Julian Assange to be imprisoned for the forthcoming years

Assange is still being held in Belmarsh Prison, where he has been for more than three years. With the decision of the British Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to order his extradition to the United States, he will undoubtedly remain imprisoned for many years.

Assange’s lawyers have indicated that they will file an appeal in the English courts and, most likely, the European Court of Human Rights.

The legal issues surrounding Assange’s situation are complex and contentious.

The world has moved on more than a decade and three presidents removed from the subject matter of the Wikileaks files.

There was once a genuine debate about whether what Assange did was journalism, but that ship has long sailed away, along with the last vestiges of traditional media dominance over public discourse.

If he’s guilty of anything, he’s already spent ten years in mostly solitary confinement; that doesn’t change anything.

The Nadesalingams case exemplifies what happens when the legal system is stretched to its breaking point.

That family had never committed a crime, but their freedom had been revoked for more than four years. In the end, the family’s legal chances were similar to Assange’s: slim.

More litigation would have resulted if the Albanese government had continued down the same path. In his case, nothing useful has been accomplished.