On January 4, a British court blocked a United States request to extradite WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
The US has charged him with hacking government computers and espionage after he obtained and published hundreds of thousands of classified documents between 2010 and 2011.
District Judge Vanessa Baraister said extradition would be “oppressive” taking into account Assange’s mental health, saying he was at risk of suicide.
Assange was arrested in April 2019 by UK police from the embassy of Ecuador in London, where he had been granted asylum since 2012.
Who is Julian Assange?
Assange is an Australian-born computer programmer and founder of WikiLeaks – an international, non-profit whistle-blowing organisation that was created in Iceland in 2006.
The 49-year-old, a father, is WikiLeaks’ publisher and former editor-in-chief. In 2018, Icelandic journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson took over as editor.
Assange came to prominence in mid-2010 after WikiLeaks published US military logs from Afghanistan and Iraq, and US cable leaks in November that year.
