WikiLeaks founder Assange may be nearing the end of his long struggle to stay out of the US

WikiLeaks the founder Julian AssangeThe fight to avoid espionage charges in the United States may be coming to an end after a protracted legal saga in Britain that has included seven years in self-imposed exile in a foreign embassy and five years in prison.

Assange's trial may be the last London next week as he tries to stop his extradition to the US. The High Court has scheduled two days of arguments on whether Assange can appeal to the Court of Appeal to block his extradition. If the court does not grant the appeal, he can be sent across the Atlantic.

His wife says the decision is a matter of life and death for Assange, whose health has deteriorated while in custody.

“His life is at risk every day he is in prison,” Stella Assange said Thursday. “If he is extradited, he will die.”

WHAT IS ASSANGE ACCUSED OF?

Assange, 52, an Australian computer expert, was indicted in the US on 18 counts of the Wikileaks publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010.

Prosecutors say he conspired with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release classified diplomatic cables and military files about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He faces 17 counts of espionage and one count of computer misuse. If convicted, his lawyers say he could face up to 175 years in prison, although US authorities have said any sentence would likely be much less.

Assange and his supporters argue that he acted as a journalist to expose wrongdoing by the US military and is protected by the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Among the files released by WikiLeaks was video of a US military Apache helicopter attack on Baghdad in 2007 that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

“Julian was charged with obtaining, possessing and communicating to the public information about war crimes committed by the US government,” Stella Assange said. “Reporting a crime is never a crime.”

American lawyers claim that Assange is guilty of trying to break into the Pentagon's computer and that the WikiLeaks publications created a “serious and imminent danger” to American intelligence services in Afghanistan and Iraq.

WHY HAS THE CASE TAKEN SO LONG?

Although the criminal case against Assange in the United States was closed only in 2019, his freedom was restricted for more than a dozen years.

Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 and was granted political asylum after the courts in England ruled that he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country.

He was arrested by British police after the Ecuadorian government revoked his asylum status in 2019 and then jailed for failing to post bail when he first holed up in the embassy.

Although Sweden has dropped its sex-crimes investigation, Assange remains in London's maximum-security Belmarsh prison while his extradition battle with the US continues.

A judge in London initially blocked Assange's extradition to the US on the grounds that he could kill himself if held in harsh US prison conditions.

But subsequent courts cleared the way for the move after US authorities gave assurances that he would not suffer ill-treatment that his lawyers said would endanger his physical and mental health.

Stella Assange and her husband's supporters have criticized these assurances as meaningless because they are conditional.

WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE RESULTS OF THE LISTENING?

If a London court rejects Assange's full appeal, he could be extradited to the US once British officials approve his removal.

His legal team plans to appeal the unfavorable decision to the European Court of Human Rights, but they fear he could be transferred before a court in Strasbourg, France, can stop his removal.

If he wins a hearing next week, it will set the stage for an appeals process that is likely to drag out the case even further.

“This procedure has been marked by a long and creeping timeline,” said Wikileaks Editor-in-Chief Christine Hrafnson. “We call it punishment through process. It is clearly a deliberate attempt to wear him down to punish him by taking so long.'

While Britain's Supreme Court rejected Assange's petition, saying it did not raise a “disputable question of law,” his wife said his new application would raise several points that are grounds for appeal.

Assange's lawyers plan to argue that he cannot get a fair trial in the US, that the US-UK treaty prohibits extradition for political crimes and that the crime of espionage did not apply to the whistleblowers.

“The drafters of the Espionage Act did not intend for publishers to be subject to it,” Stella Assange wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Undisputed expert testimony has shown that obtaining and publishing state secrets is commonplace and that there is a “continuous practice of impunity'' for publishers. The prosecutor's office “crosses a new legal boundary” and “breaks all legal precedents.”

WHAT IS ASSANGE'S CURRENT STATUS?

Stella Assange has said that her husband's mental and physical health has deteriorated dramatically and he has aged prematurely in prison. He suffered a mini-stroke in October 2021 and was so ill in December that he broke a rib while coughing.

“I worry about him every time he gets sick,” Stella Assange said. “The mental impact is extraordinary.”

The couple, who married in Belmarsh prison nearly two years ago, have two young sons, Gabriel and Max, who were conceived while Assange was in the embassy.

The boys visit their father in prison every week and undergo security checks, including being patted down by guards and sniffed by dogs, Stella Assange said. The couple is defending the children, who the mother says were not told why their father was behind bars.

“I don't think it's fair of them to know what's really going on,” she said, panting. “They know exactly what prison is. They know that the guards are preventing Julian from leaving the prison, even though he wants to go home.'