By Spy Uganda Correspondent
The fate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is in the hands of British Home Secretary Priti Patel after a London court issued an order for the 50-year-old to be extradited to the US, where he is wanted for leaking classified documents.
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Assange, who followed the court proceedings by video link, would be extradited within 28 days should Patel decide to hand him over to Washington, various newswires reported, unless there is an appeal at a higher court.
The US wants to put the Australian national on trial for sharing more than 700,000 classified documents on American government and military activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the public.
READ ALSO: Relief: Julian Assange Wins Right To Appeal To Supreme Court Against Extradition
He is facing 175 years in prison, in a case some human rights and press organizations have denounced as an attack on press freedom.
Assange has been held for three years in the high-security Belmarsh prison near London, where he married his fiancée Stella Moris last month. Before he had spent seven years hold up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he took refuge in 2012 while on bail, already fearing extradition.
