Julian Assange to file fresh challenge in effort to

escape two-year legal limbo

Lawyers for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who on
Thursday marks his second anniversary holed up in the
Ecuadorian embassy in London, are preparing to file a
challenge to his detention order in Sweden in a move that
could impact the state of legal limbo in which he is
trapped.
Jennifer Robinson, Assanges UK-based lawyer, told
reporters that the legal challenge, which is due to be
lodged with Swedish courts next Tuesday, was based on
new information gathered in Sweden. She declined to
give any further details until the filing had been made.
News of the challenge was the first indication in months of
any possible way out of the legal deadlock in which
Assange has fallen since he took refuge in the Ecuadorian
embassy on 19 June 2012. Since then, the embassy has
been ringed with British police 24 hours a day, at a cost of
more than 6m ($10m) to the taxpayer, as the UK
government seeks to enforce an extradition order to send
the WikiLeaks publisher to Sweden.
The Swedish detention order that Assange is now
challenging was issued in November 2010. It requires the
founder of the free information website to be arrested and
extradited to Sweden to face questioning over the alleged
sexual assault of two women in that country.
Assange and his legal advisers have always protested that
were he to cooperate with the British and Swedish
authorities, he would expose himself to an ongoing
criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice.
The DoJ is known to have opened a grand jury
investigation into WikiLeaks publication of a vast tranche
of secret official documents leaked by the US army private
Chelsea Manning (Bradley Manning at the time).
In a telephone press conference on the eve of the second
anniversary of his asylum in the embassy, Assange called

on the US attorney general, Eric Holder, to put a stop to

the investigation. It is against the stated principles of the
US and I believe the values supported by its people to
have a four-year criminal investigation against a publisher.
The on-going existence of that investigation produces a
chilling effect not just to internet-based publishers but to
all publishers, he said.
WikiLeaks caused a global sensation in 2010 when it
began publishing, in collaboration with international news
organisations including the Guardian, hundreds of
thousands of confidential US files including diplomatic
cables, warlogs from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a video of
a US apache helicopter attack in Baghdad. The US
government convened a grand jury to investigate
WikiLeaks role in the leak, although it has been reported
that charges have not been filed.
Since his retreat into the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange
has also played a key role in the fleeing of Edward
Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor,
from Hong Kong to Russia. WikiLeaks staffers last year
helped Snowden evade arrest and secure temporary
asylum in Moscow.
Assange declined to say whether he has been in personal
contact with Snowden. He also declined to say whether
WikiLeaks has had access to the mountain of secret
documents from the NSA and its British counterpart,
GCHQ, leaked by Snowden.
The WikiLeaks founder said that were next weeks
challenge successful in lifting the Swedish detention order,
he would still face the larger problem of the US and its
pending prosecution and perhaps extradition warrant as
well as any possible arrest by the UK government for his
role in the Snowden affair.
But he said it would be an important first step as it would
remove an extremely distracting political attack which
has been to try and draw attention away from the largest

criminal investigation ever by the department of justice

into a publisher and me personally.
Despite attempts by Assange and his lawyers to focus
attention on the US governments investigation into
WikiLeaks, he continues to face public criticism for his
refusal to subject himself to questioning in Sweden on the
sexual assault allegations. A reporter from the UK
broadcaster Channel Four News accused Assange of failing
to abide by his own principles of global transparency, to
which he replied: Oh here we go, Channel 4 News, this is
the state of the media in the UK.
Assange gave few details about how he was coping
personally with living in cramped conditions in the
embassy. He said he was watching the World Cup,
supporting the Ecuador team, though television reception
in the embassy was poor. Perhaps it makes it more
difficult for the bugs to transmit through the walls as well,
he quipped.
Asked how he was coping on the second anniversary, he
deflected the question by saying there were other people
in more difficult circumstances. He pointed to Manning
who has been sentenced to 35 years in military custody
for leaking the WikiLeaks material and is currently being
held in Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.
Assange repeatedly referred to the soldier as he even
though Chelsea Manning has legally changed her name
and now requests that she is addressed as a woman.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/18/juli
an-assange-fresh-challenge-legal-limbo-ecuadorembassy

