The Terminal Persecution of Julian Assange If Assange is somehow freed, his credibility and influence are gone. How much of that is his fault depends on what you believe. On Monday, a British court refused to extradite Julian Asssange to face espionage charges in the United States. The judge reasoned that Assange displayed psychological vulnerabilities that rendered him unable to handle isolation conditions in a maximum security U.S. prison and made him a likely suicide risk. The judge cited the likelihood that Assange could be held in the same federal prison as convicts like Theodore Kaczynski (the Unabomber) and Joaquin Guzman (El Chapo).