London (AFP) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was absent from a London court due to illness Tuesday, as his lawyers launched a likely last bid to appeal against his extradition to the United States to face espionage charges.
Washington indicted the Australian multiple times between 2018 and 2020 over WikiLeaks’ publication of secret military and diplomatic files on the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On the first of two days of evidence before two High Court judges, the 52-year-old’s leading lawyer said previous rulings contained “errors of law” and that the US charges against him are “political”.
“Mr Assange was exposing serious state criminality,” Edward Fitzgerald said, adding he is “being prosecuted for engaging in ordinary journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing classified information”.
“There is a real risk that he will suffer flagrant denial of justice” if sent to the US, Fitzgerald argued.
Earlier, Fitzgerald told the judges that Assange was “not well today” and would not attend in person or via video.
Lawyers for the US government will present their arguments on Wednesday.
It was unclear if Assange will attend then.
Reporters Without Borders said it was “concerned”.
The media advocacy group noted that when it visited Assange last month at Belmarsh high-security prison in London, he was unwell and had broken a rib from excessive coughing. It “highlights the risks to his physical and mental health that exist in his current detention conditions, which would be exacerbated if extradited,” the NGO added.
– ‘Two big days’ –
The two-day session is seen as Assange’s last chance to fight extradition in Britain’s courts after a half-decade battle.
The judges will decide whether to grant him another full appeal hearing.
If they rule against him, he will have exhausted his UK legal options.
However, Stella Assange has said her husband will then ask the European Court of Human Rights to temporarily halt the extradition, saying he would die if extradited.
“We have two big days ahead. We don’t know what to expect, but you’re here because the world is watching,” she told supporters outside court.
“They just cannot get away with this. Julian needs his freedom and we all need the truth.”
The couple, who met when Stella worked on his legal case in the mid-2010s, have two children together.
Supporters plan to march on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Downing Street office later Tuesday.
US President Joe Biden has faced sustained domestic and international pressure to drop the 18-count indictment against Assange in a Virginia federal court, which was filed under his predecessor Donald Trump.
Major media organisations, press freedom advocates and the Australian parliament are among those decrying the prosecution under the 1917 Espionage Act, which has never been used over the publishing of classified information.
Washington alleges Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to conduct “one of the largest compromises of classified information” in US history.
– ‘Bad faith’ –
Assange was arrested in 2019 after spending seven years holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy.
He fled there to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault which were later dropped.
UK courts previously blocked his extradition, but the High Court reversed the decision on appeal in 2021 after Washington vowed not to imprison him in its most extreme prison, “ADX Florence”.
It also pledged not to subject him to the harsh regime known as “Special Administrative Measures” and eventually allow him to be transferred to Australia.
In March 2022, the UK’s Supreme Court refused permission to appeal there, arguing Assange failed to “raise an arguable point of law”.
Months later, ex-interior minister Priti Patel formally signed off on his extradition.
Assange’s lawyers are now appealing on grounds including that the decades-long prison sentence he faces is “disproportionate” and that Washington is acting in “bad faith”.
Mark Summers, another Assange lawyer, told the court of news reports alleging the US had plotted to kidnap and even kill Assange before he was arrested during Trump’s presidency.
“There was a plot… the president himself requested himself to be provided with options with how to do it and sketches were even drawn up” Summers said, citing a Yahoo News report.
He branded the US extradition request a “misuse” of the Anglo-American treaty governing such matters.
