A British court denied a U.S. request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on charges of illegally obtaining and sharing classified material related to national security, NPR reports. Extradition to the U.S. would be unjust and oppressive to Assange’s mental health, British Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser said Monday. The decision surprised many watching the case who expected her to honor the U.S. request. A psychiatrist who analyzed Assange during his time in prison in London told Baraitser that Assange was at a very high risk of committing suicide if he ended up in a U.S. prison. Assange was diagnosed in 2019 with recurrent depressive disorder, at times severe and sometimes accompanied by hallucinations and often with thoughts of suicide, Baraitser said.
The psychiatrist said, “I am as confident as a psychiatrist ever can be that, if extradition to the United States were to become imminent, Mr. Assange will find a way of suiciding.” Assange was facing 18 counts tied to charges dating from 2010. He is accused by the U.S. of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, in a coordinated effort to compromise U.S. government computer networks, and to obtain and publish classified documents. If convicted, Assange likely would have been sent to a maximum security prison in Florence, Co., where inmates get little human contact and are kept in their cells 23 hours a day.