WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange May Be Free In Sweden But Not In The UK Where He Is Held Up

This must be a great day for the WikiLeaks family and other contributors to WikiLeaks. You see the Swedish prosecutor announced today that they were discontinuing the investigation into the suspected rape case of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange. This means that Assange is free in Sweden but not in the UK where he is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy. Now the UK Metropolitan Police Service of London announced in a statement that it was going to arrest Julian Assange for not showing up in court.

“Westminster Magistrates’ Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Julian Assange following him failing to surrender to the court on the 29 June 2012. The Metropolitan Police Service is obliged to execute that warrant should he leave the Embassy.”

This was also confirmed by WikiLeaks in a tweet even though they think that if he surrenders to UK authorities, he will eventually be extradited to the United States where he is wanted for leaking classified information.

But at the beginning I said it was a great day for them regardless because former soldier Bradley Manning (now known as Chelsea Manning) was also freed having had her sentence commuted by President Obama at the twilight of his administration. She was accused of leaking thousands of those documents to WikiLeaks and now she is free and as WikiLeaks said, “whistleblowing does pay.”

This all means that Assange is now wanted for a lesser charge than rape but WikiLeaks thinks he will be extradited to the US anyway considering that the US and Britain are really close allies.