Julian Assange: US allowed to continue appeal against decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder

The US can continue its appeal against the decision not to extradite Julian Assange, a court has ruled, as his partner said the family had received death threats and pleaded for their "nightmare" to end.

In January, judge Vanessa Baraitser concluded that the WikiLeaks founder, 50, should not be sent to the US because he was at "real risk of suicide".

But at a High Court appeal hearing on Wednesday, US lawyers convinced two judges that the psychiatrist report in the original case was misleading as it did not disclose the true nature of Assange's relationship with his partner.

Assange appeared via videolink from HMP Belmarsh, where he has been since 2019.

Clair Dobbin QC, acting for the US, said Professor Michael Kopelman had "failed in his duty to the court".

"Experts aren't allowed to mislead the court for any reason, let alone apparently... to protect the privacy of Mr Assange's family," she said.

"We say that ought to have been of real concern to the court and it ought to have come to a much more exacting analysis of Professor Kopelman's evidence."

Ms Dobbin also alleged that Assange did not meet the threshold of being "so ill" that he would not be able to resist harming himself in a US prison.

"He has not made the sort of serious attempt on his life or have the history of serious self-harm seen in other cases," she said.

"Part of the appeal will be that Mr Assange did not have a mental illness that came close to being of that nature and degree."

She told the court that he had been able to withstand "dire" conditions at the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years, managed to host a show on Russia Today and helped fellow whistleblower Edward Snowden flee the US.

Assange's partner Stella Moris, with whom he has two children, visited him in prison on Tuesday and has appealed to US President Joe Biden to drop the case, calling extradition arrangements between America and the UK "inherently unfair".

Speaking on Wednesday, she said the family had "for years" been "terrorised" by death threats and intimidation.

She told supporters outside the court there had been "threats against me, threats against our children, death threats against Julian's eldest son Daniel".

Ms Moris added: "Threats on Julian's life, threats of a 175-year prison sentence and the actual ongoing imprisonment for a journalist for doing his job. These are sustained threats to his life for the past 10 years. These are not just items of law, this is our lives.

"We have the right to exist. We have a right to live. We have a right for this nightmare to come to an end once and for all."

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was among supporters of Assange outside court on Wednesday.

He described him as a reporter "in the tradition of fearless journalism" and insisted the only thing he had done was to highlight "a truth that was embarrassing to the US".

Mr Corbyn was applauded by protesters who shouted "free Julian Assange" and "jail the war criminals" as uniformed police looked on.

Assange has received high profile support from several celebrities over the years, including Pamela Anderson and Dame Vivienne Westwood.

The charges against him come after WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2010.

The 50-year-old has been held at Belmarsh prison in London since 2019 after being removed from the Ecuadorian embassy for breaching his bail conditions.

He went there in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sex offence allegations, which he denied and were eventually dropped.

The final appeal will be heard at the High Court on 27 and 28 October.