07-12-2010, 06:28 PM
LONDON [NYT] — Julian Assange, the founder of the beleaguered WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group, was denied bail by a London court on Tuesday after he was arrested on a Swedish extradition warrant for questioning in connection with alleged sex offenses.
Members of the news media waited outside the rear entrance of Westminster Magistrates Court for the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London on Tuesday.
In a hearing that lasted just under an hour, Mr. Assange said he would fight extradition. But despite the presence in court of several prominent people ready to vouch for him, he was called a flight risk and ordered to remain in custody until a further court session on Dec. 14. His British lawyer, Mark Stephens, told reporters Mr. Assange would appeal the denial of bail.
Reporters and television crews from around the world watched as an armored wagon holding Mr. Assange pulled away from the court, and photographers rushed at its rear windows, cameras flashing. Dozens of WikiLeaks supporters who had gathered outside the courthouse converged on vehicle, banging on its side panels and yelling "We love you!"
The developments offered the latest twist in the drama swirling around WikiLeaks following its publication of vast troves of leaked United States government documents.
Mr. Assange’s associates said his detention would not alter plans for further disclosures like the wealth of field reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that it released over the summer and fall, and, over the past nine days, confidential diplomatic messages between the State Department and American representatives abroad.
“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.
That left unclear whether a more serious threat would be carried out. In recent days, Mr. Assange has asserted that “over 100,000 people” had been given the entire archive of 251,287 cables “in encrypted form.” Only around 1,000 of them have so far been released; in many, names of sources who might be compromised or endangered were redacted.
“If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically,” Mr. Assange wrote in a question-and-answer session on the Web site of the British newspaper The Guardian. Mr. Stephens, the lawyer, reiterated that warning on Tuesday saying a “a virtual network” of “thousands of journalists” around the world would ensure that the rest of the documents would be published.
The arrest seemed to draw ever sharper battle-lines over Mr. Assange. His supporters cast him as a crusader; his foes, including the Obama administration, have been infuriated by revelations of sensitive material whose publication, his critics say, could threaten American security interests, alliances and lives.
That contest was evident in the courtroom where the film director Ken Loach, campaigning journalist John Pilger, and Jemima Khan, a socialite and activist, were among a group of supporters that offered to stand surety for Mr. Assange, only for bail to be refused because of what police said was a risk that he would go underground or flee.
Mr. Assange entered the court wearing a dark blue suit and tie and flanked by two court officers. Over the last few months he has frequently seemed to change his appearance, dying his hair a darker color. But on Tuesday, strands of silver and gray showed through. Prosecutors said he had refused to be finger-printed or give a DNA sample, and, when asked for his address offered a post office box in Australia.
The Swedish warrant covers accusations lodged months ago by two Swedish women who said separate consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange became nonconsensual after he was no longer using a condom. Mr. Assange has denied any wrongdoing and suggested that the charges were trumped up in retaliation for his WikiLeaks work.
Tuesday’s day’s rapid-fire events began when Mr. Assange was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard’s extradition unit after he went to a central London police station by prior agreement with the authorities.
He arrived by car for a subsequent court hearing near the Houses of Parliament on the banks of the Thames, using a rear entrance to skirt a scrum of television cameras, satellite vans and reporters from Britain, the United States, China, Russia, Japan and many European countries, including Albania. He left in an armored police truck.
Speaking a crowded courtroom whose poor acoustics muffled his words, Mr. Assange said he did not consent when asked whether he understood that he could agree to be extradited to Sweden. That set the stage for what could be protracted legal wrangling over his fate. He was not asked to plead guilt or not guilty.
Police and members of the news media outside Magistrates Court, where the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was expected to arrive, in London on Tuesday.
Previously, Mr. Stephens, his lawyer, had suggested that Mr. Assange might resist extradition on the grounds that Swedish authorities could interview him by video-link from Stockholm or at their embassy in London and that the extradition request itself is politically motivated.
“It’s about time we got to the end of the day and we got some truth, justice and rule of law,” Mr. Stephens told reporters on Tuesday. “Julian Assange has been the one in hot pursuit to vindicate himself to clear his good name.”
In a statement earlier on Tuesday, the police said: “Officers from the Metropolitan Police extradition unit have this morning arrested Julian Assange on behalf of the Swedish authorities on suspicion of rape.”
The British police statement said that Mr. Assange was “accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010.”
The arrest was made under a European arrest warrant “by appointment at a London police station at 09:30 today,” the statement said.
While widely anticipated, the arrest opened an array of new questions about Mr. Assange’s future, even as the Justice Department in Washington said it was conducting what Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. called “a very serious, active, ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature” into the WikiLeaks matter.
