Julian Assange’s options narrow as judges reject extradition appeal
Short of cash and running out of legal arguments, the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, felt the net tighten around him on Wednesday as the high court dismissed his latest appeal against extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual molestation claims.
The president of the Queen’s Bench Division, Sir John Thomas, sitting with Mr Justice Ouseley, threw out Assange’s four-point appeal against the Swedish prosecutor’s European arrest warrant.Longchamp Outlet Assange’s lawyers, meanwhile, indicated that the 40-year-old Australian may not have the money to pay his opponents’ costs. Unless he appeals to the supreme court, and that requires high court approval and yet more legal fees, he could be removed to a Swedish jail by the end of the month to be questioned over claims of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion by two women he met on a visit to Stockholm in August 2010.
After the ruling, out on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice, Assange faced the cameras wearing a smart navy suit and a Remembrance Day poppy, but without his usual air of defiance. Eleven months earlier he had stood on the same spot after being freed from Wandsworth prison on bail. Back then he declared with a smile that it was “great to smell the fresh air of London again” and he pledged “to continue my work and continue to protest my innocence”. This time it was unclear whether he planned to fight on. He said only: “We will be considering our next step.”
“I have not been charged with any crime in any country,” he said. “The European arrest warrant (EAW) is so restrictive that it prevents UK courts from considering the facts of a case, as judges have made clear here today … no doubt there will be many attempts made to try to spin these proceedings as they occurred today but they were merely technical.” He directed people to a website set up by supporters “if you wish to know what is really going on in this case”, then fought his way through a pavement melee, into a minicab and away.
Court four had been full for the 9.45am case, which took minutes. Assange was joined by WikiLeaks staff and supporters including campaigning journalist John Pilger and Vaughan Smith, the owner of Ellingham Hall in Norfolk where Assange is living under strict bail conditions which include an ankle tag and evening curfew. “This is self-evidently not a case relating to a trivial offence, but to serious sexual offences,” the judges said, upholding the original magistrates court decision from Assange’s first appeal in February.
They said Assange had argued the rape claim against him dating from his trip to Stockholm in August 2010 did not in fact amount to rape, but “the allegation that he had sexual intercourse with [SW] without a condom would amount to an allegation of rape in England and Wales”.
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