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Swedish Supreme Court agrees to hear WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s appeal against rape arrest warrant

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Photo: Reuters

Sweden's highest court will hear an appeal by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as he seeks to quash an arrest warrant arising from rape and sexual molestation allegations.

On Tuesday the Swedish Supreme Court agreed to consider Mr Assange's appeal against the decisions of lower courts to uphold an arrest warrant issued in November 2010.

The Supreme Court has decreed that the Swedish "Attorney-General [Minister of Justice Morgan Johansson] expeditiously submit its reply to the case, especially on the issue of the conduct of investigations and the principle of proportionality".

Last week a United States court confirmed that WikiLeaks and Mr Assange are still being targeted by the US Department of Justice in a criminal investigation prompted by leaks of secret military and diplomatic documents by US army private Chelsea Manning in early 2010. US laws referenced in search warrants executed in the WikiLeaks probe relate to espionage, conspiracy, theft of US government property and computer fraud and abuse.

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Mr Assange was arrested in the United Kingdom in December 2010, to be extradited in accordance with a European arrest warrant to Sweden to be questioned about sexual assault allegations made by two Swedish women three months earlier. After a period of incarceration in Wandsworth Prison, Mr Assange was bailed and resided under house arrest at Ellingham Hall in Norfolk.

In June 2012, after a series of unsuccessful appeals in the British courts, Mr Assange moved to Ecuador's London embassy, where he was granted political asylum on the grounds that he is at risk of extradition to the United States to face espionage and conspiracy charges.

British police are on guard outside the embassy 24 hours a day, waiting to arrest Mr Assange so he can be extradited to Sweden. Mr Assange denies the allegations and his lawyers have advised that his extradition to Sweden could facilitate his extradition to the US.

In June 2014, Mr Assange's lawyers applied to the Swedish district court seeking to quash the original arrest warrant on the grounds that prosecutors had failed to progress the case by refusing to interview him in the United Kingdom and that he has been denied access to key facts forming the basis for the decision to arrest him. The application was rejected and that decision was upheld by Sweden's court of appeal in November 2014. Mr Assange then appealed to the Swedish Supreme Court which only considers cases that raise constitutional questions or where it is important to establish a precedent for guidance of lower courts.

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Swedish Supreme Court agrees to hear WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's appeal against rape arrest warrant

Gov’t Funding of WikiLeaker Sex Change Shows Obama Admin Cares More About Traitors Than Honorable Veterans, Tony …

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February 17, 2015|4:56 pm

U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier convicted of giving classified state documents to WikiLeaks, is pictured dressed as a woman in this 2010 photograph obtained on August 14, 2013. Manning, sentenced for leaking classified U.S. documents, said in an August 23, 2013 statement read on NBC News that he is female and wants to live as a woman named Chelsea.

Leading social conservative activist Tony Perkins has labeled the U.S. Army's recent approval of inmate Bradley Manning's sex reassignment hormone therapy as a sign that the Obama administration is more devoted to serving convicted traitors than helping the well-deserving veterans who have risked their lives to protect America.

USA Todayfirst reported that the Army revealed in a Feb. 5 memo that it will fund the sex transition hormone therapy for WikiLeaks whistleblower private Bradley Manning, who changed his name to Chelsea Manning in 2013 and is serving a 35-year sentence after he was convicted of espionage for leaking classified documents.

"Bradley Manning is in prison for treason and now the Obama administration wants to help him break another law: nature's," Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, wrote on his Washington Update."The national security leaker, whose espionage put countless Americans at risk, is demanding that the U.S. Army not just recognize, but finance his gender transition."

"Now, two years later, it seems the Army is more than willing to cater to the traitor's whims, including footing the bill for thousands of dollars in radical hormone therapy," Perkins added.

Col. Erica Nelson, the commandant of the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas, wrote in the Feb. 5 memo that she felt its was medically necessary for Manning to undergo the procedure. Nelson's approval comes after Manning filed a lawsuit last September for access to the treatment and added that if he did not receive the treatment he would commit suicide. Manning has been legally represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Perkins added that given the growing discontent from veterans not being able to get the medical services they need from Veterans Affairs, its rather peculiar to see a "traitor" pampered with an "elective" treatment.

