On Monday, Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett and Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde denied Assange permission to directly appeal December’s ruling, leaving it to the UK’s Supreme Court to decide whether or not to take up Assange’s appeal.
The only argument they accepted from Assange’s team was that the Supreme Court had never considered whether higher courts could take up assurances made by a state requesting extradition, when the assurances were not put before lower courts earlier in the legal proceedings.
Assange’s fiancée Stella Moris hailed the High Court ruling as “precisely what we wanted to happen.”
“The High Court certified that we had raised a point of law of general public importance and that the Supreme Court has good grounds to hear this appeal,” she said in a statement outside the court on Monday. “The situation now is that the Supreme Court has to decide whether it will hear the appeal, but make no mistake, we won today in court.”
Assange is wanted in the US on 18 criminal charges after WikiLeaks published thousands of classified files and diplomatic cables in 2010. If convicted, he faces up to 175 years in prison.
Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh prison since 2019, after he was arrested in connection with bail-skipping charges and a separate extradition warrant from the US Justice Department.
