Assange lawyer: Extradition risks ‘denial of justice’

LONDON (AP) — A lawyer for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Monday that Swedish secrecy around rape proceedings and his client’s global notoriety mean there is a risk of a denial of justice if he is extradited to Sweden over sex crimes allegations.

Geoffrey Robertson said at a hearing that his client was fighting extradition because such trials are usually held in secret. A trial behind closed doors would be “a flagrant denial of justice … blatantly unfair, not only by British standards but by European standards and indeed by international standards,” Mr. Robertson said.

Rape trials often are held behind closed doors in Sweden to protect the alleged victims.

Mr. Assange is accused of sexual misconduct by two women he met during a visit to Stockholm last year. Defense lawyers are arguing that he should not be extradited because he has not been charged with a crime, because of flaws in Swedish prosecutors’ case — and because a ticket to Sweden could eventually land him in Guantanamo Bay or on death row in the United States.

The prosecutor representing Sweden, Clare Montgomery, opened by dismissing several key planks of the defense. She said Marianne Ny is a public prosecutor, dismissing defense claims that she is not authorized to issue a European Arrest Warrant.

She also said the rape allegation was an extraditable offense even under Sweden’s broad definition of the crime. Mr. Assange’s lawyers say he cannot be extradited because he has not been charged with a crime in Sweden and is only wanted for questioning — and that the allegation is not rape as understood under European and English law.

“The Swedish offense of rape contains the core element of rape … the deliberate violation of a woman’s sexual integrity through penetration,” she said.

American officials are trying to build a criminal case against the secret-spilling site, which has angered Washington by publishing a trove of leaked diplomatic cables and secret U.S. military files. Mr. Assange’s lawyers claim the Swedish prosecution is linked to the leaks and is politically motivated.

Preliminary defense arguments released by Mr. Assange’s legal team claim “there is a real risk that, if extradited to Sweden, the U.S. will seek his extradition and/or illegal rendition to the U.S.A., where there will be a real risk of him being detained at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere.”

Many legal experts say the Guantanamo claims are fanciful, and Sweden strongly denies coming under American pressure.

Nils Rekke, head of the legal department at the Swedish prosecutor’s office in Stockholm, has said Mr. Assange would be protected from transfer to the United States by strict European rules.

“If Assange was handed over to Sweden in accordance with the European Arrest Warrant, Sweden cannot do as Sweden likes after that,” he said. “If there were any questions of an extradition approach from the U.S., then Sweden would have to get an approval from the United Kingdom.”

Mr. Assange, wearing a blue suit, was flanked by two prison guards as the hearing opened at Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court. Celebrity supporters Jemima Khan and Bianca Jagger also attended.

Mr. Robertson denied that Mr. Assange had committed any sexual offenses under English law. He said all relationships, long or short, contain “moments of frustration, irritation and argument. This doesn’t mean, in this country, that the police are entitled to sniff under the bedclothes.”

WikiLeaks sparked an international uproar last year when it published a secret helicopter video showing a U.S. attack that killed two Reuters journalists in Baghdad. It went on to release hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it later began publishing classified U.S. diplomatic cables whose revelations angered and embarrassed the United States and its allies.

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