Wed 06 January 2021:
Julian Assange has been refused bail by a judge Vanessa Baraitser at London’s Westminster Magistrates Court means the WikiLeaks founder will continue to be held at the capital’s maximum-security Belmarsh prison.
Earlier this week judge Vanessa Baraitser who ruled in his favour , by blocking the United States’ attempt to extradite him.
Baraitser on Monday rejected a request from the US authorities for Assange to be sent across the Atlantic to face 18 criminal charges of breaking an espionage law and conspiring to hack government computers.
Assange, 49, an Australian citizen, has been jailed at Belmarsh since he was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2019 for breaching bail conditions in a separate extradition case involving Sweden.
The US government charges relate to the release by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of confidential US military records and diplomatic cables nearly 10 years ago. In April 2019, a grand jury in the US state of Virginia charged Assange with one count of computer hacking. This was for allegedly assisting former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in accessing classified documents that exposed the US military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In May 2019, the WikiLeaks founder was indicted under the US Espionage Act on 17 counts for soliciting, gathering and publishing US military and diplomatic documents in 2010, all provided by Manning.
The US Justice Department on June 11, 2020, formally asked Britain to extradite Assange to the US to face a total of 18 charges.
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