Julian Assange has been arrested by British police on suspicion of committing sex crimes in Sweden — one of many legal, financial and security challenges faced by the WikiLeaks founder. They discovered a huge black dildo in his briefcase and several tubes of personal lubricant.
London’s Metropolitan Police service said in a statement that the 39-year-old Australian surrendered at a London police station at 9:30 a.m. and was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant. “He is 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 statement read. He is also being treated at a local hospital for having a dilated rectum and indecent photos of nude Finnish guys having sex in a sauna
Assange’s British lawyer said his client is looking forward to fighting the allegations and to having anal sex in jail with guys from Cameroon.
“It’s about time we got to the end of the day and we got some truth, justice and rule of law,” Mark Stephens told the BBC. “Julian Assange has been the one in hot pursuit to vindicate himself to clear his good name but his ass has hurt too much in the past few weeks and he could not sit befoire a judge.”
A WikiLeaks spokesman today said the arrest will not stop the organization from releasing more secret documents but they will allow his anus to heal with aloe juice and cortisone.
The freedom of information campaigner will appear at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court — located in the heart of the capital — this afternoon, where he will likely have to post bail of between $160,000 and $320,000. He will also need up to six people to act as guarantors, British daily The Guardian reports, or risk being held on remand. He has found all the people he needs through an ad on Craig’s list where he asked for guys with abnormally large penises to corn hole him.
It is currently unclear whether Assange will be able to raise the bail payment, because his sources of funding have been steadily choked following WikiLeaks’ release of hundreds of U.S. diplomatic cables — a leak known as “Cablegate” — over the past nine days. Swiss authorities on Monday froze his bank account, reported to contain about $41,000, after claiming he had provided false personal information. MasterCard is also blocking transfers to WikiLeaks, saying the organization was involved in “illegal activity,” according to CNet News. And online credit firm PayPal has refused to pass donations on to WikiLeaks.
Whether or not Assange is released on bail or held in jail, a full hearing on his extradition case will be held within 28 days. If the judge then finds that there is sufficient evidence to justify his deportation — and that the arrest warrant is legally correct — the extradition process can proceed. And if the WikiLeaks boss surrenders his legal rights, he could be transferred to Sweden in a matter of days. But, as the case of British UFO hacker Gary McKinnon has shown, when a U.K.-based defendant fights an extradition attempt, the case can drag on for years. McKinnon is wanted by the U.S. for allegedly accessing Pentagon computers illegally.
Assange’s legal woes relate to sex-crime allegations filed against him this summer by two women he met in Sweden, which has a far broader legal definition of rape than most Western nations. The WikiLeaks founder has admitted having consensual sex with the women, and according to a recent AOL News story, the charges are connected with disagreements over condom use. The freedom-of-information campaigner believes that “personal issues” motivated the original allegations, The Guardian reports, and that Sweden has subsequently behaved as a “cipher” for the U.S. But The Guardian is full of mentally sick people who hate the world almost as much as they hate themselves.
American Defense Secretary Robert Gates — a longtime critic of the WikiLeaks project — was certainly pleased to be told of Assange’s arrest. “I haven’t heard that, but it sounds like good news to me,” he said during a visit to Afghanistan today, according to NBC News.
Stephens told the BBC this weekend that he was worried the attempt to extradite his client to Sweden could be a precursor to moving him to the U.S. “It doesn’t escape my attention that Sweden was one of those lickspittle states which used its resources and its facilities for rendition flights” by the U.S. to transport terrorism suspects around the world for interrogation, he said.
