Julian Assange's partner asks London not to extradite him to the US

Stella Moris, the fiancée of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, on Tuesday asked the British government to prevent his extradition to the United States, which wants to try him for espionage following a massive leak of classified documents.

Supporters of the Australian saw one of their last hopes of avoiding extradition vanish on Monday when the British Supreme Court refused to consider his appeal against surrender to the US justice system.

The case will now be referred to the British Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel, who is ultimately responsible for approving any extradition.

Stressing that “Julian's fate is now in the hands of the Minister of the Interior,” Moris insisted in a statement that “this is a political case and she can put an end to it.”

“It takes political courage, but this is what it takes to preserve an open society that protects publishers from foreign persecution,” he said.

Assange, 50, is being prosecuted in the United States for the publication since 2010 of more than 700,000 classified documents on U.S. military and diplomatic activities, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If convicted on all charges, he could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison, in a case that his supporters denounce as a serious attack on freedom of the press.

Imprisoned in a high-security prison near London for almost three years, the Australian was arrested by British police in April 2019 at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had taken refuge seven years earlier in violation of the conditions of his release on bail.

Already then, he feared that he would be extradited to the United States from Sweden, where he faced charges of rape that had since been abandoned.

Moris, a South African lawyer with whom Assange secretly had two children during her years in the Ecuadorian legation, announced on Sunday that the couple received permission to marry on March 23 in London prison.

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