Julian Assange cannot be extradited to US, British judge rules

[BeyondGeography]

Source: The Guardian

Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the US to face charges of espionage and of hacking government computers, a British judge has decided.

The ruling was delivered at the central criminal court by the district judge, Vanessa Baraitser.

An appeal is expected to be mounted against the ruling, which comes after weeks of hearings at the Old Bailey last year and campaigning by supporters of Assange and others who have decried US charges against the him as an attack on press freedom.

The case against the 49-year-old relates to WikiLeaks’s publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jan/04/julian-assange-cannot-be-extradited-to-us-british-judge-rules?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[hlthe2b]

1. Interesting. I wonder how rumors of a Trump pardon impacted this decision...

Being appealed, so...

[Hekate]

13. GMTA

[My Pet Orangutan]

2. One cannot help wondering how much the conduct of Barr and Trump

influenced this decision. The U.S. stated that Assange would likely receive a 6-year sentence. No doubt Judge Baraitser considered representations by the U.S. to be worthless.

[Voltaire2]

3. good. Journalism is not espionage.

Unfortunately the ruling was not about that but instead about the horrendous condit6ions of us prisons and the likelihood that Assange would get 'suicided'.

[Happy Hoosier]

4. Coordinating with foreign intelligence...

Operatives to achieve specific political objectives is not journalism.

[Voltaire2]

7. which foreign intelligence agency was assange working with as per the indictment?

[Happy Hoosier]

10. Russian Internet hacking services... Guccifer 2.0

Honestly though, I am uninterested in arguing with anyone defending that piece of shit.

He is absolute SCUM, and no one of integrity should be defending him.

[Voltaire2]

11. er, no, the indictment is over the 2010 Manning data published by wikileaks

there is no allegation of foreign intelligence services involvement.

[treestar]

5. Strange basis

So no one suffering from depression can be extradited to the US, according to them. We don't protect them from themselves enough. Was there solid evidence that we have more prison suicides?

[BeyondGeography]

12. Future extraditions will be limited to defendants who are totally cool with US prisons

(I think that line of reasoning faces serious problems on appeal.)

[iscooterliberally]

14. Well, there was Jeffrey Epstein.

That might have had something to do with their ruling.

[Voltaire2]

8. they were always just a pretext.

yes, dropped.

[LeftInTX]

15. I believe the statutes of limitations ran out on that one

[Dopers_Greed]

9. He probably would have just gotten a Rump pardon