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ASSANGE EXTRADITION FIGHT

WIKILEAKS

Assange readies for UK extradition ruling

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will find out on Wednesday whether he can be extradited from Britain to Sweden, as the Supreme Court hands down its judgement at the end of a marathon legal battle.

Assange readies for UK extradition ruling

Britain’s highest court is Assange’s final avenue of appeal under UK law, having been detained in December 2010 on a European arrest warrant. He is wanted in Sweden for questioning over allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Since then, the 40-year-old Australian has been through round upon round of legal battles, culminating in what will be a short ruling at the Supreme Court in central London.

The judgment, expected to take around 10 minutes, will be handed down at 9.15am Wednesday, streamed on the Sky News website and published online once delivered.

Assange will have been living under restrictions on his movement for 540 days when the verdict is handed down.

Assange’s case rests on a single point — that the Swedish prosecutor who issued a warrant for his arrest was not a valid judicial authority.

The Supreme Court president will give a summary of the point of law raised by the appeal, the court’s decision, and a brief explanation of its rationale.

A lower court in Britain initially approved Assange’s extradition to Sweden in February 2011. An appeal to the High Court was rejected in November, but he subsequently won permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.

If that court rejects his appeal, Assange will have exhausted all his options in Britain but he could still make a last-ditch appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

Assange has said he fears his extradition would eventually lead to his transfer to the United States, where US soldier Bradley Manning is facing a court-martial over accusations that he handed documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

On May 23, Assange attended a screening in London wearing a Kevlar Guy Fawkes mask.

“This may be my last time in public, so I thought I should start with a situation where you won’t be able to see me anymore,” he explained.

Assange added: “I think all of us are at our best when we are pursuing an ideal that we find to be important to ourselves and important to others.

“I feel that I have made my days count, so I certainly would not want to exchange days that can be counted for days that cannot.”

The Supreme Court is the final court of appeal in Britain for civil cases. It hears appeals in criminal cases from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It also hears cases of the greatest public or constitutional importance affecting the whole population.

The court sits on Parliament Square in central London, directly opposite the Houses of Parliament and with the Treasury and Westminster Abbey on either side.

The judgment will be handed down in the building’s largest courtroom.

WikiLeaks supporters are expected to muster in numbers for the verdict.

Would-be attendees were pre-warned of airport-style security and that items of clothing or other materials with messages that “undermine the dignity of the court or which seek to interfere with the proper administration of justice” will not be allowed inside.

In February the Supreme Court heard two days of complex arguments from lawyers for both sides.

The legal saga began in August 2010 when Assange was accused of raping one woman by having sex with her while she was asleep, and of sexually assaulting another woman, in Sweden.

The former computer hacker insists the sex was consensual and says the allegations are politically motivated.

Assange shot to fame earlier that same year when WikiLeaks enraged Washington by leaking thousands of secret US documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After he was arrested in London in December 2010 he spent more than a week in jail before being freed to live under strict bail conditions amounting to virtual house arrest.

AFP/The Local

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SPAIN

Spanish ring ‘tried to extort €3m from Wikileaks’: Assange lawyers

Julian Assange's lawyers have filed a court complaint in Spain against a group of Spaniards they allege extorted the WikiLeaks founder and Ecuador's foreign ministry, a source in his defence team said on Saturday.

Spanish ring 'tried to extort €3m from Wikileaks': Assange lawyers
A video grab shows Julian Assange being driven away by British police after his arrest. Photo: AFP
Assange, who for seven years lived holed up in London's Ecuadoran embassy where he had taken refuge to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape accusations, was arrested on April 11 after Quito terminated his asylum.
   
The 47-year-old founder of WikiLeaks, which exposed everything from US military secrets to the wealthy's tax evasion, is now awaiting sentencing for breaching his British bail conditions in 2012.
 
The source, who wished to remain anonymous, said the complaint was against “a group of Spaniards who allegedly engaged in extortion and the embassy's employees and Ecuador's foreign ministry.”
   
The source added an investigation was ongoing and alleged “espionage” in the embassy against Assange, refusing to give further details.
 
According to Spanish media reports, four Spaniards have videos and personal documents of Assange. Online daily eldiario.es said they somehow got these via an alleged spying system set up in the embassy that included security cameras and employees taking photos of all documents handled by Assange.
   
They allegedly tried to extort three million euros ($3.3 million) out of WikiLeaks not to publish any of it, Spanish media report.
   
Eldiario.es, which had access to the written complaint that was filed to Spain's top-level National Court, says Assange's lawyers also accuse Ecuador of spying on him. The National Court could not comment when contacted by AFP.
 
That contrasts with Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno's version of events. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, he alleged Assange had tried to set up a “centre for spying” in Ecuador's embassy.
   
Last year, Quito cut his internet and mobile phone access, accusing him of breaking “a written commitment” not to interfere in its and allies' foreign policies.
   
The move infuriated Assange, who sued the government for violating his “fundamental rights” by limiting his access to the outside world.
   
Now in prison in Britain, Assange is also fighting a US extradition warrant relating to the release by WikiLeaks of a huge cache of official documents.
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