The extradition hearing for Julian Assange will resume at London's Old Bailey on Monday, after a coronavirus scare shut down proceedings last week | latikambourke
The latest drama in the ongoing saga surrounding the Australian began on Wednesday, when the wife of a barrister representing the US government developed symptoms that were feared to be signs of a COVID-19 infection.
Earlier in the week she refused a request from Assange's legal team to delay the hearing until after the US presidential election. Assange's team has presented a witness to the court, a peace expert, who claims Donald Trump is pursuing Assange, in part because his predecessor, Barack Obama, did not. Assange is resisting extradition to the US. The Department of Justice says his actions in conspiring with former army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning to steal more than half a million classified documents relating to the Iraq and Afghan wars were not journalism but crimes of hacking and theft under the Espionage Act.
It is the second extradition that Assange has fought. In 2012, a British judge ruled that he be extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations.
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