United States Provides Binding Assurances to the United Kingdom that Julian Assange Will Not Face the Death Penalty If Extradited

On April 16, 2024, the Biden Administration pro­vid­ed assur­ances to the United Kingdom that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is fac­ing extra­di­tion to the United States on espi­onage charges, would not face the death penal­ty. A hear­ing is now sched­uled in London on May 20 to eval­u­ate the assur­ances and decide whether Mr. Assange has any remain­ing legal recourse. A few weeks ear­li­er, the High Court in London grant­ed Mr. Assange a reprieve from extra­di­tion, agree­ing to grant him an appeal if the United States was unable to pro­vide assur­ances that it would not seek the death penal­ty by April 16. 

Although none of the 18 charges Mr. Assange is cur­rent­ly fac­ing are cap­i­tal, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that he could be charged with a cap­i­tal crime in the future means that his extra­di­tion would be unlaw­ful. In the United Kingdom, extra­di­tion of pris­on­ers to coun­tries where they could face the death penal­ty is barred unless ​“ade­quate writ­ten assur­ance that the death penal­ty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be car­ried out,” accord­ing to the UK’s Home Office guid­ance on extra­di­tions. In her 66-page judge­ment pub­lished on March 26, the pres­i­dent of the king’s bench divi­sion, Victoria Sharp, not­ed the need for explic­it assur­ances regard­ing the inten­tions of U.S author­i­ties, not­ing calls from U.S. elect­ed offi­cials to cap­i­tal­ly charge Mr. Assange. The assur­ances pro­vid­ed now con­firm that ​“a sen­tence of death will nei­ther be sought nor imposed on Assange,” assur­ing that he will not be ​“tried for a death-eli­gi­ble offense.” 

U.S. author­i­ties also agree that Mr. Assange, an Australian cit­i­zen, can ​“raise and seek” a defense under the First Amendment, but cau­tioned that ​“a deci­sion as to the applic­a­bil­i­ty of the First Amendment is exclu­sive­ly with­in the purview of the U.S. Courts.” The UK High Court had specif­i­cal­ly request­ed assur­ances ​“that the appli­cant [Mr. Assange] is per­mit­ted to rely on the first amend­ment, that the appli­cant is not prej­u­diced at tri­al, includ­ing sen­tence, by rea­son of his nation­al­i­ty, that he is afford­ed the same first amend­ment [free speech] pro­tec­tions as a United States cit­i­zen.”  

Stella Assange, Mr. Assange’s wife, issued a state­ment after the U.S. assur­ances were made pub­lic. “[T]he US has lim­it­ed itself to bla­tant weasel words claim­ing that Julian can ​‘seek to raise’ the first amend­ment if extra­dit­ed,” she said. ​“The diplo­mat­ic note does noth­ing to relieve our family’s extreme dis­tress about his future – his grim expec­ta­tion of spend­ing the rest of his life in iso­la­tion in US prison for pub­lish­ing award-win­ning jour­nal­ism. The Biden admin­is­tra­tion must drop this dan­ger­ous pros­e­cu­tion before it is too late.” 

For years, Australia has called upon the United States to drop the charges against Mr. Assange. On April 10, dur­ing an offi­cial vis­it with the Japanese prime min­is­ter, President Biden respond­ed to a ques­tion about the request, stat­ing, ​“We’re con­sid­er­ing it.” Australian prime min­is­ter, Anthony Albanese told Sky News Australia the fol­low­ing day that, ​“I’m increas­ing­ly opti­mistic about an out­come, but one cer­tain­ly has not been deliv­ered yet. We’ll con­tin­ue to argue the case at every oppor­tu­ni­ty that we have.” The Wall Street Journal had report­ed on March 20 that U.S. Justice Department was con­sid­er­ing offer­ing Mr. Assange a plea deal.