WikiLeaks founder Assange detained arbitrarily — United Nations panel

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has been fighting to avoid extradition to Sweden, which wants to question him about allegations of rape.

September: Assange’s lawyers submit a complaint against Sweden and Britain to the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention claiming his situation in the embassy amounts to illegal detention.

“Mr. Assange has chosen, voluntarily, to stay at the Ecuadorian Embassy and Swedish authorities have no control over his decision to stay there”, the Swedish government said in a press release. “And Britain will still arrest Assange if he walks out of the embassy because it has a legal obligation to extradite him to Sweden”.

A committee looking into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s peculiar predicament of being trapped in a London diplomatic mission said that he has been abitrarily detained.

Sweden’s foreign ministry said yesterday that a United Nations advisory panel has concluded that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s has been a victim of “arbitrary” detention at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where he sought refuge in 2012. Assange told reporters via video link from the Ecuadorean embassy building in central London, where he has been holed up, that “it is now the task of the states of Sweden and the United Kingdom as a whole to implement the verdict”, which he hailed as “vindication” of his innocence.

The panel consists of a Korean law professor, a Mexican human right expert, a law professor from Benin, an Australian judicial expert, and a specialist in worldwide criminal justice from Ukraine.

“It is a very complicated and unusual case”, said the Working Group’s Secretary Christophe Peschoux, adding that “it’s important to make a distinction between the legality of a detention and its arbitrariness”.

Assange turns himself in to police in London and is placed in custody pending a ruling on the Swedish extradition request. Swedish officials have not filed charges against Assange, though a warrant was issued for his arrest and he is also wanted for skipping bail.

It ruled in his favour, although the decision was not unanimous but three of the five members on the panel supported a decision in Assange’s favour, with one dissenter and one recusing herself.

As the Two-Way reported, the BBC said on the same day that it had learned the panel had found in Assange’s favor. “Today we have a really significant victory that has brought a smile to my face and Many others as well I hope”.

“The statement from the Working Group has no formal impact on the ongoing investigation, according to Swedish law”, said Karin Rosander, spokeswoman for Sweden’s Prosecution Authority, in a statement.

The ruling did not sit well with the U.K. Foreign Office, which declared that the report “changes nothing” and it will “formally contest the working group’s opinion”.

Sweden and Britain may also choose to appeal the panel’s decision, a process that could take months. “If not, how do you explain why two countries have (Assange) arbitrarily detained without the right, not even the minimal right, to a defense or the presumption of innocence?” Free speech organizations worldwide have condemned the USA attempts to prosecute Julian Assange; this includes a statement just yesterday by the ACLU’s executive director Anthony Romero calling a US case against Mr. Assange ‘unprecedented and unconstitutional.’ Nevertheless that USA case was confirmed in December 2015.