UK court rejects Assange extradition appeal

http://rt.com/news/assange-british-higher-court-361/

 

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, will be extradited from the UK to Sweden to face questioning over rape allegations. Britain's High Court has decided that there is enough evidence against the Australian citizen to grant the request.

 

Judges John Thomas and Duncan Ouseley ruled Wednesday that Julian Assange, who attended the court to hear the verdict, should be extradited to Sweden to be questioned over allegations of sexual molestation and rape in Stockholm last year.

 

“I have not been charged with any crime in any country. Despite this, the European Arrest Warrant is so restrictive that it prevents UK courts from considering the facts of a case, as judges have made clear here today. We will be considering our step in the days ahead. The full judgment will be available on SwedenversusAssange.com No doubt there will be many attempts to try to spin these proceedings as occurred today, but they are really technical. Please go to SwedenversusAssange.com if you want to know what is really going on in this case,” Assange stated.

 

On saying this, the WikiLeaks founder declined to answer questions and immediately made it to a car awaiting him, accompanied by a handler.

 

Assange, 40, has been consistently denying all allegations, insisting that the case has been inspired by political motivations. WikiLeaks’ Australian founder has been under virtual house arrest in the UK for the last 11 months .

 

Assange’s lawyers have 14 days to prepare a case to convince the High Court to allow for a third and final appeal to the Supreme Court. Appealing to the Supreme Court in Britain is only allowed if the High Court rules a case creates a major precedent and the results would apply to a wider public.

 

If it does go to the Supreme Court, it is likely that the entire basis of the European arrest warrant, under which people can be extradited to other EU countries to face questions with very little evidence, will be put under scrutiny. Many in the UK would welcome that.

 

But civil right groups fear that extraditing Julian Assange to Sweden could result in his landing in an American court to face charges relating to WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of classified US government documents.

 

This case is politically-motivated,” civil rights activist Jim Curran told RT. “If Assange is extradited to Sweden, the major concern among civil lawyers and civil rights groups that this will create an implication for his further extradition to the US. There is great concern in the UK about extradition to the US, as many people fear they cannot get a fair hearing in America.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

So, on the back of Wikileaks perhaps closing down due to lack of access to funds, we have this ruling... Yep, the 1% and the US Political establishment basically joining forces to take out one of the leading voices who were calling them to account for their crimes against humanity..

 

I've never really bought the charges against him. They seem to be considerably shakier than the rape case against Dominic Strauss Khan (and I would say there was probably more evidence there than there is against Assange..), and the case against DSK was dropped. Assange had already been in a Swedish court, but they basically couldn't bring any charges against him because of lack of evidence, and then all of a sudden, the charges get resurrected by some politician AFTER the first lot of damaging revelations which embarrassed Obama, Hillary and Co... Doesn't take a genius or a conspiracy theorist to see something's really not right here...

 

Let's make no mistake about this, I think that this is basically an excuse to get him to a stopping-post, and then, before you know it, he'll be off to the US to a Federal Super-Max, or to Guantanamo Bay.

Interesting video this... "191 Days Without Charge"

 

http://vimeo.com/25113282

How can you say there was more evidence against Strauss-Kahn than there is against Assange? There is a difference between the US system and the Swedish system. The US system allows all sorts of information to enter the public domain whereas the Swedish system does not.