Swedish Court Upholds Arrest Warrant for WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange

by Micah J. Fleck

It seems WikiLeaks mastermind Julian Assange’s dubious rape allegations aren’t going away anytime soon, as his most recent appeal to have his arrest warrant for the alleged incident lifted was denied by Swedish courts.

According to a new report:

The court announced in a statement that Assange “is still detained in absentia”, adding that it “shares the assessment of the (lower) district court that Julian Assange is still suspected on probable cause of rape… and that there is a risk that he will evade legal proceedings or a penalty.”

The 45-year-old Australian has been holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since June 2012, seeking refuge there after exhausting all his legal options in Britain against extradition to Sweden.

Assange has refused to travel to Stockholm for questioning over the rape allegation, which he denies, due to concerns Sweden will extradite him to the United States over WikiLeaks’ release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is the eighth time the European arrest warrant has been tested in a Swedish court. All of the rulings have gone against him.

The fact that Assange has not been proven as a rapist, and has denied the allegations consistently over the years, still keeps the debate around his guilt alive and well – even among political activists that otherwise agree with WikiLeaks’s purpose and function itself. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, however, it isn’t a stretch to assume Assange would receive very unfavorable treatment if he returned to a location where he was currently wanted. The very systems that rule the courts in these countries are the monoliths he takes aim at every single day with his lifting of the veil on shady world government dealings that affect citizens negatively.