WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested in the United Kingdom. The imperialist countries, led by the United States, has been calling for his arrest for months because his website has released documents that expose war crimes and other intrigue.
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Founder of whistleblowing website to appear in London court after
being detained over allegations of sex crimes.
Last Modified: 07 Dec 2010 14:48 GMT
Assange has angered the US by facilitating the release of hundreds of thousands of secret documents
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been arrested by British police over allegations of sex crimes in Sweden, police have said.
The 39-year-old Australian handed himself in to a London police
station at about 09:30 GMT on Tuesday, where he was detained under a European Arrest Warrant.
"He is accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful
coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all
alleged to have been committed in August 2010," police said in a
statement.
He is due to appear before City of Westminster Magistrates Court in
London later on Tuesday, where a date for an extradition hearing is
likely to be set.
Mark Stephens, one of Assange's lawyers, said that Sweden appeared to have been manipulated by the US, which has been angered by WikiLeaks latest release of classified documents.
"The question is, are the Swedes being manipulated by a third party
actor or is there any improper interference?" he said in an interview
with Al Jazeera.
He added that the Swedish prosecutor had not told Assange what the nature of the allegations are or what the evidence is against him.
"I have to say, the way you have a prosecutor from Sweden, the most
civilised country ordinarily, who isn't complying with her obligations
under the United Nation's requirements for prosecutors, who's not
complying with Swedish law ... then you have to start asking yourself
... whether there is some other motivation going on here, which is the
unseen hand."
However, Marianne Ny, the Swedish director of prosecution, told
Swedish media last week that Assange's lawyers had been given all the information that is appropriate to share at the current stage of the
investigation.
Extradition possible
Assange is accused of rape and sexual molestation in Sweden, and the case could lead to his extradition. He has denied the accusations, which Stephens has said stem from a "dispute over consensual but unprotected sex".
According to media reports, Assange slept with two women during a
visit to Sweden in August. One of them has been quoted by a Swedish newspaper as saying that the sex was consensual to begin with, but ended with abuse.
In an interview with Aftonbladet, one of the women dismissed claims
that the allegations had been orchestrated by the Pentagon.
"The responsibility for what happened to me and the other girl lies
with a man with a twisted attitude to women and problem to take a no
for an answer," she told the paper.
Jennifer Robinson, Assange's London-based lawyer, said her client
would likely resist being returned to Sweden for fear he could be
turned over to the US where outrage is growing over the leak of
documents.
"[The Swedish prosecutor] said publicly on television last night that
all she wants is his side of the story. Now we've offered that on
numerous occasions. There is no need for him to return to Sweden to do that," she said.
"I think he will get a fair hearing here in Britain but I think our,
his, prospects if he were ever to be returned to the US, which is a
real threat, of a fair trial, is, in my view, nigh on impossible," she
told Australian broadcaster the ABC.
'Grossly irresponsible'
On Tuesday, Julia Gillard, Australia's prime minister, said that
posting the US diplomatic correspondence on the web was "grossly
irresponsible" and that the publication would not have been possible
"if there had not been an illegal act undertaken" in the United
States.
Gillard had previously said that publishing the documents was an
illegal act, without saying why.
She said police were still investigating whether Assange had broken
any Australian laws.
In an opinion piece published in The Australian newspaper on Tuesday, Assange attacked Gillard, saying her government was trying to "shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed".
"Has there been any response from the Australian government to the
numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks
personnel?" he wrote.
"One might have thought an Australian prime ministe would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality".
WikiLeaks has been under intense international scrutiny over its
disclosure of a mountain of classified US cables that have embarrassed Washington and other governments.
US officials have been putting pressure on WikiLeaks and those who
help it, and is investigating whether Assange can be prosecuted under espionage law.
The pressure on WikiLeaks has increased as the Swiss authorities
closed Assange's bank account,depriving him of a key fundraising tool.
WikiLeaks has struggled to stay online amid an increase in hacker
attacks and resistance from world governments, receiving help from
computer-savvy advocates who have set up hundreds of "mirrors", or
carbon-copy websites around the world.
In what Assange described as a last-ditch deterrent, WikiLeaks has
warned that it has distributed a heavily encrypted version of some of
its most important documents and that the information could be
instantly made public if the staff were arrested.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
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