Swedish court upholds Assange warrant, clears way for questioning in October

[DonViejo]

Source: Reuters

A Swedish appeals court decided to uphold the arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Friday, prolonging the six year long legal stand off with prosecutors and clearing the way for the Wikileaks founder to be questioned in London next month.

Assange, 45, is wanted by Swedish authorities for questioning over allegations, which he denies, that he committed rape in 2010. "The Court of Appeal shares the assessment of the District Court that Julian Assange is still suspected on probable cause of rape," the court said.

Assange avoided possible extradition to Sweden by taking refuge in Ecuador's London embassy in 2012. He says he fears further extradition to the United States, where a criminal investigation into the activities of Wikileaks is ongoing. Per Samuelson, a Swedish lawyer representing Assange, said he had not yet talked to his client. "I assume we will appeal, it would be strange if we did not," he said.

The court said the lengthy deadlock and the previous passivity of Swedish prosecutors in pursuing the investigation were arguments for setting aside the warrant, but there remained a strong public interest argument for it remaining in place. "At present, continued detention therefore appears to be both effective and necessary so as to be able to move the investigation forward," the court said.

Ecuador has set an October 17 date for questioning Assange at its London embassy.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-sweden-assange-idUSKCN11M0SH?il=0

[cstanleytech]

1. To be perfectly honest I believe Assange is using US extradition as a red herring to

avoid being put on trial in Sweden.
Mind you thats just my opinion and I am well aware that there are others here who believe its a legit fear for him but I personally just dont think it is so save yourself some time before coming to his defense by trying to attack me for having an opinion because I am already aware of yours.

[MADem]

2. I think Russia is paying Ecuador to keep him!

I think Russia is also paying him to not release any damaging information about Russia, as well as paying him to interfere in this POTUS election. He is compromised, he is a LIAR.


http://gizmodo.com/wikileaks-may-have-withheld-key-russian-documents-from-1786445992

Wikileaks withheld a batch of emails showing a $2.2 billion transaction between the Syrian regime and a Russian government-owned bank, according to a Daily Dot report. If true, the report will likely have a lasting negative impact on Wikileaks’ credibility. The report alleges that the transparency organization betrayed its own core values of “pristine leaking,” and did so in a way that protects Russia’s public image.

As the Daily Dot reports, court records placed under seal by a Manhattan federal court and obtained by the news organization “show in detail how a group of hacktivists breached the Syrian government’s networks on the eve of the country’s civil war and extracted emails about major bank transactions the Syrian regime was hurriedly making amid a host of economic sanctions.”

The report claims batch of emails were not included in the cache of documents Wikileaks published under the name the “Syria Files”in 2012. The emails allegedly show correspondence between the Central Bank of Syria and Russia’s VTB Bank. When the Daily Dot asked Wikileaks for comment, the transparency organization denied removing the batch of emails and vaguely threatened the journalist, saying, “You can be sure we will return the favor one day.”

It’s entirely possible that the hackers removed the email batch from the data dump it provided to Wikileaks. But it also seems very unlikely. As Daily Dot reporters Dell Cameron and Patrick Howell O’Neill point out in their story, they received 500 pages showing every step the hackers went through to infiltrate the Syrian government’s networks. The reporters say, “the court records leaked to the Daily Dot reveal the Moscow bank’s emails were, in fact, part of the larger backup file containing numerous emails currently found on the WikiLeaks site.”...Wikileaks’ credibility has been increasingly called into question with each of its last major leaks. When the organization published 19,252 emails from top US Democratic National Committee members earlier this year, cybersecurity experts said the leak was likely facilitated by the Russian government.

During an appearance on HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange also claimed the organization did not publish sensitive information from DNC donors. “We did not publish full credit card numbers of donors,” he said. “It’s the last four digits, just like your 7-Eleven receipt.” As Gizmodo reported, Assange blatantly lied about the contents of the dump. Wikileaks had in fact published dozens of full credit card numbers.....

[EX500rider]

4. Well of course...the UK is a much closer ally then Sweden if we really were trying