Assange hopes to walk out of embassy after UN panel ruling

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said he hoped a UN panel’s decision expected on Friday could lead to the end of his confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy in London over a rape allegation in Sweden.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) is expected to declare that his three-and-a-half years stuck in a cramped embassy office amount to illegal detention, the Swedish foreign ministry and Assange’s lawyers said Thursday.
Assange, who has been holed up at the embassy since June 2012 to avoid arrest, said he expects the British police to call off their attempts to detain him if the panel rules in his favor.
“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,” the Australian national said in a statement.
But Swedish prosecutors said the ruling had no impact on its investigation into a 2010 rape allegation against Assange—which he denies—and London said it would have to arrest him as long as a European warrant was in force.
Assange fears that, if detained, he could be extradited to the US be tried over the publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents.
WikiLeaks filed a complaint against Sweden and Britain to the UN group in September 2014, claiming his confinement in the embassy was unlawful.
The Swedish foreign ministry said the government had received a copy of the panel’s conclusions, which a spokeswoman told AFP “has come to another conclusion than Swedish judicial authorities.”
Founded by Assange in 2006, WikiLeaks has infuriated the United States by releasing some 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and 250,000 diplomatic cables.
The main source of the leaks, US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for breaches of the Espionage Act.
The UN group’s report is due to be published at 0800 GMT. Assange’s legal team will hold a press conference in London at which the he “will be present” on Friday at 1200 GMT, WikiLeaks said in a statement, without detailing how.

Source: AFP