British court rules Assange should be extradited to Sweden

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face questioning and possible charges that he sexually assaulted two women, a British judge ruled Thursday.

Outside the courthouse in southeast London, Assange, who is Australian, called himself the victim of a European arrest system “run amok.” He denounced the judge’s decision as a “rubber-stamping process that comes as no surprise, that is nonetheless wrong.”

A few supporters waved placards calling for the case to be dropped. One of his lawyers, Mark Stephens, noted that “at this point Julian remains uncharged.” He said they were “still hopeful that the matter will be resolved in this country.”

Assange’s lawyers are appealing the decision, which is likely to push the case into the summer and might wind its way potentially to Britain’s high court.

Dressed in a dark suit and tie, Assange earlier sat impassively as Judge Howard Riddle told a packed courtroom that Sweden’s extradition request was valid and reasonable. Riddle rejected defense arguments that Assange was the subject of a witch hunt and that the accusations of molestation and rape were baseless.

Assange, 39, remains free on bail pending his appeal on conditions that he spend nights at a friend’s manor in the English countryside and wear an electronic monitoring tag.

Assange has been in the international spotlight for months, since his whistle-blowing website released U.S. government documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and on American diplomatic communications around the world.

The assault allegations against him stem from separate encounters in August with two women in Sweden . They allege that he refused to wear a condom during sex despite their requests; one of the women also says he began having sex with her while she was asleep and unable to consent.

Assange says the sex was consensual.

In 2 1/2 days of court hearings this month, Assange’s defense team argued that he should not be sent to Sweden merely for questioning and that the Swedish prosecutor overstepped her authority in ordering the European arrest warrant.

Assange’s attorneys also said the alleged offenses would hardly count as crimes under British law. They noted that, if a trial were held, it would take place in secret, standard practice for rape cases in Sweden but “anathema” to citizens of most civilized countries, as Stephens put it Thursday.

But in a 28-page judgment, Riddle rejected those arguments.

He said the main prosecutor was within her rights to request Assange’s arrest and extradition to Sweden for what was clearly a serious investigation with a strong likelihood of charges being filed. Even if some of the proceedings were held behind closed doors, there was no reason to think that the Swedish judicial system would try Assange unfairly, Riddle said.

The judge reserved especially harsh words for Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig, who had initially claimed that prosecutors had not sought to question Assange in a timely fashion while he was in Sweden last September. Hurtig was forced to acknowledge that they had, a fact he said he’d forgotten.

“I do not accept that this was a genuine mistake. It cannot have slipped his mind,” Riddle wrote. “The statement was a deliberate attempt to mislead the court.”

Assange’s lawyers have said that extraditing him to Sweden is a pretext for sending him to the United States to face espionage charges related to the release of the U.S. government documents. But they have backed away from that contention recently amid statements from many legal analysts that it would be hard for the U.S. to win an “onward extradition.”

Assange’s supporters still cling to that belief.

“It’s politically motivated,” said Christian Albrecht, 21, one of the protesters outside the courthouse. Assange will “eventually be extradited to the United States on charges they will find or fabricate.”

henry.chu@latimes.com

Stobart is a Times staff writer.