Lawyers for Julian Assange have filed an appeal with the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court against a High Court finding that he might be extradited to the United States, according to the Wikileaks founder’s girlfriend.
The ruling by the High Court in London on December 10 overturned an earlier finding by a British magistrates’ court that extraditing the 50-year-old Australian to the US legal system would be “oppressive” owing to his mental health and danger of suicide.
The US wants Assange tried for leaking confidential military information about its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to Wikileaks in 2010.
The US government has charged Assange with 18 counts stemming from the publication of 500,000 classified data on the wars.
In the United States, he might face up to 175 years in prison, however the actual punishment is difficult to predict.
Stella Moris, Assange’s girlfriend and a lawyer, announced on Twitter on Thursday that his attorneys had submitted an appeal to the extradition order.
Moris, who has two children with Assange, believes that no judgement on a Supreme Court appeal will be made before the third week of January.
During a two-day hearing in October, US lawyers argued that a lower court judge had not given enough weight to other expert testimony concerning his mental health.
They also cited diplomatic assurances given since the January decision that Assange would not be kept in severe isolation at a federal supermax jail, but would instead receive proper treatment.
Two justices at the High Court in London granted the appeal, observing that the fresh guarantees were not unusual in such instances and were “solemn commitments provided by one government to another.”
Assange has been detained since 2019, despite having already completed a term for violating bail conditions in a different case.
He stayed in Ecuador’s embassy in London for seven years to evade deportation to Sweden to face sexual assault accusations that were eventually dismissed.