Julian Assange awaits ‘decisive day’ in High Court extradition battle

Mr Assange has resisted extradition from the UK for over a decade after his Wikileaks website published thousands of confidential US documents in 2010 and 2011.

The US Department of Justice described the leaks as “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States”.

The leaked files suggested the US military had killed civilians in unreported incidents during the war in Afghanistan.

US authorities say Mr Assange endangered lives by failing to redact the names of intelligence operatives in the documents, but his lawyers have argued that the case is a politically motivated form of “state retaliation”.

“He exposed literally war crimes,” Stella Assange told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday. “This case is the revenge of that country against openness and accountability.”

Ms Assange has two children with the Wikileaks founder, who she married in Belmarsh Prison in 2022. She says she hasn’t told them that their father could be extradited.

“They don’t understand the concept of extradition or that their father might be taken away from them. So I just tell them that we’re fighting to free him and we make plans about what we’ll do when he’s free.”

Dozens of people gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Monday morning to support Mr Assange.

Kaylaa Sandwell, who travelled from south-east London to attend the rally, said the case had come to a “crunch point”.

“He needs to be freed because he hasn’t done anything wrong,” she said. “If he doesn’t get freed, we won’t have a free press anymore.”

Though Monday’s hearing could represent his last chance to resist US extradition through the UK courts, Mr Assange does have another hope.

Last month, US President Joe Biden said he was considering a request from Australia to drop Mr Assange’s prosecution and return him to his native country.