Extradition Hearing Of Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange To The United States To Begin In February 2020 Rules UK Court

The full extradition hearing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US will begin in February 2020, a London court has ruled.

Assange is a multi-award winning journalist, with more than 15 international recognitions for his work. The most outstanding awards are the 2008 New Media Award from The Economist, 2010 Time Person of the Year (Reader's Choice), and the 2009 Amnesty International UK Media Award, among others.

The 47-year-old is currently in custody in the UK. He was jailed for 50 weeks for breaching his bail after spending seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid extradition.

He is wanted in the US on a number of charges, including espionage and computer hacking.

London's Westminster Magistrates Court ruled that Assange's full US extradition hearing will be held on February 25, 2020, Efe news reported.

Assange told the court that “175 years of my life is effectively at stake” and argued that WikiLeaks is “nothing but a publisher”.

The preliminary hearing was held a day after British Home Secretary Sajid Javid signed the extradition request from the US for Assange to face criminal charges.

Mark Summers, the lawyer representing Assange, said that the allegations represent “an outrageous and full-frontal assault on journalistic rights”.

Earlier, United States Federal Judge John G Koeltl had ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had not broken any US law by publishing hacked Democratic National Congress (DNC) emails, adding that WikiLeaks was fully entitled to publish them.

He concluded that if WikiLeaks could be held liable for publishing documents about the DNC’s political, financial and voter-engagement strategies simply because the DNC labels them ‘secret’ or trade secrets, then any newspaper or other media outlet also could be held liable for the same.

The judge stated that the US First Amendment prevents such liability in the same way it would preclude liability for press outlets which publish materials in public interest.

Meanwhile, actress Pamela Anderson said, “Freedom of the press is at stake. Julian Assange is being used to scare publishers and journalists. He cannot be extradited to the US where he will not be treated fairly. It’s this simple, don’t extradite Assange. Journalism is not a crime!”

World famous fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood who visited Julian Assange in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison recently said, “Assange must not be extradited. If dispatched to the US, this man faces 175 years in jail, believe it or not. That’s totally out of proportion. It’s the kind of thing that a nation that has gone crazy would charge somebody with, for telling the truth.”