"While thousands of honorable veterans suffer serial abandonment in VA clinics across the country, the Obama administration is rewarding an avowed traitor with expensive and elective treatment," Perkins wrote. "It's a sad commentary on this administration when an act of treason entitles you to better care than most of the men and women who have honorably served this country!"

Manning's therapy approval is just another cog in the president's broad agenda, Perkins continued.

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Gov't Funding of WikiLeaker Sex Change Shows Obama Admin Cares More About Traitors Than Honorable Veterans, Tony ...

Shailene Woodley calls Edward Snowden a ‘hero’ | Fox News

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Shailene Woodley had only kind words for the man who inspired her on-screen love interest in the upcoming Oliver Stone drama about Edward Snowden.

The "Insurgent" star is set to play the National Security Agency whistleblower's girlfriend Lindsay Mills and said he should be celebrated for his work.

"I define a hero as somebody, who against the judgement of other people, if they believe something will positively impact the world and they chose to do it and honor their integrity. That's what I sort of consider a hero, no matter how big or small a feat they create," Woodley told E! News. "And in that light, absolutely I think Edward Snowden is a hero."

Woodley hasn't met Snowden but said she would like to. He has been living in Moscow seeking asylum since 2013 and is facing espionage charges in the United States for leaking classified information to the press.

"You are the epitome of the word selfless," Woodley said of Snowden. "You did something knowing you wouldn't be able to come home, knowing that your country would have very mixed feelings and yet your integrity on what you believe was right or wrong or should be public knowledge was more important to you than almost your own comfortability and the life that you had lived for so long. So I would like say thank you to him."

Joseph Gordon-Levitt will star as Snowden and the rest of the cast includes Nicolas Cage, Zachary Quinto and Scott Eastwood.

WATCH: Break Time: Conrad Hilton faces the consequences

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Shailene Woodley calls Edward Snowden a 'hero' | Fox News

Civil liberties groups file lawsuit against NSA

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The suit, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, was filed on Tuesday in a Maryland District Court "challenges the suspicion less seizure and searching of internet traffic" by the NSA on U.S. soil, according to court documents.

READ: Did 47 Republican senators break the law in plain sight?

The plaintiffs argue that to do their jobs they must be able to exchange information in confidence, free-from, warrantless government search which undermines the named organizations' ability to communicate with clients, victims of human rights abuses, government officials and other civil society groups.

The plaintiffs also contend NSA spying violates the First and Fourth Amendments, as well as Article III of the Constitution, because the surveillance orders are "in the absence of any case or controversy."

The ACLU's concern is the government's interpretation of the updated Foreign Intelligence Surveillance law, which in 2011 allowed the government to collect 250 million Internet communications under the FISA Amendment Acts. And In 2013, the director of National Intelligence reported the surveillance of almost 90,000 individuals or groups relied on a single court order.

The government contends that "upstream" surveillance is covered by the 2008 surveillance law and the practice includes installing devices, with the assistance of companies such as Verizon and AT&T, onto the network of cables, switches and routers that Internet traffic flows through, known as it's "backbone."

The ACLU further details the NSA's surveillance program by intercepting massive amounts of communication in transit that are then searched alongside thousands of keywords associated with targets of intelligence analysts.

In addition to having weak limitations and numerous exceptions on who they can surveil, the program's pool of potential targets can encompass completely innocent individuals as the only requisite is that the person is likely to communicate "foreign intelligence information, which can include journalists, professors, attorneys or aid workers.

The "upstream" surveillance differs from another spying program carried out by the NSA called "PRISM," where information is obtained directly from U.S. companies providing communications services. "Upstream" allows the government to connect surveillance devices at Internet access points, which are controlled by telecommunications providers.

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Civil liberties groups file lawsuit against NSA


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