The much-maligned Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange has been arrested this morning in London. Assange turned himself in to London police to face a Swedish arrest warrant for rape allegations, which Assange has denied.
Despite this and a tide of other setbacks, the classified document publishing website remains online and assures its followers that it will continue its release of secret and classified documents.
According to Sky News, Assange voluntarily went to police in London, where he was arrested. Mark Stephens, Assange’s lawyer, has called the move a “political stunt” and told Sky News that “any attempt to extradite Mr Assange will be resisted, ‘mainly on the grounds that he may be handed over to the Americans.'” Assange’s lawyers have told the Associated Press that he would “contest any extradition.”
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Over the past two weeks, Wikileaks has battled to remain online as it releases more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables. During this time, it has suffered a denial of service attack, had its servers shut down by Amazon, had PayPal refuse to handle its donations and had its bank accounts closed. The organization stated this morning via its Twitter account that “Today’s actions against our editor-in-chief Julian Assange won’t affect our operations: we will release more cables tonight as normal.”
According to Sky News editor Tim Marshall, “Assange has not been charged with anything, he only wants to be interviewed as a witness, so magistrates may decide they’re not happy with sending him to Sweden but that it’s ok for police to come over [to London] to interview him.”
In response to the news, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had this to say to the Associated Press: “That sounds like good news to me.”
