Julian Assange Wins Right To Appeal UK Supreme Court
Julian Assange
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday night won the right to appeal the Supreme Court on the extradition case to Sweden, where he is expected to answer to charges of sexual molestation. On Monday he appealed two judges from the High Court, who rejected his initial ground for appeal to the Supreme Court but granted it on the ground that the prosecutor who issued the European arrest order was a judicial officer, thus making the case of general public importance.
The appeal to the Supreme Court is expected to last for several month, though technically his leave to appeal had been denied. The fact that the judges deemed his arrest of general public importance which qualifies it for the appeal.
Assange has been spending the last year on bail fighting extradition to Sweden. He claims that the sex allegations are groundless and that he is not in any danger of being convicted in Sweden, but fears that the extradition is just a pretext to pull him out of British jurisdiction so that his further extradition to the United States be easier.
The American judicial authorities are thought to prepare a case against him related to accusations of national security breach. A first attempt was thwarted by Bradley Manning, the soldier who said that he helped Assange and leaked information to him on his accord.
It is said that American judicial authorities wanted to prove that Manning had been manipulated into releasing classified information, which would have been the ground for a national security breach case.
In the earlier stages of the trial in Britain, Assange’s lawyers argued that their client had serious reasons to think that once on American soil he could face deportation to Guantanamo Bay or execution.
Assange spoke to the press after the decision was made by the High Court judges. He said that the British parliament was debating the problem of extradition these days, and that there were many families aggrieved over extradition issues all over Europe.
He added that being allowed to appeal the Supreme Court was a good decision and thanked those who were by his side in this struggle to avoid extradition.
Julian Assange angered the American authorities last year after he published on his site hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cable, creating a diplomatic scandal that embarrassed the United States and many of the subjects in those cables, who protested against this breach of security.
President hopeful Sarah Palin was quoted to have demanded that Assange be haunted down and the US general attorney was said to have said that if the American law could not punish Assange, new laws are to be made for him.
