WikiLeaks founder Assange starts final U.K. legal battle to avoid extradition to U.S. on spy charges

Julian Assange’s lawyers will begin their final U.K. legal challenge on Tuesday to stop the WikiLeaks founder from being sent to the United States to face spying charges.

The 52-year-old has been fighting extradition for more than a decade, including seven years in self-exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and the last five years in a high-security prison.

Assange’s attorneys will ask two High Court judges to grant a new appeal hearing, his last legal roll of the dice in Britain. If the judges rule against Assange, he can ask the European Court of Human Rights to block his extradition — though supporters worry he could be put on a plane to the U.S. before that happens.

Judges Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson could deliver a verdict at the end of the two-day hearing on Wednesday, but they’re more likely to take several weeks to consider their decision.

“This hearing marks the beginning of the end of the extradition case, as any grounds rejected by these judges cannot be further appealed in the U.K. — bringing Assange dangerously close to extradition,” the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said.

Assange supporters plan to demonstrate outside the neo-Gothic court building on both days and march to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Downing Street office at the end of the hearing.

Assange, an Australian citizen, has been indicted on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over his website’s publication of classified U.S. documents. U.S. prosecutors say he helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.

To his supporters, Assange is a secrecy-busting journalist who exposed U.S. military