Julian Assange - what next?

David Heath
Wednesday, 02 November 2011 21:23

IT People - People

Having lost his appeal against extradition to Sweden, what next for Julian Assange?

A little over an hour ago, their honours Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Ouseley delivered their decision to deny Julian Assange's appeal against extradition to Sweden for questioning over alleged sexual assault and rape charges.  Interestingly, it seems that despite his obvious interest in the delivery of the judgement, his legal team (and that of the Crown) had been given the full text of the judgement a week previously.

Assange's appeal centred on four grounds:

Issue 1: Was the EAW [European Arrest Warrant] issued by a judicial authority?

In contention here was whether such an arrest warrant must be issued by a judicial authority (i.e. a Judge or similar) as in this instance it was not.  The judges drew attention to the Extradition Act (2003) and to much of the publicly released discussion surrounding the framing of the Act.  All of which made it very clear that a Prosecutor was a suitably competent authority to issue the warrant and that any reference to "judicial authority" was inclusive of a duly authorised Crown prosecutor (or the foreign equivalent).

Issue 2: Dual Criminality; the fairness and accuracy of the description of the conduct alleged.

This issue revolved around the general principle that the conduct for which extradition was sought should be an offence of both the extradition requesting country and in the country from which the extradition was sought.

Assange's lawyers argued that of the first three offenses listed in the extradition request, two would meet the "dual criminality" test as written but were very inaccurately described and if properly described would fail the test; the other would fail the test as written and would still fail if accurately described (in Assange's telling of the events).

The judgement essentially concluded that any test of the veracity of the statements should be performed in the Swedish courts as Assange had effectively agreed that if not fully accurate, the general tone of the extraditable offences was agreed.

Appeal grounds continued on the next page.