A British court is deciding today whether to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to America, which wants to try him for espionage after the publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents.
For his supporters, the 49-year-old Assange has become a symbol of the fight for freedom of information.
His fate will be decided by Judge Vanessa Beritzer at the Old Bailey Court in London.
Whatever decision is made it will be possible to appeal so the court battle in the UK will certainly not end there.
It remains to be seen what the future US President Joe Biden's attitude will be towards the WikiLeaks founder.
Assange was prosecuted under the presidency of Donald Trump.
During the time of Trump's predecessor Barack Obama, whose vice president Biden was, the American courts gave up on the prosecution of Assange.
However, 10 years ago, Biden compared Assange to a "high-tech terrorist".
Lawyer Stella Morris, with whom Assange has two children, said in an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel on Sunday that none of his lawyers have appeared at London's high-security Belmarsh prison, where he is being held, since March.
She said Assange's defense was "severely handicapped."
"But the situation in Belmarsh prison is nothing compared to the prison conditions he will be subjected to in the US if he is extradited," she said, assessing that Assange would then be "buried alive".
On April 11, 2019, the WikiLeaks founder was kicked out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he took refuge in 2012, and was immediately arrested by the British police.
The US has requested the extradition of Assange, who is facing a total of 18 counts of the US indictment, and if he is convicted of espionage and treason for publishing secret state documents about US military and diplomatic activities, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, he faces a prison sentence of 175 years.
The US blames him for putting US intelligence sources at risk, which he disputes.
Among the documents he released was a video showing civilians killed by US helicopter gunfire in Iraq in July 2007, including two Reuters journalists.
The British court has to decide whether the US extradition request meets certain legal criteria, and specifically whether it is disproportionate or incompatible with human rights.
Kristin Hrafnson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, told AFP yesterday that it was "almost certain" that the court would rule against Assange and denounced bias in the proceedings.
In a statement released this weekend, he assessed that the very fact that this case was brought to court and that it lasted for so long represents a historic, high-level attack on freedom of expression.
During the five-week trial in February and September, Julian Assange's lawyers denounced a "political" process based on "lies."
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