AKIPRESS.COM - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for skipping bail in Britain seven years ago and seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy, USA Today reports.

Deborah Taylor, the judge at London’s Southwark Crown Court, said Assange’s time in the embassy cost British taxpayers about $21 million and she imposed a near-maximum sentence because of his "deliberate attempt to delay justice."

The sentencing comes one day before a court hearing in London over a U.S. extradition request for Assange. The Department of Justice charged him with conspiring to break into a Pentagon computer system to reveal government secrets.

The Justice Department alleges that Assange, a computer hacker, assisted Chelsea Manning, then a soldier in the U.S. Army, in cracking a password stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers. WikiLeaks subsequently published thousands of classified U.S. military and diplomatic cables and images, including video footage purportedly showing U.S. soldiers killing civilians in Iraq.

Manning served nearly seven years of a 35-year sentence for theft and espionage for helping to deliver classified documents to WikiLeaks. The sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama, and Manning was released in 2017.