WIKILEAKS (3)

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has lost the latest round in his long attempt to resist being extradited from the U.K. to Sweden. The authorities there want to question him in connection with the complaints of two women that he sexually molested and raped them during a trip to Stockholm. He has not been formally charged, denies the complaints and is happy to talk to the prosecutors about the incidents, which he says were consensual. But he doesn't want to go to Sweden, since he fears being sent on to the United States, very keen to get their hands on him because of Wikileaks' leaking confidential documents from U.S. embassies (see my earlier post).

This week the U.K.'s Supreme Court decided 5-2 that he should be extradited. The key legal point was what constitutes a "judicial authority" for the purposes of a European arrest warrant. Mr. Assange had argued that a public prosecutor (who was the person in Sweden who had issued the warrant), was not a judicial authority, and that warrants could only be issued by a judge or a court. The Supreme Court disagreed, thereby upholding the decision of two lower courts. Although the relevant U.K. legislation was unclear on this point, most European states allowed public prosecutors to issue warrants, and it was best to go along with this rather than sticking to a literal interpretation of the English text.

Mr. Assange has the option of appealing to the European Court of Human Rights, but I suspect that he won't get very far with that. And so, at some point, he will be put on a plane to Stockholm, and the next chapter in this saga.

Walter Blotscher