London: Lawyers for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who today marks his second anniversary holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, are preparing to file a challenge to his detention order in Sweden in a move that could impact the state of legal limbo in which he is trapped.
Jennifer Robinson, Assange’s UK-based lawyer, told reporters that the legal challenge, which is due to be lodged with Swedish courts next Tuesday, was based on “new information gathered in Sweden”. She declined to give any further details until the filing had been made.
News of the challenge was the first indication in months of any possible way out of the legal deadlock in which Assange has fallen since he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy on June 19 2012. Since then, the embassy has been ringed with British police 24 hours a day, at a cost of more than £6m to the taxpayer, as the UK government seeks to enforce an extradition order to send the WikiLeaks publisher to Sweden.
The Swedish detention order that Assange is now challenging was issued in November 2010. It requires the founder of the free information website to be arrested and extradited to Sweden to face questioning over the alleged sexual assault of two women in that country.
Assange and his legal advisers have always protested that were he to cooperate with the British and Swedish authorities, he would expose himself to an ongoing criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice. The DoJ is known to have opened a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks publication of a vast tranche of secret official documents leaked by the US army private Chelsea Manning (Bradley Manning at the time).
In a telephone press conference on the eve of the second anniversary of his asylum in the embassy, Assange called on the US attorney general, Eric Holder, to put a stop to the investigation. “It is against the stated principles of the US and I believe the values supported by its people to have a four-year criminal investigation against a publisher. The ongoing existence of that investigation produces a chilling effect not just to internet-based publishers but to all publishers,” he said.
WikiLeaks caused a global sensation in 2010 when it began publishing, in collaboration with international news organisations including the Guardian, hundreds of thousands of confidential US files including diplomatic cables, warlogs from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a video of a US apache helicopter attack in Baghdad.
The US government convened a grand jury to investigate WikiLeaks’ role in the leak, although it has been reported that charges have not been filed.
The Guardian