In an article in The Australian newspaper on Tuesday, by contrast, Mr. Assange depicted WikiLeaks as a proponent of what he termed scientific journalism, which “allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on.”
“That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?” he wrote. “Democratic societies need a strong media, and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest.”
His arrest came amid mounting challenges to the operation of WikiLeaks, as computer server companies, Amazon.com and PayPal.com, have cut off commercial cooperation with the organization.
Visa said on Tuesday that it had suspended all payments to WikiLeaks pending an investigation of the organization’s business, Reuters reported. The decision appeared to strike a further blow against the organization, which relies on donations made online, and came a day after a Swiss bank froze an account held by Mr. Assange that had been used to collect donations.
As of Monday night, the group had released fewer than 1,000 of the quarter-million State Department cables it had obtained, reportedly from a low-ranking Army intelligence analyst.
So far, the group has moved cautiously. The whole archive was made available to five news organizations, including The New York Times. But WikiLeaks has posted only a few dozen cables on its own in addition to matching those made public by the news publications. According to the State Department’s count, 1,325 cables, or fewer than 1 percent of the total, have been made public by all parties to date.
Justice Department prosecutors have been struggling to find a way to indict Mr. Assange since July, when WikiLeaks made public documents on the war in Afghanistan. But while it is clearly illegal for a government official with a security clearance to give a classified document to WikiLeaks, it is far from clear that it is illegal for the organization to make it public.
Perhaps in a warning shot of sorts, WikiLeaks on Monday released a cable from early last year listing sites around the world — from hydroelectric dams in Canada to vaccine factories in Denmark — that are considered crucial to American national security.
Nearly all the facilities listed in the document, including undersea cables, oil pipelines and power plants, could be identified by Internet searches. But the disclosure prompted headlines in Europe and a new denunciation from the State Department, which said in a statement that “releasing such information amounts to giving a targeting list to groups like Al Qaeda.”
Asked later about the cable, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the continuing disclosures posed “real concerns, and even potential damage to our friends and partners around the world.”
In recent months, WikiLeaks gave the entire collection of cables to four European publications — Der Spiegel in Germany, El País in Spain, Le Monde in France and The Guardian. The Guardian shared the cable collection with The New York Times.
Since Nov. 28, each publication has been publishing a series of articles about revelations in the cables, accompanied online by the texts of some of the documents. The publications have removed the names of some confidential sources of American diplomats, and WikiLeaks has generally posted the cables with the same redactions.
The five publications have announced no plans to make public all the documents. WikiLeaks’ intentions remain unclear.
Members of the news media waited outside the rear entrance of Westminster Magistrates Court for the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London on Tuesday.
In a hearing that lasted just under an hour, Mr. Assange said he would fight extradition. But despite the presence in court of several prominent people ready to vouch for him, he was called a flight risk and ordered to remain in custody until a further court session on Dec. 14. His British lawyer, Mark Stephens, told reporters Mr. Assange would appeal the denial of bail.
Reporters and television crews from around the world watched as an armored wagon holding Mr. Assange pulled away from the court, and photographers rushed at its rear windows, cameras flashing. Dozens of WikiLeaks supporters who had gathered outside the courthouse converged on vehicle, banging on its side panels and yelling "We love you!"
The developments offered the latest twist in the drama swirling around WikiLeaks following its publication of vast troves of leaked United States government documents.
Mr. Assange’s associates said his detention would not alter plans for further disclosures like the wealth of field reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that it released over the summer and fall, and, over the past nine days, confidential diplomatic messages between the State Department and American representatives abroad.
“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.
That left unclear whether a more serious threat would be carried out. In recent days, Mr. Assange has asserted that “over 100,000 people” had been given the entire archive of 251,287 cables “in encrypted form.” Only around 1,000 of them have so far been released; in many, names of sources who might be compromised or endangered were redacted.
“If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically,” Mr. Assange wrote in a question-and-answer session on the Web site of the British newspaper The Guardian. Mr. Stephens, the lawyer, reiterated that warning on Tuesday saying a “a virtual network” of “thousands of journalists” around the world would ensure that the rest of the documents would be published.
The arrest seemed to draw ever sharper battle-lines over Mr. Assange. His supporters cast him as a crusader; his foes, including the Obama administration, have been infuriated by revelations of sensitive material whose publication, his critics say, could threaten American security interests, alliances and lives.
That contest was evident in the courtroom where the film director Ken Loach, campaigning journalist John Pilger, and Jemima Khan, a socialite and activist, were among a group of supporters that offered to stand surety for Mr. Assange, only for bail to be refused because of what police said was a risk that he would go underground or flee.
