A British judge said on Thursday she would give her decision early next year on whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States to face charges including espionage. Judge Vanessa Baraitser told London's Old Bailey Court at the conclusion of hearings from witnesses in the case that she would deliver her verdict on Jan. 4. Decision nearly a year in the makingThe legal team representing the United States have countered that many of those arguments are issues that should be addressed in a trial, and have no bearing on extradition. U.S. investigators have concluded that the emails were hacked by Russia as part of an effort to influence the election. In 2012, Assange took refuge in Ecuador's London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden where he was accused of sex crimes, which he denied and which were later dropped.

Source: CBC News October 01, 2020 16:57 UTC