UK court rules WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can appeal his extradition to the U.S

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday was granted permission by a U.K. court to appeal his extradition to the U.S., where he is wanted on spying charges.

The 52-year-old has been battling extradition for more than a decade. In that time, Assange has spent seven years in self-exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and the last nearly five years at Belmarsh, a high-security prison on the outskirts of the U.K. capital.

Assange is wanted in the U.S. on 18 charges, including 17 under the Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He faces up to 175 years in prison after WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of leaked confidential military files and diplomatic documents related to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

The U.S. says that the charges relate to Assange’s alleged role “in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”