Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States has been cleared by a British appellate court, which overturned a lower court’s decision that the WikiLeaks founder’s could not withstand the US criminal justice system due to his fragile mental state. UK Home Secretary Priti Patel will take a final call on Assange’s extradition after the London High Court ruled that US assurances were enough to guarantee Assange would be treated humanely, and directed a lower court judge to send the extradition request to Britain’s interior minister for review.

In January, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser refused the US request to extradite Assange on health grounds, saying the WikiLeaks founder was likely to kill himself under harsh US prison conditions.

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The United States appealed the ruling. James Lewis, a lawyer for the US government, said Assange “has no history of serious and enduring mental illness.”

US authorities have told British judges that if Assange would be eligible to serve any US prison sentence he receives in his native Australia, and that he wouldn’t be held at the supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.

The High Court ordered that Assange, 50, remain in custody at London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison till the outcome of the extradition case.

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Assange has been in prison since he was arrested in April 2019 for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years holed up inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London. Assange sought protection in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019.

Charges against Assange and possible prison time

Assange has been indicted in the US on 18 charges under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act over WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents in 2010. He faces a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison even though although Lewis has said “the longest sentence ever imposed for this offense is 63 months.”

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Prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published. Lawyers for Assange argue he is entitled to First Amendment freedom of speech protections for publishing documents that exposed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

‘Travesty of justice’

Human rights groups including Amnesty International have called on US authorities to drop charges against Assange. Amnesty termed Friday’s court ruling as a “travesty of justice.” By allowing this appeal, the High Court has chosen to accept the deeply flawed diplomatic assurances given by the US that #Assange would not be held in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison,” Amnesty posted on their Twitter account.

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In 2016, a United Nations panel also opposed Assange’s extradition to the US. Assange’s partner Stella Moris, who has been raising funds to fight against his extradition, called the High Court decision a “grave miscarriage of justice” that Assange’s lawyers would appeal in the UK Supreme Court.

“We will fight,” Moris said outside the court.

“Every generation has an epic fight to fight and this is ours, because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society,” she said.