UK court rules that Julian Assange can be extradited to US to face espionage charges, overturning previous decision

• Wikileaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, a UK court said on Friday.
• Assange is currently a UK prison, and a court previously ruled he could not be sent to the US.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the US where he faces charges including hacking charges, a London court ruled on Friday.

It overturns an earlier ruling in a lower court that Assange could not be extradited on humanitarian grounds, which was based on concern that he would be at a risk of suicide and self-harm if sent to the US.

That decision was reversed on Friday in London's High Court after the US made assurances to the UK that it would not subject him to its harshest prison conditions.

The High Court hearing does not itself mean that Assange will be extradited. The decision now passes to the UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel, who can choose to extradite or not.

The Home Office told Insider after the verdict that it was too soon to comment on the case.

The US has accused Assange of conspiring to hack government computers and breaching the Espionage Act after WikiLeaks published a trove of confidential military and diplomatic documents in 2010.

He faces 18 charges in the US.

Assange lived for years in Ecuador's embassy in London, hoping to avoid the US justice process by seeking asylum there. Ecuador withdrew its protection over him in in April 2019, at which point police entered the embassy dragged him out.

The US then requested to extradite him, a process which has lasted more than two years. Assange has been in prison in the UK since he was arrested.

A summary of the decision published by UK officials said that the US assured the UK that Assange "will receive appropriate clinical and psychological treatment" in prison while in the US.

The US also said it would let Assange serve his sentence to Australia, his home country, if he sought a transfer there.

Assange's fiancée Stella Morris, a former member of his legal team, said in response to Friday's ruling: "How can it be fair, how can it be right, how can it be possible, to extradite Julian to the very country which plotted to kill him?"

That appeared to be a reference to a Yahoo News investigation which said that the CIA during the Trump administration considered plans to kidnap or assassinate Assange while he was still in the embassy.