The announcement came on Friday, the day two weeks after British Home Secretary Priti Patel approved his extradition to the United States, where he is accused of espionage.
Julian Assange turns 51 on Saturday and ahead of his birthday, several of his supporters – including his wife Stella Assange – had gathered outside the British Home Office to protest the extradition decision.
In April, a British court ruled that Assange could be extradited to the United States. The case was then referred to the British Government for a final decision. On June 17, Prit Patel signed the extradition order.
– We will fight this. We will use every opportunity to appeal, Stella Assange said then.
Some details about Friday’s appeal has not been published.
If Julian Assange is extradited to the United States, he risks a very long prison sentence for the publications Wikileaks made in 2010. The hundreds of thousands of secret military and diplomatic documents that were leaked revealed American war crimes and human rights violations.
In June 2012, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, due to suspicions of sexual crimes.
He stayed at the embassy until April 2019 when he was dragged out. He has since been detained pending the decision on extradition to the United States.
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