WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange’s Mental Unraveling Drives U.K. Judge to Block Extradition to United States

Blocking Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States, a U.K. judge found on the Monday that the WikiLeaks founder’s psyche may not be able to handle the possibility of imprisonment for the rest of his life. “By the time of his August 2020 report he found that Mr. Assange’s depression had subsided to ‘moderate’ severity,” District Judge Vanessa Baraitser wrote, quoting psychiatrist Michael Kopelman  in finding Assange a risk of suicide. The judge rejected Assange’s arguments grounded in freedom of expression and the U.S. judiciary’s ability to protect it. “The auditory hallucinations were much less prominent and less troubling and the somatic hallucinations had been abolished,” the judgment continues. “His symptoms in December 2019 included loss of sleep, loss of weight, impaired concentration, a feeling of often being on the verge of tears, and a state of acute agitation in which he was pacing his cell until exhausted, punching his head or banging it against a cell wall.” If extradited, the 49-year-old Assange could have spent the rest of his natural life in a United States prison. He faces 17 charges related largely to a massive cache of military and diplomatic files disclosed to him by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning . The Department of Justice said that it will continue to seek Assange’s extradition on appeal. “While we are extremely disappointed in the court’s ultimate decision, we are gratified that the United States prevailed on every point of law raised,” the department said in a statement. “In particular, the court rejected all of Mr. Assange’s arguments regarding political motivation, political offense, fair trial, and freedom of speech.” Press-freedom advocates have warned that prosecuting Assange under the Espionage Act for disclosing what was the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history would criminalize what has long been a standard journalistic practice. “We welcome the fact that Julian Assange will not be sent to the USA, but this does not absolve the UK from having engaged in this politically-motivated process at the behest of the USA and putting media freedom and freedom of expression on trial,” Amnesty International wrote in a statement. But U.S. prosecutors claim that Assange’s actions went beyond journalism, such as conspiring with Manning and other sources to hack into private databases. “This court trusts that upon extradition, a US court will properly consider Mr. Assange’s right to free speech and determine any constitutional challenges to their equivalent legislation,” the judge wrote. When prosecutors first unsealed charges against Assange in 2019, the first public indictment’s computer intrusion charge focused on revelations from Manning’s trial that the two allegedly discussed cracking the password of a national-defense database. This past June, U.S. prosecutors went farther, saying that Assange also asked a teenager to steal audio recordings of phone conversations between high-ranking officials of a NATO country, including a member of its parliament. The superseding indictment also charges him in connection with hacks by collectives Anonymous, Gnosis, AntiSec, and LulzSec. This is a developing story… [Image via Jack Taylor/Getty Images]
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