JULIAN ASSANGE’S bid to mount a final appeal against extradition to the United States — where he faces up to 175 years in a “political prosecution” — will be heard in the High Court in February.

In a two-day public hearing starting on February 20, two judges will hear the 52-year-old WikiLeaks founder’s legal team’s arguments that Mr Justice Swift’s rejection of all eight grounds of Mr Assange’s appeal against extradition in June was unlawful.

The hearing will determine whether Mr Assange has exhausted his opportunities to appeal against his extradition before a British court, though an application before the European Court of Human Rights remains a possibility.

Mr Assange, who exposed war crimes committed by the US in the Afghan and Iraq wars, faces 18 charges in the US over WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents leaked by former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

The father-of-two has suffered from deteriorating physical and mental health while being held in Belmarsh, the maximum-security prison in south-east London, following his removal from the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had sought sanctuary for seven years, in 2019.

John Rees, of the Free Assange campaign, said: “The US is attempting to convict Julian Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act. If they get away with it, they will have succeeded in redefining journalism as spying.

“This is the most important press freedom case of the 21st century, and we need to ensure we don’t lose any hard-won freedoms.”

Ms Assange’s wife Stella, whom he married while in prison, said: “The last four-and-a-half years have taken the most considerable toll on Julian and his family, including our two young sons.

“His mental health and physical state have deteriorated significantly.

“With the myriad of evidence that has come to light since the original hearing in 2019 — such as the violation of legal privilege, and reports that senior US officials were involved in formulating assassination plots against my husband — there is no denying that a fair trial, let alone Julian’s safety on US soil, is an impossibility were he to be extradited.

“The persecution of this innocent journalist and publisher must end.”

Editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks Kristinn Hrafnsson said:  “This is the last chance for judges in the UK to halt this unjust extradition of an innocent man.”