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| Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and lawyer Jennifer Robinson arrive at Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court in London yesterday |
The 39-year-old Australian could face the death penalty if extradited to the US on separate charges relating to WikiLeaks, his lawyer Geoffrey Robertson said at the start of a two-day hearing in London.
Swedish prosecutors want to question the whistleblowing website’s chief over allegations of sexual assault and rape made by two women in Sweden, moves which Assange claims are politically motivated.
In his opening arguments at the high-security Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court in southeast London, Robertson said a rape trial in Sweden would violate Assange’s human rights.
“He would be tried behind closed doors in a flagrant denial of justice,” he told a packed courtroom. “The Swedish custom and practice of throwing the press and public out of court when rape trials begin is one that we say is blatantly unfair, not only by British standards but also by European standards,” Robertson said.
Assange’s lawyers were also expected to argue that the extradition request is unacceptable because he has not been charged with any crime.
Wearing a dark blue suit and tie, the former computer hacker spoke only to confirm his name and date of birth at the start of the proceedings. The judge is expected to defer his ruling until later this month.
If the decision goes against Assange, he will be able to appeal all the way to England’s supreme court.
Having won worldwide notoriety for his website’s release of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables, Assange insists his real fear is that Washington will try to persuade Sweden to pass him on to American authorities.
Robertson claimed that any trial in Sweden would be held “in secret” and that he would be held “without bail in conditions that have been condemned by the European Commission”.
He also argued that a rape charge would not count as rape under European law. “The court cannot accept the charge of rape is correctly identified, that that box has been ticked, because what is rape in Swedish law does not amount to rape in any other country,” he said.
“The prosecutor describes this charge as ‘minor rape’. That is a contradiction in terms, rape is not a minor offence.”
The three molestation charges relating to Assange’s other accuser were also “plainly wrong” because the woman had consented to sex, he told the court. But Clare Montgomery, representing the Swedish authorities, said the arrest warrant alleges that Assange had sexual intercourse with one of the women “improperly exploiting the fact that she was asleep.”
Talk of extradition to the US “depends on a factual hypothesis that has not yet been established as being real”, Montgomery said.
Called as a defence witness, a retired former Swedish appeals court judge said the case had been “from the beginning extremely peculiar”.
Brita Sundberg-Weitman said Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny had a “rather biased view against men”.