photo: Reuters Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard’s extradition unit on Tuesday when he went to a central London police station by prior agreement with the authorities, the police said.
Assange is wanted for questioning in Sweden about allegations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. He denies the claims.
Assange's lawyers have said he will fight extradition to Sweden, for fear he could be turned over to the United States.
US Justice Department prosecutors are trying to find a way to indict Mr. Assange. While it is clearly illegal for a government official to give a classified document to WikiLeaks, it is not clear that it is illegal for the organization to make it public.
Some lawmakers have suggested accusing WikiLeaks of receiving stolen government property, but experts said Monday that argument is not very strong either.
His British lawyer, Mark Stephens, suggested Swedish authorities could interview Mr. Assange by video-link from Stockholm or at their embassy in London .
A spokesman for WikiLeaks says the arrest of Assange does not affect plans for the release of more documents.
“Today’s actions against our editor-in-chief Julian Assange won’t affect our operations: we will release more cables tonight as normal,” a posting on the WikiLeaks Twitter account said.
“Over 100,000 people” were given the entire archive of 251,287 cables in encrypted form, Mr. Assange said on Friday in a question-and-answer session on the Web site of the British newspaper The Guardian.
“If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically,” Mr. Assange said
On Monday, a Swiss bank froze an account that Mr. Assange used to collect donations for WikiLeaks. Marc Andrey, a spokesman for the bank, PostFinance, an arm of the Swiss postal service, said the account was closed because Mr. Assange “gave us false information when he opened the account,” asserting inaccurately that he lived in Switzerland.
adapted from VOAnews and NYT
