A Swedish court on Friday upheld the arrest warrant in a rape case issued in the name of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is now taking refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London fearing he could be extradited to the United States to face trial for leaking online confidential documents through WikiLeaks.
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Mr. Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for years, evading Swedish authorities who are pursuing charges against him stemming from an alleged 2010 incident.
That same year, two women who met Assange while he was in Sweden speaking at a conference filed accusations of rape and molestation against him.
A Swedish appeals court has upheld the issuing of an arrest warrant for the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange.
The computer programmer and publisher has been seeking refuge in London’s Ecuadoran embassy since August 2012, after a Swedish court ruled to extradite him on charges of sexual assault and rape.
Assange has said the rape allegations are a pretense for him to be extradited to the United States.
As we noted in 2014, when Svea Court of Appeal affirmed the validity of the arrest warrant, Assange has not been formally indicted in Sweden.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has offered to serve time at a US prison if President Barack Obama would pardon Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower who handed Wikileaks US military and diplomatic documents in 2010.
Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny hailed the decision.
Assange has challenged the detention order several times.
The rape allegations, involving one of the women, will expire in 2020, if Assange isn’t charged by then.
“The Swedish case, it’s a nothing case, right, so that is easy”. All of the rulings have gone against Assange.
Swedish prosecutors say they are not in contact with counterparts in the United States and that they would also need Britain’s permission should a third country seek his extradition. On July 29, National Security Agency leader Edward Snowden, who WikiLeaks helped gain asylum in Russian Federation in 2013, criticized the organization for the way it publishes sensitive data.
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Pollack also said “the department publicly announced it was closing its criminal investigation of the handling of classified information by Hillary Clinton”, as another development that justifies more transparency into the case against Assange. Allegations of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion were dropped a year ago when the statute of limitations expired.
