On March 26, the UK High Court granted provisional permission to journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to appeal his extradition to the United States.
Assange has been held for the past 5 years in the Belmarsh maximum security prison while the US has sought to extradite Assange to prosecute him on 18 charges, 17 of which are under the draconian Espionage Act. These charges are related to the publication of classified documents on WikiLeaks exposing war crimes and human rights abuses committed by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and several other countries.
Peoples Dispatch spoke to Kevin Gosztola, journalist, press freedom advocate, and author of “Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange” to understand this latest development in the Assange case and what lies ahead.