Mr. Assange entered the court wearing a dark blue suit and tie and flanked by two court officers. Over the last few months he has frequently seemed to change his appearance, dying his hair a darker color. But on Tuesday, strands of silver and gray showed through. Prosecutors said he had refused to be finger-printed or give a DNA sample, and, when asked for his address offered a post office box in Australia.
The Swedish warrant covers accusations lodged months ago by two Swedish women who said separate consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange became nonconsensual after he was no longer using a condom. Mr. Assange has denied any wrongdoing and suggested that the charges were trumped up in retaliation for his WikiLeaks work.
Tuesday’s day’s rapid-fire events began when Mr. Assange was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard’s extradition unit after he went to a central London police station by prior agreement with the authorities.
He arrived by car for a subsequent court hearing near the Houses of Parliament on the banks of the Thames, using a rear entrance to skirt a scrum of television cameras, satellite vans and reporters from Britain, the United States, China, Russia, Japan and many European countries, including Albania. He left in an armored police truck.
Speaking a crowded courtroom whose poor acoustics muffled his words, Mr. Assange said he did not consent when asked whether he understood that he could agree to be extradited to Sweden. That set the stage for what could be protracted legal wrangling over his fate. He was not asked to plead guilt or not guilty.
Police and members of the news media outside Magistrates Court, where the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was expected to arrive, in London on Tuesday.
Previously, Mr. Stephens, his lawyer, had suggested that Mr. Assange might resist extradition on the grounds that Swedish authorities could interview him by video-link from Stockholm or at their embassy in London and that the extradition request itself is politically motivated.
“It’s about time we got to the end of the day and we got some truth, justice and rule of law,” Mr. Stephens told reporters on Tuesday. “Julian Assange has been the one in hot pursuit to vindicate himself to clear his good name.”
In a statement earlier on Tuesday, the police said: “Officers from the Metropolitan Police extradition unit have this morning arrested Julian Assange on behalf of the Swedish authorities on suspicion of rape.”
The British police statement said that Mr. Assange was “accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010.”
The arrest was made under a European arrest warrant “by appointment at a London police station at 09:30 today,” the statement said.
While widely anticipated, the arrest opened an array of new questions about Mr. Assange’s future, even as the Justice Department in Washington said it was conducting what Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. called “a very serious, active, ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature” into the WikiLeaks matter.
In an article in The Australian newspaper on Tuesday, by contrast, Mr. Assange depicted WikiLeaks as a proponent of what he termed scientific journalism, which “allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on.”
“That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?” he wrote. “Democratic societies need a strong media, and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest.”
His arrest came amid mounting challenges to the operation of WikiLeaks, as computer server companies, Amazon.com and PayPal.com, have cut off commercial cooperation with the organization.
Visa said on Tuesday that it had suspended all payments to WikiLeaks pending an investigation of the organization’s business, Reuters reported. The decision appeared to strike a further blow against the organization, which relies on donations made online, and came a day after a Swiss bank froze an account held by Mr. Assange that had been used to collect donations.
As of Monday night, the group had released fewer than 1,000 of the quarter-million State Department cables it had obtained, reportedly from a low-ranking Army intelligence analyst.
So far, the group has moved cautiously. The whole archive was made available to five news organizations, including The New York Times. But WikiLeaks has posted only a few dozen cables on its own in addition to matching those made public by the news publications. According to the State Department’s count, 1,325 cables, or fewer than 1 percent of the total, have been made public by all parties to date.
Justice Department prosecutors have been struggling to find a way to indict Mr. Assange since July, when WikiLeaks made public documents on the war in Afghanistan. But while it is clearly illegal for a government official with a security clearance to give a classified document to WikiLeaks, it is far from clear that it is illegal for the organization to make it public.
Perhaps in a warning shot of sorts, WikiLeaks on Monday released a cable from early last year listing sites around the world — from hydroelectric dams in Canada to vaccine factories in Denmark — that are considered crucial to American national security.
Nearly all the facilities listed in the document, including undersea cables, oil pipelines and power plants, could be identified by Internet searches. But the disclosure prompted headlines in Europe and a new denunciation from the State Department, which said in a statement that “releasing such information amounts to giving a targeting list to groups like Al Qaeda.”
Asked later about the cable, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the continuing disclosures posed “real concerns, and even potential damage to our friends and partners around the world.”
In recent months, WikiLeaks gave the entire collection of cables to four European publications — Der Spiegel in Germany, El País in Spain, Le Monde in France and The Guardian. The Guardian shared the cable collection with The New York Times.
Since Nov. 28, each publication has been publishing a series of articles about revelations in the cables, accompanied online by the texts of some of the documents. The publications have removed the names of some confidential sources of American diplomats, and WikiLeaks has generally posted the cables with the same redactions.
The five publications have announced no plans to make public all the documents. WikiLeaks’ intentions remain unclear.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass