A British judge on Wednesday, 20 April, formally approved the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States (US) in connection with the charges related to espionage.
The case is now expected to go to Britain's interior minister for a final decision.
The order is one step closer to Assange's extradition, as it comes after the United Kingdom (UK) Supreme Court refusal last month to grant him permission to appeal against a lower court's ruling in favour of extradition.
The US government has asked British authorities to extradite Assange so he can be tried on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse.
In January 2021, a lower court had ruled that Assange could not be extradited due to his mental health concerns, based on the assumption that Assange would be held in a highly restrictive prison if extradited, and would thereby be suicidal.
But then in December 2021, a London court overturned that judgment.
Prosecutors allege that Assange unlawfully helped an analyst named Chelsea Manning steal classified military and diplomatic files that were published by WikiLeaks, a website that Assange founded.
They also assert that the classified material that Assange leaked put lives in serious danger, thereby the insistence on his extradition.
He can be sentenced up to 175 years in jail if he gets convicted in the US, but prosecutors have said that they are seeking a sentence that will put Assange in jail for four to six years.
(With inputs from Reuters.)
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