UN panel: Assange illegally detained
Print Edition
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange’s confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London amounts to illegal detention according to a UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Sweden’s foreign ministry said yesterday.
“We can only note that the working panel has come to another conclusion than Swedish judicial authorities,” a ministry spokeswoman told reporters, a day before the panel was due to publish its report.
Assange, who is wanted for extradition on a rape accusation in Sweden and has lived in the embassy since June 2012, said earlier that he expected to be treated as a free man if the panel ruled in his favor.
In September 2014, he filed a complaint against Sweden and Britain to the UN group, claiming his confinement in the embassy amounted to illegal detention.
“Should I prevail and the state parties be found to have acted unlawfully, I expect the immediate return of my passport and the termination of further attempts to arrest me,” he said.
Rulings by the group are not legally binding, although the Justice for Assange group claims its rulings have influenced the release of prominent figures including Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi and Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, who was held by Iran for 18 months.
Assange’s Swedish lawyer Per Samuelsson said a ruling in his client’s favor meant prosecutor Marianne Ny would have to ask a court to lift the arrest warrant issued against him.
“A ruling in his favor means Marianne Ny would have to have my client released immediately,” he said. “If the Swedish decision is lifted, he is a free man.”
The Swedish prosecution authority has yet to comment on the panel’s report.
However, Britain said it would still have to arrest Assange if he left the embassy.
“An allegation of rape is still outstanding and a European arrest warrant in place, so the UK continues to have a legal obligation to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden,” a spokesman for the UK government said.
“We have been consistently clear that Mr Assange has never been arbitrarily detained by the UK but is, in fact, voluntarily avoiding lawful arrest by choosing to remain in the Ecuadorian embassy.”
The BBC also reported that the UN panel would find for Assange, although WikiLeaks sent a tweet saying it was awaiting “official confirmation.”
The BBC report said the panel took its decision in December and had already informed both the Swedish and British governments.
Ecuador granted Assange asylum, but he has faced immediate arrest if he steps onto British soil and for years police have been posted around the clock outside the embassy doors at a cost of millions of pounds.
In October last year, police ended a 24-hour guard outside the embassy in Knightsbridge but said they would strengthen a “covert plan” to prevent his departure.
Separately, the Australian fears he could face extradition to the United States to be put on a trial over the leak of hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents.
Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006, and its activities — including the release of 500,000 secret files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and 250,000 diplomatic cables — have infuriated the United States.
The main source of the leaks, US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for breaches of the Espionage Act.
Assange has likened life at the embassy — in a small room divided into an office and living area — to living on a space station.
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