The ruling sets the stage for an appeal process likely to further drag out a years-long legal saga.
High Court judges Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson on Monday said Assange had grounds to challenge the United Kingdom's government's extradition order – a decision likely to further drag out what has already been a long legal saga.
The Australian computer expert has spent the last five years in a British high-security prison after taking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for seven years. Lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said prosecutors had failed to guarantee that Assange, who is an Australian citizen and claims protections as a journalist for publishing US classified information, could rely on press protections of the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Assange's lawyers have argued he was a journalist who exposed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sending him to the US, they said, would expose him to a politically motivated prosecution and risk a "flagrant denial of justice". The US provided those reassurances, but Assange's legal team and supporters argue they were not good enough to rely on to send him to the US federal court system because the First Amendment promises fall short.
Attorney James Lewis, representing the US, said Assange's conduct was "simply unprotected" by the First Amendment.
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