File:Protesters demonstrating in solidarity with Julian Assange on a road outside Belmarsh Prison.jpg

English: On Saturday 29 January 2022, I went to meet and photograph some of the activists staging their weekly protest outside Belmarsh Prison against the continued detention and extradition proceedings against whistleblower and dissident journalist Julian Assange.

The previous Monday the High Court had made its decision regarding whether Julian Aaange' could request an appeal hearing on his extradition case at Britain's Supreme Court. As Julian Assange's fiancée, Stella Morris, left the building she smiled briefly, an immediate indication that there was at least some good news. She then gave a brief speech to a crowd of supporters and the press -

'Make no mistake,' she declared, 'We won today in court,' but then added, 'but let's not forget that every time we win, as long as this case is not dropped, as long as Julian is not freed, Julian continues to suffer.'

While Assange's defence team were granted the right to apply for a hearing at the Supreme Court, it will be up to Britain's highest court to decide whether to agree to consider his case. That decision on a possible Supreme Court hearing is expected sometime in the next two to three months.

Unfortunately, the remit of the appeal has been restricted to examining the United States' claimed legal promises on how Assange will be treated, rather than to the wider issues of freedom of speech, the CIA plot to assassinate him, the extent to which the evidence against him has obviously been fabricated or as to whether his treatment in Belmarsh Prison has amounted to torture.

If convicted in the United States on the charges of espionage for exposing US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as other wrongdoing by the United States and other governments, he faces up to 175 years in prison.