 In a major setback to free speech and human rights, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom on March 14 rejected an appeal against extradition filed by Julian Assange. The appeal was filed last month after the High Court in London overturned a lower court's ruling denying the extradition request by the United States. The High Court had permitted Assange to file an appeal to the court on the single point of law regarding the lateness of the U.S. diplomatic assurances. The decision will now be formally sent to the U.K. Home Office currently headed by Home Secretary Priti Pratel of the Conservative Party Government. The extradition request was first certified in June 2019 by former Home Secretary Sajid Javed of the previous Conservative Theresa May government. However, before the final decision, the case will return to Judge Vanessa Barritzer of the Westminster Magistrates Court who had earlier ruled against the extradition. The Home Office will wait the lower court's decision to make the final judgment, after which, depending on the Home Office judgment, a fresh appeal could be filed. The U.K. Supreme Court has today ruled that the Julian Assange appeal will not be heard by them. They will not grant permission for Julian Assange to appeal to the Supreme Court. And that's really bad news for a couple of reasons. What it means is that non-legally binding diplomatic assurances that Julian Assange would not be tortured will not be scrutinized by the Supreme Court. Luckily, this is not the end of the road for the Julian Assange case, because Julian Assange and his legal team will now be able to reopen a number of the issues that they reserved from the Magistrates Court. So they'll be able to restart a number of appeal grounds. So this case is far from over. According to reports, the Home Office's decision is not expected before June this year. This means that Assange will continue to remain in the high-security Belmarsh Prison without charges. Next month will Mark Assange completing three years in prison, awaiting a final decision on the extradition process. In January 2021, Beritzer had ruled to deny the U.S. extradition requests on the grounds of Assange's deteriorating health and risk of suicide in case of imminent extradition. Assange's lawyers will now have to revisit some of the other grounds against extradition previously raised in the courts but failed to be considered. These may include the political nature of the ongoing indictment in the U.S., conditions of U.S. prisons, and even his rights as a publisher that protects him from such legal prosecutions against him. Nevertheless, Assange's supporters have called out the threats that the Supreme Court's decision has on journalism and press freedoms. If extradited, Assange will face a federal grand jury in the U.S. for 18 counts of charges, 17 of which are under the Espionage Act for a maximum prison sentence of 175 years. The charges are related to WikiLeaks publication of classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other violations of international law.