WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is targeted by the United States for uncovering state-level crimes, and Donald Trump has sought options on how to deal with him.
This is what Assange's lawyers, who are fighting to stop his extradition from Britain, said yesterday.
The hearing at the High Court in London will last two days, and the judges are expected to make a decision later, possibly in a few weeks or even months.
US prosecutors are demanding that Assange, 52, be brought to trial on 18 counts related to WikiLeaks' release of large amounts of classified US military documents and diplomatic cables.
They claim that the data leak endangered the lives of their agents and that there is no justification for his criminal actions. Assange's supporters hail him as an anti-establishment hero and a journalist persecuted for exposing American wrongdoing.
At the start of a hearing that could be his last chance to prevent extradition from Britain to the US, Assange's lawyers and wife said the case was politically motivated and an attack on all journalists, Reuters reported.
Stella Assange compared his case to that of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition activist who died in prison on Friday while serving a three-decade sentence.
"Julian is a political prisoner and his life is in danger. What happened to Navalny can happen to Julian," she told reporters outside the court where a large group of people demanded his release. Assange himself was not in the courtroom nor did he follow the process remotely because he was ill.
His wife warned last week that Assange's condition was "deteriorating, physically and mentally".
Assange's colleague Mark Summers said there was evidence that there was a "really stunning plan" to kidnap or kill Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy, and that former US President Trump had asked for "detailed options" to kill him.
The Australian's legal battle began in 2010 and he spent seven years detained in the Ecuadorian embassy in London before being extradited and jailed in 2019 for breaching his bail conditions.
Since then he has been held in a maximum security prison in London, even got married and had two children there, until Britain finally approved his extradition to the US in 2022.
His legal team is trying to overturn that approval in a two-day hearing. They claim that previous judges failed to consider their argument that the extradition was politically motivated and a deliberate attempt to punish and silence him for exposing US "state-level crimes".
The hearing is the "beginning of the end" of extradition challenges in British courts, Assange's team says.
"Assange is being prosecuted for standard journalistic practices of obtaining and publishing confidential information that is true and in the public interest," Assange's lead attorney, Edward Fitzgerald, told the court.
He said that if convicted, Assange could face up to 175 years in prison, but it is more likely to be at least 30 to 40 years, according to Reuters. American prosecutors said that the sentence will not exceed 63 months.
Assange's colleague Mark Summers said there was evidence that there was a "truly stunning plan" to kidnap or kill Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy, and that former US President Trump had asked for "detailed options" to kill him.
In 2021, Yahoo News reported that CIA officials had prepared options for the Trump administration on how to handle Assange while he was in the London embassy.
"Senior CIA officials asked for plans, the president himself asked for options on how to do it, and sketches were even drawn," the lawyer said yesterday.
In their written submissions, US attorneys said Assange's legal team "consistently and repeatedly misrepresented" their case against him. They said Assange was not being prosecuted for releasing the leaked material, but for aiding and abetting with a former intelligence analyst. of the US Army, Chelsea Manning, to obtain them illegally, then reveal the names of the sources and “put these individuals in grave danger”.
If Assange wins the case, a full appeals hearing will be held to reconsider his challenge, Reuters reports. If he loses, the only option left would be the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and Stella Assange said his lawyers would apply to European judges for an emergency order if necessary.
WikiLeaks first came into the limelight in 2010 when it released US military videos showing a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed twelve people, including two Reuters journalists.
He then released thousands of secret classified documents and diplomatic cables that exposed often highly critical US assessments of world leaders, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to members of the Saudi royal family.
Assange's supporters include Amnesty International, media groups and politicians including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who last week voted in favor of a motion seeking his return to Australia.
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