Julian Assange
Julian Assange was born on July 3, 1971, in Townsville,
Australia. He discovered his passion for computers as a
teenager and developed a talent for hacking into
computer systems. His 1991 break-in to the master
terminal for Nortel, a telecommunications company, got
him in trouble. He was charged with more than 30 counts
of hacking in Australia, but got off with only a fine for
damages.
He continued to pursue a career as a computer
programmer and software developer. He studied
mathematics at the University of Melbourne but dropped
out without finishing his degree, later claiming that he left
the university for moral reasons; he objected to other
students working on computer projects for the military.
In 2006, Julian Assange began work on Wikileaks. It was a
website intended to collect and share confidential
information on an international scale. The information his
organization released earned him strong supporters but
also powerful enemies.
In 2006, Wikileaks launched as a safe haven for
whistleblowers wanting to expose corruption in Third
World countries. It officially launched in 2007 and the site
was run from Sweden because the country had strong
laws protecting a person's anonymity. Later that year,
Wikileaks released a U.S. military manual that provided
detailed information on the Guantanamo detention center.
Wikileaks also shared emails from then-vice presidential
candidate Sarah Palin that it received from an anonymous
source in September 2008.
In 2008, Julian Assange was honored with the Freedom of
Expression Award by The Economist magazine and in
2009 he was awarded the Amnesty International UK
Media Award for exposing assassination plots and human
rights violations in Kenya.
In February 2010, Wikileaks began releasing more than
250,000 cables sent to the U.S. State Department from
hundreds of international embassies and consulates. The

first document released was Reykjavik cable 13, which

exposed corruption in Icelandic banks. This is reported to
be the first document Pfc. Breanna Manning, also known
as Bradley Banning, sent to Wikileaks.
In April 2010, Wikileaks began publishing thousands of
U.S. cables, including the Collateral Murder video, which
portrays a U.S. helicopter firing on civilians and two
Reuters journalists in Baghdad in 2007.
Pfc. Breanna Manning was arrested in Iraq in May 2010 for
allegedly leaking classified cables to Wikileaks.
The Afghan War diaries were released in July 2001 which
contained around 76,900 documents about the Afghan war
and torture tactics previously hidden from the public.
In August 2010, Woman AA invites Assange to speak at
a seminar about Afghanistan. Woman SW invites Assange
to stay at her place. Apparently text message evidence
shows the women find out about each other and conspire
to tarnish his reputation and Wikileaks. The women then
went to the Swedish police to file a sexual assault report.
The Police, going against interrogation procedures, do not
film the womens testimonies. The Police allege rape; but
the women never claimed Assange raped them the
police officers were the only ones who claimed rape.
Assange stayed in Sweden for five weeks offering to be
interviewed; but all interview requests were denied and he
left Sweden with permission.
In October 2010: Assange was awarded with the Sam
Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. He offered to fly
to Sweden on two more occasions to be interviewed but
both requests were rejected - once because the date
landed on a weekend and the other time because the date
was too far away.
In November 2010: Julian Assange worked with The
Guardian (UK), The New York Times (U.S.), El Pais (Spain),
Der Spiegel (Germany) and Le Monde (France) to publish
the first 220 Cablegate files. Those cables exposed U.S.

exploitation, bullying and intimidation tactics used against

other countries.
In November 26, 2010, Julian Assange sent a letter to
the U.S. asking they point out information that would
potentially put lives at risk. The Department of State
rejected the request. Then Sweden filed a European Arrest
Warrant from the prosecutor, not a judge as they are
legally obliged to do (I havent checked that). An EAW is
also only supposed to be issued to prosecute, not to
merely question a suspect.
In November 28, 2010, the five newspapers Wikileaks
partnered with began publishing selected cables; the other
unreleased Cablegate documents were published on their
web site. According to the Peoples Record.com, many
politicians, including Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Tom
Flannagan and Hillary Clinton, condemned Assange to be
a terrorist and some even condoned his assassination.
Following pressure from the U.S. President, Barack Obama,
in December 2010, a number of high profile businesses
blocked donations to Wikileaks including, PayPal, Visa,
MasterCard, Bank of America and Western Union. Amazon
also removed Wikileaks from its storage servers, and
Apple removed an app that allowed users to search cables
from their phones.
In December 7, 2010, Julian Assange turned himself
over for voluntary custody in the UK. He spent seven days
in solitary confinement. On December 8, 2010, it was
confirmed that Sweden and the United States began
informal talks about extraditing Assange to the U.S.
On December 14, 2010, he was granted bail in the
region of 200,000. He gave up his passport, was put
under house arrest with curfews, ordered to wear an ankle
monitor and forced to report to the local police station
daily. However, he still not been charged for a crime in any
country.
He lost his extradition appeal on 30 May, 2012. Expecting
to be handed over to the United States once he faced

questioning by the Swedish authorities, on 19 June he

applied for political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in
London. Nearly two months later, in August 2012, Assange
was granted political asylum by the Ecuadorean
government. This protects him from British arrest, but only
on Ecuadorean territory. He remains vulnerable to arrest,
however, if he tries to leave the embassy, eg. to head to
an airport or a train station. The decision cited the
possibility that he could face 'political persecution' or be
sent to the United States to face the death penalty.
Analysis
Have the US authorities used rape as an emotive tool to
encourage public calls for Assange to accept extradition to
Sweden?
http://thepeoplesrecord.com/post/25934688551/wikileakstimeline-of-events-photo-june-25-2012