WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has lost his UK extradition hearing, and he has seven days to appeal the court’s decision before he is extradited to Sweden. Assange has not actually been formally charged with any crime; rather, he is wanted for questioning in relation to allegations that he sexually assaulted two women while in the country last summer. The judge presiding over the UK trial rebuked Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Bjorn Hertig, for misleading the court in a “deliberate” fashion about the efforts of the Swedish prosecutor to contact Assange before he left Sweden; Hertig said that prosecutor Marianne Ny did not make an effort to contact Assange, but later corrected his statement.
Assange’s lawyers expressed their disappointment with the decision, and questioned the fairness and transparency of the legal process facing Assange in Sweden: Geoffrey Robertson said in a statement that Assange would be “tried in secret behind closed doors in a flagrant denial of justice,” and that he feared that the Swedish prosecutor’s efforts were front for an eventual US effort to extradite Assange.
Full legal ruling below: (via Guardian)
Published: Feb 24, 2011 08:58 am