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Julian Assange can appeal extradition to the US, UK court rules | CNN

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Julian Assange can appeal extradition to the US, UK court rules | CNN

The High Court in London has ruled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has the right to appeal in a final challenge against his extradition to the United States.

Assange’s legal team argued that the judges Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson should not accept the assurances given by US prosecutors that the WikiLeaks founder could seek to rely upon the rights and protections under the US First Amendment.

His legal team made the case that Assange could be discriminated against on the basis of his nationality, as an Australian-born foreign national.

In a short ruling, the judges said the US submissions were not sufficient, granting Assange permission to a full appeal in relation to the points on freedom of speech and nationality.

A date has not yet been set for the full appeal.

Assange is wanted by US authorities on espionage charges connected to his organization’s publication of thousands of classified documents and diplomatic cables in 2010 and 2011. He faces spending the rest of his life behind bars if convicted.

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Julian Assange gestures from a police vehicle after arriving at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London in April 2019.

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Assange holds a copy of The Guardian newspaper in London on July 26, 2010, a day after WikiLeaks posted more than 90,000 classified documents related to the Afghanistan War.

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Assange attends a seminar at the Swedish Trade Union Confederation in Stockholm on August 14, 2010. Six days later, Swedish prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest based on allegations of sexual assault from two women. Assange has always denied wrongdoing in that case, and years later Swedish prosecutors eventually dropped their investigations.

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Assange, in London, displays a page from WikiLeaks on October 23, 2010. The day before, WikiLeaks released approximately 400,000 classified military documents from the Iraq War.

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Assange and his bodyguards are seen after a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in November 2010. It was the month WikiLeaks began releasing diplomatic cables from US embassies.

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Assange sits behind the tinted window of a police vehicle in London on December 14, 2010. Assange had turned himself in to London authorities on December 7 and was released on bail and put on house arrest on December 16. In February 2011, a judge ruled in support of Assange’s extradition to Sweden. Assange’s lawyers filed an appeal.

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In October 2011, a month after WikiLeaks released more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables, Assange speaks to demonstrators from the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

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Assange leaves the High Court in London in December 2011. He was taking his extradition case to the British Supreme Court.

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Assange leaves the Supreme Court in February 2012. In May of that year, the court denied his appeal against extradition.

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Assange addresses the media and his supporters from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on August 19, 2012. A few days earlier, Ecuador announced that it had granted asylum to Assange. In his public address, Assange demanded that the United States drop its “witch hunt” against WikiLeaks.

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Assange speaks from a window of the Ecuadorian Embassy in December 2012.

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Assange addresses the Oxford Union Society from the Ecuadorian Embassy in January 2013.

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Assange appears with Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino on the balcony of the embassy in June 2013.

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Assange speaks during a panel discussion at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, in March 2014.

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Assange attends a news conference inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in August 2014.

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Assange is seen on a video screen in March 2015, during an event on the sideline of a United Nations Human Rights Council session.

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Assange, on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy, holds up a United Nations report in February 2016. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said that Assange was being arbitrarily detained by the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom.

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Assange speaks to the media in May 2017, after Swedish prosecutors had dropped their investigation of rape allegations against Assange. But Assange acknowledged he was unlikely to walk out of the embassy any time soon. “The UK has said it will arrest me regardless,” he said. “The US CIA Director (Mike) Pompeo and the US attorney general have said that I and other WikiLeaks staff have no … First Amendment rights, that my arrest and the arrest (of) my other staff is a priority. That is not acceptable.”

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Assange was seen for the first time in months during a hearing via teleconference in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2018. The hearing was then postponed due to translation difficulties.

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A van displays images of Assange and Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who supplied thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in April 2019. A senior Ecuadorian official at the time said no decision had been made to expel Assange from the embassy. According to WikiLeaks tweets, sources had told the organization that Assange could be kicked out of the embassy within “hours to days.”

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A screen grab from video footage shows the dramatic moment when Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by police in April 2019. Assange was arrested for “failing to surrender to the court” over a warrant issued in 2012. Officers made the initial move to detain Arrange after Ecuador withdrew his asylum and invited authorities into the embassy, citing his bad behavior.

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Assange gestures from the window of a prison van as he is driven into the Southwark Crown Court in London in May 2019. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breaching his bail conditions in 2012.

In March, the court delayed its decision on an extradition as the judges sought a series of assurances, including from the US that it would not seek the death penalty for the 52-year-old Australian citizen.

It has been 12 years since the Australian has lived freely.

Assange has spent the past five years in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison and nearly seven years before that holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in the English capital trying to avoid arrest. He maintains his extradition is politically motivated.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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