LONDON, June 17 (Xinhua) -- British Home Secretary Priti Patel has approved the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to face espionage charges, the Home Office confirmed on Friday.
Britain's Westminster Magistrates' Court issued a formal order in April to extradite Assange, leaving the final decision to Patel. Assange and lawyers for the United States have gone through several rounds of legal battle over the past months that reached up to the British Supreme Court.
Assange, 50, is wanted in the United States on allegations of disclosing national defense information following WikiLeaks's publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked military documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars a decade ago, which included an Apache helicopter video footage documenting the U.S. military gunning down Reuters journalists and children in Baghdad's streets in 2007.
The Home Office said in a statement: "On 17 June, following consideration by both the Magistrates Court and High Court, the extradition of Mr. Julian Assange to the U.S. was ordered."
"In this case, the UK courts have not found that it would be oppressive, unjust or an abuse of process to extradite Mr. Assange," it said. "Nor have they found that extradition would be incompatible with his human rights, including his right to a fair trial and to freedom of expression."
Assange has 14 days to appeal the decision and his legal team said they will be appealing.
"Today is not the end of the fight. It is only the beginning of a new legal battle. We will appeal through the legal system, the next appeal will be before the High Court," WikiLeaks said in a statement on Twitter.
It also argued that Assange did nothing wrong and this case has been politically motivated.
"Make no mistake, this has always been a political case. Julian published evidence that the country trying to extradite him committed war crimes and covered them up; tortured and rendered; bribed foreign officials; and corrupted judicial inquiries into U.S. wrongdoing. Their revenge is to try to disappear him into the darkest recesses of their prison system for the rest of his life to deter others from holding governments to account," it said.
"This is a dark day for press freedom and for British democracy," it added.
Assange has been held at south London's high-security Belmarsh Prison since 2019. Lawyers for the United States said earlier that Assange would be allowed to transfer to Australia, his home country, to serve any prison sentence he may be given.
