THE WIKILEAKS founder is to be extradited to Sweden within 10 days to face allegations that he raped and sexually assaulted two women there last year, following a decision by a London court.
Mr Assange will appeal, his legal team has confirmed.
Julian Assange, clearly unhappy outside the court later, yesterday dismissed the ruling as “a rubber-stamping” exercise. “It comes as no surprise but it is nevertheless wrong. It comes as the result of a European arrest warrant system run amok,” he said. He will remain on bail until the appeal is heard.
In a detailed judgment, Judge Howard Riddle in Westminster Magistrates Court’s rejected all of the arguments put forward by Mr Assange’s legal team at three previous sittings in a court adjoining Belmarsh high-security prison in east London. He particularly rejected the argument that Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny was not authorised to issue the European arrest warrant.
The Australian listened impassively as Judge Riddle delivered a scathing criticism of his Swedish lawyer, Björn Hurtig, whom he described as “an unreliable witness”. He accused him of deliberately trying to mislead the court about alleged efforts that he made to contact the WikiLeaks founder before Mr Assange left Sweden at the end of September.
Judge Riddle said Mr Hurting could produce no records, including those of mobile telephone calls or text messages, to prove that he had made any such attempt. “It would be a reasonable assumption from the facts that Mr Assange was deliberately avoiding interrogation before he left Sweden.”
Mr Hurtig’s declaration in a written statement to the court before he gave evidence, that it was “astonishing” that Ms Ny had made no effort to interview Mr Assange before he left, was untrue, although he had tried to correct that in his oral testimony, but only in a “low-key” fashion.
“Mr Hurtig must have realised the significance of . . . his proof when he submitted it,” Judge Riddle told the magistrates court, which was attended by a large number of international journalists. “I do not accept that this was a genuine mistake. It cannot have slipped his mind. The statement was a deliberate attempt to mislead the court.”
He acknowledged that there has been “considerable adverse publicity” about Mr Assange in the Swedish press and in the Swedish parliament, including from the country’s prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, but the best place to investigate if there had been any irregularities was before a Swedish court, he said.
Mr Assange faces four allegations, including one that he had sex with one of the women while she was asleep, without a condom and without her agreement. He could face four years in jail if found guilty. The evidence in Swedish rape cases is given in private, although the arguments from lawyers are presented in public.
Rejecting the argument of Mr Assange’s barrister Geoffrey Robertson, that this would be “a secret trial”, Judge Riddle said: “None of the points raised by the Assange defence establishes an abuse of process. I have no doubt this defendant is wanted for prosecution in Sweden . . . the boundary between suspicion and prosecution has been crossed.”