Julian Assange will not be extradited to the US to face charges of espionage and of hacking government computers, a British Judge ruled.

Judge Vanessa Baraister reasoned Assange would likely be held in self isolation in a US prison and could potentially be a suicide risk.

Assange who had been a resident at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years was granted some respite by the British justice system when Judge Baraister said, “I find that the mental condition of Mr Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America”.

The 49-year-old WikiLeaks founder has been a target for the US since the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in 2010 and 2011 on his site.
His lawyers have maintained that the pursuit of Assange was always due to the fact the documents released on WikiLeaks revealed evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses by the US.