Julian Assange's extradition legal saga timeline

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's decade-and-a-half-long attempt to avoid extradition to the United States on espionage charges.

A look at key events in the long-running legal saga:

-- 2006: Assange founds WikiLeaks in Australia. The group begins publishing sensitive or classified documents

-- 2010: In a series of posts, WikiLeaks releases almost half a million documents relating to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

-- August 2010: Swedish prosecutors issue an arrest warrant for Assange based on one woman's allegation of rape and another's allegation of molestation. Assange denies the allegations

-- September 2010: Sweden's director of prosecutions reopens the rape investigation. Assange leaves Sweden for Britain

-- November 2010: Swedish police issue an international arrest warrant for Assange

-- December 2010: Assange surrenders to police in London and is detained pending an extradition hearing. The High Court grants Assange bail

-- February 2011: A district court in Britain rules Assange should be extradited to Sweden

-- June 2012: Assange enters the Ecuadorian embassy in London, seeking asylum, after his bids to appeal the extradition ruling fail

-- August 2012: Assange is granted political asylum by Ecuador

-- July 2014: Assange loses his bid to have an arrest warrant issued in Sweden against him cancelled

-- August 2015: Swedish prosecutors drop investigations into some allegations against Assange because of the statute of limitations; an investigation into a rape allegation remains active

-- October 2015: Britain's Metropolitan Police end their 24-hour guard outside the Ecuadorian Embassy but say they'll arrest Assange if he leaves

-- February 2016: Assange claims "total vindication" as the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention finds that he has been unlawfully detained and recommends he be immediately freed

-- September 2018: Ecuador's president says his country and Britain are working on a legal solution to allow Assange to leave the embassy

-- October 2018: Assange seeks a court injunction pressing Ecuador to provide him basic rights he said the country agreed to when it first granted him asylum

-- April 2019: Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno blames WikiLeaks for recent corruption allegations; Ecuador's government revokes Assange's asylum status. London police haul Assange out of the Ecuadorian embassy and arrest him for breaching bail conditions in 2012

-- May 2019: Assange is sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail in 2012

-- May 2019: The US government indicts Assange on 18 charges over WikiLeaks' publication of classified documents

-- November 2019: Swedish prosecutor drops rape investigation

-- May 2020: An extradition hearing for Assange is delayed during the COVID-19 pandemic

-- June 2020: The US files a new indictment against Assange that prosecutors say underscores Assange's efforts to procure and release classified information

-- January 2021: A British judge rules Assange cannot be extradited to the US because he is likely to kill himself if held under harsh US prison conditions

-- July 2021: The High Court grants the US government permission to appeal the lower court's ruling blocking Assange's extradition

-- December 2021: The High Court rules that US assurances about Assange's detention are enough to guarantee he would be treated humanely

-- March 2022: Britain's Supreme Court refuses to grant Assange permission to appeal against his extradition

-- June 2022: Britain's government orders the extradition of Assange to the United States. Assange appeals

-- May 2023: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Assange should be released and "nothing is served" by his ongoing incarceration

-- June 2023: A High Court judge rules Assange cannot appeal his extradition

-- February 20, 2024: Assange's lawyers launch a final legal bid to stop his extradition at the High Court

-- March 26, 2024: Two High Court judges in London give US authorities three more weeks to submit further assurances, including a guarantee that Assange won't get the death penalty, before deciding whether they will grant him a new appeal against his extradition

--May 20, 2024: Two High Court judges grant Assange leave to mount a fresh appeal against his extradition to the US