The Assange appeal and News of the World scandal
Barbara Gunnell - Griffith Review15 July 2011 (Excerpts) - JULIAN Assange’s appeal against extradition from England, heard in London’s High Court earlier this week, closed, as expected, with a delayed decision.
This was, at base, a technical hearing about the validity of a European Arrest Warrant, not an examination of bedroom behaviour in Stockholm. In fact, the courtroom exchanges did not even concern themselves with whether the events known mainly from leaked Swedish police reports actually happened, only on whether, if they had happened, they would be offences in British law. Hard, then, to understand how the Daily Mail got its headline (‘I want to make you pregnant...I prefer virgins’), which the two-million-circulation daily says Assange is ‘accused’ of saying.
As it happens, he is not accused of that, nor - and this was a major part of his team’s case - anything at all. Their argument is that Assange is being sought for questioning in advance of any accusations or charges, a kind of fishing expedition for Swedish prosecutors that the hastily drawn together legislation governing the European Arrest Warrant may or may not support.
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