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Julian Assange appeals to UK court against extradition

Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, has appealed to UK High Court against the British government’s decision last month to extradite him to the US.

Assange is best known for his journalism which exposed American war crimes and human rights abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Wikileaks released 400,000 classified US documents about the Iraq war which revealed over 109,000 deaths between 2004 and the end of 2009. This included the deaths of 66,081 civilians, 23,984 people classed as "enemy", 15,196 members of the Iraqi security forces, and 3,771 coalition troops.

If extradited to the US, Assange faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse. Assange remains in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison following an arrest in 2019 for skipping bail during a separate legal challenge. Prior to that, he had spent seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy avoiding extradition to Sweden over allegations of sexual assault. Despite Sweden dropping these charges in November 2019, British judges have kept Assange in prison.

Wikileaks has shed light on the Sri Lankan conflict revealing that British and American officials were aware of the war crimes being committed by the Sri Lanka state during the final stages of the war.

Recent reporting indicates that the CIA had considered kidnapping or killing Assange whilst he was trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy.

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