Legal News

Wikileaks Founder to Face Sex-Assault Charges in Sweden

By Ashby Jones

Sweden is chilly this time of year, and that could be exactly the kind of reception Wikileaks founder Julian Assange gets when he arrives.

A U.K. court on Thursday ordered Assange to be extradited to Sweden to face questioning about sexual assault allegations. The move deals a serious blow to the document-leaking site and its silver-haired founder. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the NYT story; here for the Guardian story; here for the story from The Local (tagline: Sweden’s news in English); here for all previous LB coverage.

The decision ensures that Assange’s efforts to build and promote WikiLeaks will be to some degree detoured in coming months by the possibility that he will face criminal sex charges.

Sweden hasn’t formally charged Assange with a crime, but wants to question him over allegations that he raped one woman and molested another during a visit to Stockholm last August. He denies any wrongdoing. Assange’s lawyers have seven days to appeal the U.K. court’s decision. They have said they plan to appeal.

The Swedish Prosecutors’ Office in Stockholm declined to comment on the decision. “Chief Prosecutor Marianne Ny will not give any interviews about the case while it is being handled by British authorities,” said a statement on the Prosecutors’ Office website.

Assange’s lawyers argued he shouldn’t be extradited for a number of reasons. They said he wouldn’t get a fair trial in Sweden, where they said he’s been vilified in the press. They also argued that he tried to meet with Swedish prosecutors several times after the investigation began and before leaving Sweden, but was rebuffed. They also argued that the sexual offenses alleged don’t amount to extraditable offenses in the UK.

But the U.K. court said it appeared that Assange had tried to evade questioning while he was in Sweden. Judge Howard Riddle called all four alleged offenses extraditable, and said he was confident Assange would receive a fair trial in Sweden if he is charged.

“Clear and specific, serious allegations have been made against Assange. Serious attempts have been made by prosecutors to interview him. He has not been interviewed,” Riddle said while reading his decision at Belmarsh Magistrates Court in south London.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 24, 2011 (boomark / email).