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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange wins appeal to fight extradition to U.S.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange wins appeal to fight extradition to U.S.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange won the right to challenge a British court’s decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face espionage charges, extending a yearslong legal battle that pitted U.S. and British authorities against the Australian national and free speech campaigners.

The U.K. High Court’s decision on Monday means that Assange, whose legal fight in Britain has been going on for more than 13 years, will have another chance to try to halt being transferred by British authorities to the U.S. to stand trial for disclosing American military secrets.

Assange’s lawyers argue the charges are politically motivated.

The 52-year-old hacker burst onto the world stage in 2010 with details from what was the biggest security breach of its kind in U.S. military history. The U.S. Justice Department indicted Assange in 2019 on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over his publication of classified U.S. diplomatic and military documents. Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelea Manning served jail time for leaking documents to WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks published a trove of classified documents about U.S. military action including video footage that showed a helicopter killing civilians in Iraq. It also published thousands of confidential documents indicating the U.S. military killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan in unreported incidents.

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Some consider Assange a champion of government transparency and freedom of the press, while others have condemned him as a dangerous rogue who has undermined national security.

WikiLeaks released more than 90,000 documents related to Afghanistan and later published more than 400,000 documents from the war in Iraq. The documents included information about civilian deaths, the hunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Iran’s backing of militants in Iraq.

Assange has been fighting extradition to the U.S. since 2012. He spent seven years in self-exile inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and the past five years in a high-security British prison.

The exact timing of the appeal was not made clear Monday, though it is expected to take months.

Assange’s lawyers have said that if extradited and convicted in a U.S. court he faces up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, although U.S. prosecutors have said the sentence would be much shorter. Prosecutors recently gave the British court “assurances” that if Assange is extradited he would not face the death penalty.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement it was “heartened” that Assange was granted the right to appeal his case.

“Assange’s prosecution in the United States would have disastrous implications for press freedom. It is time for the United States Department of Justice to drop its harmful charges against Assange,” said Committee to Protect Journalists President Jodie Ginsberg.

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