Julian Assange extradition appeal hearing – day two live coverage

Robert Booth at the high court and Paul Owen at the Guardian office bring you full coverage of the second day of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s battle to avoid being sent to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations • Read more about Julian Assange • Read more about WikiLeaks • Read our live blog of yesterday’s session 10.12am: Mark Summers, who is acting for Julian Assange, says the WikiLeaks founder is suspected “with probable cause” in Sweden but this comes before any charges – so he is not “accused”, so the European arrest warrant is not valid 10.00am: Assange is in good spirits in court four: kisses on both cheeks for his lawyer Gareth Peirce. But the QC for Sweden, Clare Montgomery, is limbering up. 9.55am: Julian Assange has arrived at the high court. As yesterday, he said nothing but smiled and nodded to his applauding supporters. Robert Booth took a picture . 9.31am: John Pilger, the campaigning leftwing journalist and Assange ally, got a round of applause as he arrived at the court this morning. He did not look amused at his role as warm-up act. 9.28am: Robert Booth is at the Royal Courts of Justice, where the usual posse of news cameramen have gathered to record Assange’s court entrance. A few more protesters against the legal proceedings have also turned up. One placard reads: “Julian Assange dacks the rich and powerful”, Australian slang for pulling down their trousers. 9.23am: Julian Assange appeared at the high court in London yesterday for the first day of the latest stage of his fight against extradition to Sweden over sex allegations. The WikiLeaks founder will be back in court this morning for what is expected to be the final day of the hearing. Clare Montgomery QC , speaking for the Swedish authorities, is expected to argue that the decision to allow Assange to be extradited at the last stage of this legal process was correct. They will contend that the European arrest warrant under which Assange was arrested is nothing less than fair, accurate and proper and there is no justification for an inquiry into the validity or accuracy of the statements it contains, as Assange’s legal team suggested yesterday. Judgment is expected to be reserved, so a ruling might not be made public for days or weeks. If he loses, Assange could take his case to the supreme court, although permission to appeal to the supreme court would only be granted on a point of law considered to be of general public interest. Here are the key points from yesterday’s hearing : • Assange is claiming that the European arrest warrant that led to this hearing contained “fundamental misstatements” of what occurred in Stockholm last August. It falsely claims he used violence and “acted in a manner to violate sexual integrity”, Assange’s legal team said. • The WikiLeaks founder’s team claimed that his encounters with two women who made complaints against him involved consensual sex and would not be considered crimes in England. Ben Emmerson QC, his barrister, admitted that the women involved may have found Assange’s behaviour “disreputable, discourteous, disturbing, or even pushing towards the boundaries of what they were comfortable with” – discussing, for example, Assange’s initiating sex with one woman while she was asleep – but maintained that no crime had been committed under UK law. • Emmerson also claimed that the use of the European warrant was “disproportionate”, as there were other means available to obtain Assange’s assistance in the Swedish investigation. You can read all our coverage of yesterday’s hearing as it happened here , while, in the Guardian today, Robert Booth sums up the day’s events . Assange’s barrister set out the accusations against Assange in graphic detail yesterday, but as Robert points out Assange’s case against extradition does not hinge on whether he accepts these versions of events and testimonies relating to other incidents because there are no charges against him, Emmerson said. Rather, the barrister said, it was a question of whether the arrest warrant in connection with the allegations is valid on “strict and narrow” legal grounds. Julian Assange Crime Sweden WikiLeaks Rape Paul Owen Robert Booth guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 13, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.