Assange’s extradition battle at its final stage

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, took his extradition battle to Britain’s Supreme Court yesterday, arguing that sending him to Sweden would violate a fundamental legal principle.

The two-day hearing is Assange’s last chance to persuade British judges to quash efforts to send him to Scandinavia, where he is wanted on sex crime allegations.

Assange was accused of rape, coercion and molestation following encounters with two Swedish women in Aug 2010, shortly after WikiLeaks published US government documents relating to the Afghan war.

Assange’s case in the Supreme Court hinges on a single technical point: whether Sweden’s public prosecutors could issue a warrant for Assange’s arrest. Swedish authorities issued the European Arrest Warrant on rape and molestation accusations, and Assange was arrested in London in Dec 2010. Assange, who denies any wrongdoing, has been fighting extradition since then.

In Britain, as in the US, it is generally only judges who can issue arrest warrants, and British courts only honour warrants issued by what they describe as judicial authorities. Lawyers for Sweden argue that, in Sweden, as in other European countries, prosecutors play a judicial or semi-judicial role.

Assange’s lawyer, Dinah Rose, rejected that argument yesterday, telling the seven justices gathered in Britain’s highest court that a prosecutor “does not, and indeed cannot, as a matter of principle, exercise judicial authority”.

She said that was not just a parochial British view but rather a “fundamental principle” that stretches back 1,500 years to the Codex Justinius, the Byzantine legal code. “No one may be a judge in their own case,” Rose said.

Legal experts say Rose faces an uphill battle to convince the Supreme Court to block the extradition.

British judges “absolutely defer” to their European counterparts’ justice systems, said Karen Todner, an extradition specialist.

The British justices will hear lawyers for the prosecution today. Their decision isn’t expected for several weeks.

If they rule against Assange, he is expected to be on a flight to Sweden within two weeks. Assange could appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, but because Sweden is a fellow European country that would not stop extradition.