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Julian Assange Starts Extradition Fight From UK Prison

Julian Assange appeared in a London court by videolink from a high-security prison on Thursday as his battle against extradition to the United States on a computer hacking conspiracy charge gets underway. The WikiLeaks founder telling a judge, "I do not wish to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism that's won many, many awards and affected many people." Lawyer Ben Brandon, representing the US government, said that the provisional arrest warrant for Assange was based on an indictment filed in Virginia for "one offense of attempting to access a computer without consent and accessing a computer without authorization." "Chelsea Manning downloaded a vast amount of classified documents. This include four databases with nearly 90,000 Afghan war reports, 400,000 Iraq significant activity reports ... [and] 250,000 state department cables," Brandon said. Manning then provided the documents to WikiLeaks, Brandon continued. He added that evidence collected during the course of the US investigation showed the pair "unlawfully conspired to effect these disclosures" and that Assange "agreed to help Manning crack a password that was connected to government server." Brandon said the maximum sentence for this type of offense is five years, adding that the full request from the US government had not yet been received. He said the prosecution would like the first day of the hearing to take place on June 12. Proceedings were adjourned until May 30, when another procedural court date will take place.