London, December 24 (RHC)-- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has filed an application to the British Supreme Court to appeal against a lower court verdict that gave the green light to his extradition to the United States.

According to Stella Moris, the Australian journalist's partner, the application was filed before the highest court in the United Kingdom at 11:05 a.m. local time on Thursday.

Last December 10, the judges of the High Court of London reversed the decision of a magistrate of first instance that last January blocked the extradition, considering that Assange could commit suicide if he was imprisoned in the United States.

Explaining his verdict, Judge Timothy Holroyde said he was satisfied with the promise made by U.S. prosecutors that the WikiLeaks founder would not be locked up in a maximum-security prison or subjected to extreme measures of solitary confinement.

Moris, a lawyer by profession, explained that according to British law, for the Supreme Court to accept the appeal, the same judges who approved his extradition must certify that at least one of the arguments in the request is based on a matter of general public importance.

She added that it is unknown how long it will take for the judicial body to decide whether or not to accept the appeal, but considered that it would not be before the third week of next January.  

Julian Assange has been imprisoned in Belmarsh maximum security prison in southeast London since the Ecuadorian government handed him over to British authorities in April 2019.

Sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for violating a bail imposed in 2012, the British justice decided to keep him in prison until the conclusion of the extradition process initiated by Washington, which wants to convict him for revealing war crimes committed by American military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If extradited to the United States, Assange could be sentenced to a total of 175 years in prison, based on the 17 charges of violation of the U.S. espionage law he is accused of.