WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will find out this Tuesday (26) whether the High Court in London will allow him to appeal his extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States or whether his British trials have finally come to an end.
Two senior judges will hand down the decision at 7:30 am (Brasília time). If Assange wins, a full appeal hearing will be held to consider his challenge again. If she loses, her last option would be to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
US prosecutors are trying to put 52-year-old Assange on trial on 18 charges related to WikiLeaks' release of vast confidential military records and American diplomatic cables. All but one of the charges fall under the Espionage Act.
They argue that the leaks put the lives of their agents at risk and there is no excuse for the crime.
Assange's supporters consider him a hero anti-establishment who is being persecuted, despite being a journalist, for exposing US irregularities and committing alleged war crimes.
His legal battles in the UK began in 2010 and he subsequently spent seven years hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in London before being arrested for breaching his bail conditions in 2019.
Since then, he has been detained in a maximum security prison in southeast London, even getting married there.
The United Kingdom gave the green light to extradite Julian Assange to the United States in 2022, and he has since tried to overturn that decision.
His first attempt at an appeal was rejected last year, which led to a two-day hearing last month when his lawyers tried to reverse the decision.
His supporters say this represents his last opportunity to block extradition in the English courts.
His wife, Stella Assange, stated that it could be a life or death decision, pointing out that her husband would not survive if he was sent to the United States.
Who is Julian Assange?
Assange was born in Townsville, Australia, in July 1971, to parents who worked in theater and traveled frequently.
As a teenager, Assange gained a reputation as a sophisticated computer programmer, and in 1995 he was arrested and found guilty of hacking.
He was fined but avoided prison on the condition that he not reoffend. In his late 20s, he went to the University of Melbourne to study mathematics and physics.
What is WikiLeaks?
Assange launched WikiLeaks in 2006, a website where secret files were shared by people who leaked them.
The page gained prominence in April 2010 when it published a confidential video showing a 2007 US helicopter strike that killed a dozen people in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, including two Reuters news workers.
In total, WikiLeaks released more than 90,000 classified US military documents about the war in Afghanistan and around 400,000 secret US files about the Iraq war. The two leaks represented the largest security breaches in American military history.
Source: CNN Brasil
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