Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, hero to some, traitor to others, is set to fight what may be his last battle against being extradited from Britain to the United States. A hearing has been scheduled to take place at the High Courts in London on February 20-21. It will be presided over by a two-judge panel to reexamine the decision made by a judge last June that denied Assange’s appeal request to block extradition.
The 52-year-old Australian is facing multiple charges from U.S. officials including violation of the Espionage Act, receiving, possessing, and communicating classified US government information to the public and conspiring to commit computer intrusion. The gravity of these accusations are substantial. Should he be extradited to the United States, Assange would stand trial in Alexandria, Virginia, potentially facing a staggering sentence of up to 175 years in a maximum-security prison.
The charges date back to 2010, when a US Army intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning, who has since undergone sex reassignment surgery and now goes by the name Chelsea Manning, stole 750,000 pages worth of classified cables, videos, and documents from the Department of Defense and then sent it, the largest unauthorized leak of classified material in US history, unsolicited, to Wikileaks.