A SMALL group of supporters gathered early yesterday outside the gates of Belmarsh high-security prison in East London as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrived in a silver taxi for the opening day of his extradition hearing.
“WikiLeaks and freedom of information is priceless. For everything else, there’s Mastercard,” said one placard in a play on the credit-card company’s advertising slogan and its decision to stop taking contributions destined for WikiLeaks.
Assange’s legal team, led by Geoffrey Robertson QC, is putting up a determined case to stop his extradition to Stockholm to face rape and sexual molestation charges made by two women after his visit there last year. They said Assange would face “a secret trial” and “a flagrant denial of his rights” if the European arrest warrant is approved by Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
It is accepted that Assange had sex with the two women, but the issue is whether they consented, and whether he wore a condom. Equally, Robertson argues, Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny does not have authority to seek his extradition.
Former Swedish judge Brita Sundberg-Weitman sharply criticised Ny’s conduct during exchanges with Robertson, and later with Clare Montgomery QC for the crown prosecution service.
“She seems to take it for granted that everybody under prosecution is guilty. I think she is so preoccupied with the situation of battered women and raped women that she has lost balance,” she said. Assange was interviewed about the lesser allegations while he was still in Sweden, but not about the rape charge. His offer to meet with police on a Sunday was refused because officers were on a day off, Robertson told the court.
Sundberg-Weitman, a witness called by the Assange team, agreed. “It would have been so simple to have him heard while he was in Sweden. After he left Sweden it would also have been very easy to have him questioned by telephone, video-link or at an embassy,” she said. Frequently critical of the judiciary of which she was once a part, the former judge said she could “hardly imagine” a case where more harm has been done to a person “than in this matter”.
Assange, an Australian who has been living in a Norfolk mansion since his pre-Christmas release from Wandsworth Prison, is now, she said, known all over the world “as a rapist, and he hasn’t even been charged”.
Media opinion in Sweden is against him, she said, while a court-appointed lawyer for his alleged victims had said on radio and television that Assange should “show that he is a man and go to Sweden and confess what he has done”.
For now, the two women at the centre of the allegations against Assange have not been named in open court, though there is no bar on this. They are named in court documents and have been identified many times on the internet.
Goran Rudling, a campaigner who has pushed for changes to Swedish sex crime laws to help victims, found Twitter messages by one of the women, Anna Ardin, the day after one of the alleged offences occurred.
In the messages she showed herself “to be friendly with him and happy to be in his company”, he noted. The messages were later deleted by Ardin.
“This is not consistent with her allegations. Moreover, it is apparent that she was aware later of this inconsistency and sought to destroy evidence that would be helpful to the police in the investigation and obviously helpful to the defence,” Rudling wrote in a document brought before the court. Rudling emphasised he was not a fan of Assange or WikiLeaks, saying he was “critical of their work”.