“I do not wish to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism that has won many, many awards and protected many people,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Thursday in his official refusal to comply with a US extradition request for allegations that he conspired to break into a Pentagon computer system. As a result, a legal battle will ensue over his extradition, which could take months or years.
Assange was arrested last month in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he had spent almost seven years to avoid extradition to the US. A UK judge sentenced Assange to 50 weeks in prison on Wednesday for his failure to surrender to the UK court in 2012.
Read more: Julian Assange refuses to surrender to U.S. extradition request as legal battle begins
