Julian Assange Loses Extradition Appeal

judgecorp writes "Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has lost his appeal in the British High Court against extradition to Sweden on charges of rape. His team has 14 days to appeal to the Supreme Court — but would have to show a 'wider issue of public importance' to justify such an appeal. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks has suspended publication because it says a 'banking blockade' has cut off its sources of funding."

Comments

Re:Good.

[dkleinsc]

Julian Assange has offered to be questioned over video or phone conference, which Sweden refused. That strongly suggests that Sweden wants him in physical custody more than it wants questions answered.

Re:The CIA and MI6 are wimping out

[TheCarp]

Actually.... I decided this morning to do some reading up on the allegations. The stories sound fairly bad, and damning, and paint a picture of a rather strange and misogynistic individual.... as long as you ignore a few bits that don't make sense, like "Mrs A" indicating a paranoid fear that he purposefully "tore the condom", based on.... um.... huh what?

If you take the stories at face value, they paint the picture of a misogenistic womanizing individual, and casual rapist (im not sure how one properly categorizes rapists)

Then... there are also counter allegations of twitter posts (I didn't have time to get that far, I mean to look more later, but if anyone has any pointers on this... I would love to see) that contradict the stories and indication that neither Mrs A nor Mrs W came forward until they found out about eachother, and even that they may have a profit motive to have both come forward together.... and that things looked non-kosher enough that the initial prosecutor dismissed the whole case as not being strong enough to pursue.

So we are left with a third possibility... the women are independent actors trying to cash in, and intelligence agencies are running with it because all it takes is a little pressure.

Of course... who knows... maybe he did it? After reading some articles on the allegations tho.... it does seem to stink of sex and money fueled drama.

Of particular interest is the allegations made by the Assange defense team: "There are many more text and SMS messages from and to the complainants which have been shown by the assistant prosecutor to the Swedish defence lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig, which suggest motivations of malice and money in going to the police" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden )

So it sounds like which version is true is going to come down to the content of those messages.

If thats true, and the prosecution knows about it.... then.... well... it makes the international intrigue aspect of this look much more probable.