The U.S. extradition case for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been delayed because of the coronavirus.
A British judge announced during a conference call on Monday that the three-week trial planned for May has been scuttled because of restrictions meant to stop the spread of the outbreak that make it impossible for lawyers to appear in person.
“Remote attendance by the parties in this case will not be appropriate. Mr. Assange and the lawyers on both sides will need to be physically present in the courtroom,” District Judge Vanessa Baraitser said.
A new trial date will be determined during a hearing in early May. As Bloomberg notes, the only available court date for three consecutive weeks is in November, but Baraitser said the first two weeks could happen in July and the final week scheduled for a later date.
Assange, 48, was arrested just over a year ago and is facing up to 175 years in U.S. prison stemming from 18 charges of espionage and computer hacking related to the trove of U.S. intelligence documents he released online in 2010. The United States has accused Assange of working in coordination with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack the Department of Defense and releasing secrets that put U.S. citizens in danger.
Assange’s lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said his client is “unwell” and has not been permitted “direct access” to his lawyer in over a month.
“There have always been great difficulties in getting access to Mr. Assange. But with the coronavirus outbreak, the preparation of this case cannot be possible,” Fitzgerald told the court.
In late February, Fitzgerald accused U.S. officials of attempting to poison and kidnap the WikiLeaks founder in retaliation for more than 250,000 top-secret U.S. Department of State documents that Assange released during the Iraq War.
Assange has been held in Belmarsh Prison in London ever since he was yanked from the Ecuadorian Embassy last April. Assange, who spent years hiding out from authorities in the embassy, was pictured holding a copy of Gore Vidal’s History of The National Security State.
