2022-01-25 07:19
by Stella Moris-Crowd Justice
Julian Assange has won the right to ask the Supreme Court to block his extradition to the US. on Monday, Jan.24th, 2022, announced his lawyer and fiancee Stella Moris.
"The High Court has ruled that we have an arguable point of law and we can petition the Supreme Court to hear the case."
The point of appeal concerns the 'assurances' given by the US about how Julian would be treated by the US justice system if he was extradited.
Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice, said the case had raised a legal question over the circumstances in which judges received and considered assurances from the US about how he would be treated in prison.
Julian's lawyers now have 14 days to appeal to the Supreme Court to hear the case. In its pronouncement the High Court granted our request to certify the following point of law:
"In what circumstances can an appellate court receive assurances from a requesting state which were not before the court of first instance in extradition proceedings".
It is quite a technical issue so I thought it would be helpful to share the statement I gave outside the court after the hearing:
“Thanks everyone for coming today. What happened in court today is precisely what we wanted to happen. The High Court certified that we had raised a point of law of general public importance and that the Supreme Court has good grounds to hear this appeal. The situation now is that the Supreme Court has to decide whether it will hear the appeal but make no mistake we won today in court.
But let’s not forget that every time we win, as long as this case isn’t dropped, as long as Julian isn’t freed, Julian continues to suffer. For almost three years he has been in Belmarsh prison and he is suffering profoundly, day after day, week after week, year after year. Julian has to be freed and we hope that this will soon end.
But we are far from achieving justice in this case because Julian has been incarcerated for so long and he should not have spent a single day in prison. If there had been justice the officials who plotted, who conspired to murder Julian, would be in the courtroom right now. If there were justice, the crimes that Julian exposed, war crimes, the killing of innocent civilians, would not be ignored.
Our fight goes on and we will fight this until Julian is free. Thank you.”
As I told journalists outside the High Court, the fight goes on. Please help us to continue the fight to free Julian by contributing to this appeal.
I will update you further when we have recieved a decision from the Supreme Court and, if they agree to hear the case, a new phase of the campaign will begin, she said.
