(2PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
Stephen Webster writes this morning at RawStory that Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange has been arrested Tuesday morning by London Metropolitan police on a warrant out of Sweden:
The Guardian reports on a statement from Metropolitan police that “Assange, 39, was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant by appointment at a London police station at 9.30 a.m.
He is accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010.”
Assange’s attorney says they plan to fight extradition to Sweden. A full extradition hearing is expected sometime in the next 21 days. If he is successfully taken to Sweden, the Guardian noted, he could also be legally vulnerable to extradition requests from other countries as well.
His attorneys were reportedly negotiating a sum for bail, but his freedom was not certain as Swedish rape laws make bail more difficult to obtain when the charge is rape.
Assange has reportedly recorded a video statement, set to be published online later Tuesday.
A protest group, calling itself “Justice for Assange,” has already said it plans to gather outside the London police station on Tuesday afternoon to stage a “silent” protest. It is distributing a digital copy of a Julian Assange placard, asking participants to wear them over their faces.
Asked by reporters for his reaction to the arrest, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “that sounds like good news to me.”
Assange and WikiLeaks had earlier this year posted on the WikiLeaks website a massive (1.4 GB, 10x larger than all the other files on the page combined) heavily encrypted file on their dedicated “Afghan War Diary” page labeled simply “Insurance”, that was disseminated widely.
It is anyones guess now how many copies of the insurance file are now in existence around the world, and whether or not Wikileaks will publicly release the public key need to decrypt the file, as had been promised were anything to happen to Mr. Assange.
Although WikiLeaks has had problems since the latest release with hacking, denial of service attacks, web hosts closing their sites down, and domain name registrars pulling their domain name, you can always get to their site by navigating to any of the WikiLeaks mirror sites listed here:
WikiLeaks Mirror Sites
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He truly does mirror the plight of the aware and aroused citizen of Earth.
and on the international pursuit of and charges against Assange at Counterpoint. (I don’t know how accurate and reliable they are.) Including one linking at least one of the Swedish “victims” to a CIA-sponsored anti-Castro group in Cuba, of all places. It also asserts that heavy pressure was put on Sweden by the U.S. (is anyone surprised?) to reinstate the charges against Assange after they’d been dropped.
Plus Naomi Klein has a funny piece over at Huffington Post demanding the arrest of every man who’s been an insufficiently attentive date; which, by the time you sort through all the smoke and mirrors, is apparently what Assange is being charged with in Sweden. They have some strange laws.
Edger, for everything you do.