UK home secretary signs Julian Assange extradition warrant

The UK home secretary has signed an extradition warrant allowing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be extradited to the US, where he faces charges of conspiring to hack government computers and violating espionage law.

Sajid Javid announced on Thursday that he had formally agreed to the request, which was received from the US justice department this week. “He [Assange] is rightly behind bars,” Mr Javid told the BBC. “There is an extradition request from the US that is before the courts tomorrow but yesterday I signed the extradition order and certified it and that will be going in front of the courts tomorrow.”

Westminster magistrates' court will hold an administrative hearing into Assange’s case on Friday but has not yet set a date for a full extradition hearing, which could take place later this year.

Assange is fighting the extradition and is likely to argue that his removal to the US breaches his human rights. The court will decide whether the case meets the legal test for Assange to be extradited to the US; it will not decide whether he is guilty or innocent of the US allegations.

The WikiLeaks founder can challenge any decision by the magistrates' court via a lengthy appeals process, which could take many months and see the case go to the High Court.

Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorean embassy in April, where he had spent seven years under diplomatic protection avoiding extradition. However, after a series of disagreements with his hosts, he was handed over to UK police with the co-operation of the Ecuadorean government. A London court in May sentenced him to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail in 2012.

A Home Office spokesman said on Thursday that Assange had been arrested in relation to “a provisional extradition request from the United States of America” relating to “offences including computer misuse and the unauthorised disclosure of national defence information”.

The spokesman added: “We have received the full extradition request, which has been certified by the home secretary. This case is now before the courts and it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

The US alleges that in 2009 Assange and WikiLeaks solicited classified information from former US army analyst Chelsea Manning, who searched for classified documents and provided Assange with sensitive material relating to the Iraq war and details of Guantánamo Bay detainees, as well as state diplomatic cables.

The UN warned last month that Assange would be “exposed to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights” if extradited to the US. Nils Melzer, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, accused Washington and other democratic governments of “ganging up” on Assange and called for him to be given greater access to his legal team.

Assange also faces rape charges in Sweden, but this month a Swedish court declined to arrest Assange in his absence, ruling that he should not be extradited to Sweden but instead be questioned in the UK over the rape allegations.

Swedish prosecutors said they would issue a European investigation order to question Assange while continuing their preliminary rape investigation against him. The judge’s decision was at the time viewed as strengthening the case for extradition to the US.

Additional reporting by Jane Croft