London court sets Julian Assange’s US extradition hearing for February next year

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will face a five-day US extradition hearing in February next year, a London court has ruled.

Assange, 47, faces 18 counts in the U.S. including conspiring to hack government computers and violating an espionage law. He could spend decades in prison if convicted.

At Westminster magistrates court on Friday, the chief magistrate, Emma Arbuthnot, ordered that a full extradition hearing should begin on 25 February.

Ben Brandon, representing the US, formally opened the case, a day after an extradition request was signed off by the home secretary, Sajid Javid.

“This is related to one of the largest compromises of confidential information in the history of the United States,” Brandon told the court.

As Brandon ran through a summary of the accusations against Assange, including that he had cracked a US defence network password, Assange, appearing by video link, protested: “I didn’t break any password whatsoever.”

“It is important that people aren’t fooled into believing that WikiLeaks is anything but a publisher,” said Assange, who appeared by videolink from a London prison, dressed in a grey T-shirt and wearing black-framed glasses.

“The U.S. government has tried to mislead the press,” he told Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

His lawyer, Mark Summers QC, described the case as “an outrageous and full-frontal assault on journalistic rights”.