Julian Assange will make his final appeal to a High Court judge on Tuesday against his extradition to the United States to face espionage charges relating to the release of secret US military documents. 

The WikiLeaks founder is viewed by US prosecutors and Western security officials as a reckless and dangerous enemy of the state whose actions placed agents named in the material at risk.

Supporters regard him as an anti-establishment hero who has been victimised for exposing US wrongdoing in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and say his prosecution is an assault on both journalism and free speech.

His legal team argue that his extradition to the US is political and that he could be subject to torture or degrading treatment once there.

But what exactly is the case against him?

Who is Julian Assange and what is WikiLeaks?

Julian Assange, 52, is the founder of WikiLeaks, a non-profit organisation set up in 2006 to publish classified information from anonymous sources. It claims to be a platform for whistleblowers and to have published more than 10 million files. 

Assange became a skilled hacker during his teenage years and by 1996 - aged 25 - he had pleaded guilty to 24 charges of hacking and related crimes in Australia, being fined $2,100. 

Assange has described WikiLeaks as “a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents”. 

Where is Julian Assange from?

Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland in 1971, but moved often, living in more than 30 Australian towns and cities over the course of his childhood. 

What is Assange and WikiLeaks accused of? 

Assange is facing extradition to the United States on 17 charges related to obtaining and disclosing US defence information and one charge of conspiring with Chelsea Manning to hack a government system. 

He will appear at the High Court in London on Tuesday to make his final appeal against his extradition.

What information did Julian Assange allegedly release?

WikiLeaks has released, among other things, footage from a US military helicopter showing civilians being killed in Baghdad in Iraq, documents relating to the unreported killing of civilians by US military in Afghanistan and a manual for operations at Guantanamo Bay. 

It also shared US State Department diplomatic cables in 2010 and files which documented alleged spying by the US on European presidents, including Angela Merkel.

In 2016, WikiLeaks shared emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the campaign manager of Hillary Clinton, which damaged Clinton’s run for president. 

The US claimed that the leaked emails were hacked by Russia, which WikiLeaks denies. The group has been criticised over its alleged ties to Moscow.

The US government also claimed Assange helped Osama bin Laden hunt American informants in the Middle East by publishing classified documents online, with prosecutors saying documents made public by WikiLeaks had been recovered at Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound.

The US claimed that a New York Times article in 2010 proves that the Taliban was using information it found on the WikiLeaks website. 

The Americans also claimed that informants allegedly named by WikiLeaks have since “disappeared”.

Where is he currently being held?

Since April 2019, Assange has been confined in HM Prison Belmarsh, London.

How has he avoided extradition to the US so far?

Assange evaded extradition by taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy from 2012 to 2019. 

In 2010, a warrant had been issued for his arrest by Sweden over allegations of sexual assault, which Assange denied, claiming they were a pretext to extradite him to the US. He gave himself up to British police but was released on bail within ten days. 

After unsuccessfully challenging the extradition proceedings, Assange breached his £340,000 bail in June 2012 to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. 

However, in 2019, his political asylum status was withdrawn following a disagreement with the Ecuadorian authorities and he was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breach of bail conditions. 

Then in 2021, a judge ruled that Assange’s detention should continue on the “substantial grounds” that he might abscond from future appeal hearings.

The US government has since unsealed their own indictments against Assange, and his extradition to the US is currently being contested in the British courts. 

The Swedish investigation against Assange has since been dropped. 

What will happen to him if he is extradited? 

If extradited, Assange could face a 175-year prison sentence, according to his lawyers. He has also claimed that he could be tortured.

Assange’s wife has said he will “die” if extradited and his lawyers have promised to lodge an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights if his attempt fails this week at the High Court.

What is his defence?

During Assange’s 2020 extradition hearing, his lawyers argued that the prosecution “is not motivated by genuine concern for criminal justice but by politics”. 

They have also argued that the case is part of a wider assault on free speech by Donald Trump’s administration and that the US wants to make an example of the WikiLeaks founder.

Assange claims that WikiLeaks only published the unredacted material pertaining to the names of informants “after they had been published by others who have never faced prosecution”. 

He also denies helping Manning in accessing the leaked documents. As such, his defence team argue that the US case “fundamentally misrepresents the facts in order to bring this case within the bounds of an extradition crime”.

His team also contend that the extradition would be an abuse of process because extradition for a political offence is “expressly prohibited” by Article 4(1) of the Anglo-US Extradition Treaty.

Who supports Assange?

Supporters of Assange include Dame Vivienne Westwood, who protested outside the court on the first day of the extradition hearing in 2020; Rafael Correa, the former president of Ecuador; and Pamela Anderson, the ex-Baywatch actress. 

He has also been praised by Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek economist, and John McDonnell, who has said the Assange case is “the Dreyfus case of our age”. 

Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, has also criticised Assange’s extradition.

Organisations and civil liberties groups including Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have offered support to Assange too, arguing the charges threaten the freedom of the press.

What is the Russia connection?

Assange’s barrister claimed during his 2020 extradition hearing that his client had been offered “a pre-emptive pardon” in exchange for helping Donald Trump find the source of the DNC leaks, known as “the Russia investigation”.

Assange claimed in Feb 2020 that Trump offered him a pardon if he denied Russian involvement in the hacking of the DNC emails.

What happened inside the embassy?

Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex offence allegations, which he denied and were later dropped. 

During his time in the embassy, his supporters claimed he was subject to intimidation, threats and a breach of his human rights. 

During his initial extradition hearing, an unnamed witness said the US was holding “conversations about whether there should be more extreme measures contemplated, such as kidnapping or poisoning Julian Assange in the embassy”.

Assange also claims that he and his lawyers were secretly filmed at the embassy and that this information was passed to the Americans. He also claims he was subject to constant surveillance and took to sleeping in a tent to retain some privacy. 

In December 2017, the owner of UC Global, a Spanish company contracted by the Ecuadorian Government to provide security at the embassy, allegedly directed an employee to steal the used nappy of a baby who sometimes accompanied its mother when she visited Assange. 

The owner, David Morales, said in a court hearing in Spain that the theft was necessary to DNA test faecal matter to establish if the child was Assange’s. 

The WikiLeaks founder has claimed that this may have been part of an attempt to blackmail him.