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   Julian Assange hopes to walk out of embassy after UN panel ruling

Julian Assange hopes to walk out of embassy after UN panel ruling

AFP
Published : Feb 5, 2016, 11:43 am IST
Updated : Feb 5, 2016, 11:43 am IST

Assange’s legal team will hold a press conference in London at which the 44-year-old himself 'will be present' on Friday at 1200 GMT.

(Photo: AP)
 (Photo: AP)

Assange’s legal team will hold a press conference in London at which the 44-year-old himself 'will be present' on Friday at 1200 GMT.

London/Stockholm:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said he hoped a UN panel’s decision expected on Friday could lead to the end of his self-imposed confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy in London over a rape allegation in Sweden.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) is expected to declare that his three-and-a-half years stuck in a cramped embassy office amount to illegal detention, the Swedish foreign ministry and Assange’s lawyers said on Thursday.

Assange, an Australian national who has been holed up at the embassy since June 2012 to avoid arrest, said he expects the British police to call off their attempts to detain him if the panel rules in his favour.

“Should I prevail and the state parties be found to have acted unlawfully, I expect the immediate return of my passport and the termination of further attempts to arrest me,” Assange said in a statement.

But Sweden’s prosecution authority said the ruling had no impact on its investigation into a 2010 rape allegation against him, and the British government said it would have to arrest him as long as a European arrest warrant was in force.

The ruling comes after WikiLeaks filed a complaint against Sweden and Britain to the UN group in September 2014, claiming his confinement in the embassy was unlawful.

The Swedish foreign ministry said the government had received a copy of the panel’s conclusions.

“We can only note that the working panel has come to another conclusion than Swedish judicial authorities,” a ministry spokesperson told AFP.

Supporters rally

Assange founded anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks in 2006, and its activities -- including the release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and 250,000 diplomatic cables -- have infuriated the United States.

The main source of the leaks, US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for breaches of the Espionage Act.

The UN group’s report is due to be published at 0800 GMT.

Location: Portugal, Lisboa, Stockholm