Julian Assange remains wanted by Swedish authorities.<\/p>\n
A Swedish lower court has upheld the arrest warrant for Julian Assange, saying the Wikileaks founder's stay at Ecuador's London embassy did not equal detention. <\/p>\n
Assange, 44, is wanted by Swedish authorities for questioning over allegations, which he denies, that he committed rape in 2010. <\/p>\n
An Australian computer hacker who enraged US authorities by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables, he has been holed-up in the embassy since June 2012 to avoid the rape investigation in Sweden. <\/p>\n
He says he fears further extradition to the United States, where there has been a criminal investigation into the activities of Wikileaks. <\/p>\n
\"The district court finds that there is still probable cause for the suspicion against JA (Julian Assange) for rape, less serious incident, and that there is still a risk that he will depart or in some other way evade prosecution or penalty,\" the court said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Last year, Sweden's Supreme Court rejected a previous appeal by Assange to revoke a detention order. <\/p>\n
Following a statement by a UN panel that his stay in the embassy amounts to arbitrary detention, Assange's lawyers again in February asked the Stockholm District Court to overturn the warrant for his arrest. <\/p>\n
\"Unlike the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention the district court does not consider JA's stay at the Embassy of Ecuador in London a form of detention,\" the court said. <\/p>\n
Assange will appeal the ruling, said Per Samuelsson, one of his Swedish lawyers. <\/p>\n
\"I just spoke to him, and like us he is not surprised but very critical and angry,\" he said. <\/p>\n
\"The Swedish justice system only takes into consideration the Swedish bit, and not the whole situation given the tough sentence hanging over him in the United States.\" <\/p>\n
In 2010, Wikileaks released more than 90,000 secret documents on the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan, followed by almost 400,000 US military reports detailing operations in Iraq. <\/p>\n
Those disclosures were followed by release of millions of diplomatic cables dating back to 1973. <\/p>\n
Reuters\/AFP <\/p>\n
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