Assange ‘smiling’ after UN ruling

http://www.news.com.au/world/uk-rejects-un-finding-that-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-has-been-arbitrarily-detained/news-story
Aprecalls on UK, Sweden to ‘implement’ UN finding
JULIAN Assange called for Britain and Sweden to “implement” a UN panel finding saying that he should be able to walk free from Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he has lived in self-imposed confinement since 2012.
“It is now the task of the states of Sweden and the United Kingdom as a whole to implement the verdict,” the WikiLeaks founder said through a video link from the embassy shown at a press conference in London overnight.
“We have a really significant victory that has brought a smile to my face,” said the lanky 44-year-old Australian hacker, who has published millions of classified military and diplomatic documents for years.
“It is the end of the road for the legal arguments ... Those arguments lost. There is no appeal. The time for appeal is over,” said Assange, who looked pale and dishevelled and spoke in a monotone.
“I’ve been detained without charge in this country, the United Kingdom, for five and a half years ... I’ve had great difficulty seeing my family and my children,” he said.
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond earlier dismissed the UN panel opinion as “ridiculous”.
Assange reacted to that saying: “I find those comments to be beneath the stature that a foreign minister should express.” “This is a serious finding,” he added.
Police have said they are obliged to detain Assange if he sets foot outside the embassy on British soil because of a European arrest warrant against him stemming from a rape allegation in Sweden.
He has exhausted all appeals in British courts against an extradition to Sweden.
Assange press conference
According to Ecuador’s foreign minister, Assange must be allowed to go free.
“What more do they want to be accused of before they start to rectify their error?” Ricardo Patino told regional broadcaster Telesur overnight, in reference to Britain and Sweden.
Assange, a computer hacker who enraged the United States by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables, has been holed up in the embassy since June 2012 to avoid a rape investigation in Sweden.
Saying Assange was a victim of “evident political persecution,” Patino added Ecuador was analysing its next steps in the legal and diplomatic arena.
The United Kingdom earlier ‘completely rejected’ a United Nations ruling that Assange has been ‘deprived of liberty’ and must be allowed to walk free.
The UN human rights panel has released its reasoning for finding that Assange has been “arbitrarily detained” by Britain and Sweden since December 2010,and should be freed and compensated.
UK police, however, insist he still faces arrest. Downing St said the ruling was not binding and that the arrest warrant will remain in place.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which falls under the offices of the UN human rights chief, made the call in an 18-page document made public after it had notified Assange.
The five human rights experts who make up the panel said Assange’s virtual imprisonment in the Ecuadorean Embassy “should be brought to an end, that his physical integrity and freedom of movement be respected ... and that he should be entitled to an enforceable right to compensation.”
“The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention considers that the various forms of deprivation of liberty to which Julian Assange has been subjected constitute a form of arbitrary detention,” said panel chairman Seong-Phil Hong in a statement.
Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange over allegations of rape stemming from a working visit he made to the country in 2010 when WikiLeaks was attracting international attention for its secret-spilling.
Assange has consistently denied the allegations but declined to return to Sweden to meet with prosecutors and eventually sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has lived since June 2012.
In an indirect swipe at Sweden’s judicial system, the panel noted that Assange was never formally charged in Sweden - only placed under preliminary investigation.
The British government disagrees.
“We have been consistently clear that Mr Assange has never been arbitrarily detained by the UK but is, in fact, voluntarily avoiding lawful arrest by choosing to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy,” a Downing St spokesman said. “The UK continues to have a legal obligation to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden.”
The panel’s decisions are not binding on states, even if they are generally considered a good arbiter of international law.
“The statement from the Working Group has no formal impact on the ongoing investigation, according to Swedish law,” said Karin Rosander, spokeswoman for Sweden’s Prosecution Authority, in a statement.
She said the prosecutor in charge of the case was travelling and not immediately available for comment on the decision.
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Strongsupport... Julian Assange’s legal team listen on as the WikiLeaks founder speaks via video link at a press conference in London. Picture: Chris Ratcliffe/Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images
A supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holdsa poster outside the Ecuadorean embassy. Source: AFPSource:AFP
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