US President Joe Biden's administration won't give up plans to seek extradition of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

United States President Joe Biden's administration won't give up on plans to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the United Kingdom to face hacking conspiracy charges, the US Justice Department said.

Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi said the US Government would continue to challenge a British judge's ruling last month that Assange should not be extradited to the United States because of the risk he would commit suicide.

In a January 4 ruling, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser found "the mental condition of Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America".

The British judge set Friday as a deadline for the United States to appeal her ruling forbidding Mr Assange's extradition.

Mr Raimondi said the United States would challenge Ms Baraitser's ruling.

"We continue to seek his extradition," he said.

WikiLeaks drew fury from the US Government after publishing thousands of pages of once-secret reports and documents generated by American military and intelligence agencies, including detailed descriptions of CIA hacking capabilities.

WikiLeaks also published emails hacked from Democrat Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and a key adviser, which Ms Clinton and some of her supporters say was a factor in her election defeat to Republican Donald Trump.

Debate over possible American moves to seek Assange's extradition from Britain first arose nearly a decade ago when Barack Obama served as president and Joe Biden as his vice-president.

Mr Obama's Justice Department decided not to seek Assange's extradition on the grounds that what he and WikiLeaks did was too similar to journalistic activities protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Trump administration officials stepped up public criticism of Assange and WikiLeaks weeks after taking office in January 2017 and subsequently filed a series of increasingly harsh criminal charges accusing Assange of participating in a hacking conspiracy.

Assange's supporters have been pressing Mr Biden's administration to drop charges against him during the president's first 100 days in the White House.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-10/biden-administration-continues-to-seek-extradition-of-assange/13139018