UK: Assange's partner presents petition at Downing Street

Supporters of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange tried to deliver a petition to British prime minister Boris Johnson on Monday, calling on the government to turn down Washington's request to have him extradited to the United States.

Assange's partner Stella Morris arrived at the gates of Downing St but wasn't allowed to enter because of coronavirus restrictions.

Morris, accompanied by a representative from the Reporters Without Borders organisation, said she would post the document instead.

"I'm fighting for his life. He won't survive if he's extradited," said Morris, at the gates of Downing Street.

The development came as lawyers for Assange and the U.S. government squared off in a London court on Monday.

Assange, who has spent almost a year and a half in a British prison, sat in the dock at the Old Bailey criminal court and formally refused the U.S. extradition request.

American prosecutors have indicted the 49-year-old Australian on 18 espionage and computer misuse charges over Wikileaks’ publication of secret U.S. military documents a decade ago.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.

American authorities allege that Assange conspired with U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a new indictment filed in June, U.S. prosecutors also say he conspired with members of hacking organizations and sought to recruit hackers to provide WikiLeaks with classified information.

Assange’s lawyers say the prosecution is a politically motivated abuse of power that will stifle press freedom and put journalists around the world at risk.

They argue that Assange is a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection, and say the leaked documents exposed U.S. military wrongdoing.

Among the files released by WikiLeaks was video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.