Assange’s lawyers press for ruling regarding limitations on WikiLeaks founder’s freedoms since seeking asylum in Ecuadorian embassy, which they consider unreasonable.
Julian Assange took his appeal to Sweden’s highest court in a final attempt to persuade a Swedish judge that the arrest warrant against him should be lifted.
His lawyers asked Sweden’s supreme court on Wednesday to agree that the “severe limitations” on Assange’s freedoms since he claimed asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 to escape extradition to Sweden are unreasonable and disproportionate to the case.
In August 2010, the WikiLeaks founder and campaigning journalist was accused by two women of rape and sexual molestation, but he has not been charged because the prosecutor insists she is unable to interview him about the allegations.
Prosecutor Marianne Ny has declined invitations by Assange to do so in London, where he has taken refuge in the embassy to avoid a perceived threat of extradition to the US for publishing military secrets. Assange denies all the charges.
In November, Stockholm’s appeal court rejected Assange’s case, saying there was a risk he would evade legal proceedings should the detention order be lifted. The court also ruled that his confinement to the embassy was voluntary.
However, in the ruling, senior appeal court judge Nicklas Wågnert noted the deadlock in the case and criticised the prosecution for failing to move the investigation forward.
Swedish legal opinion at a senior level has swung against the prosecutor’s decision not to travel to London to interview Assange, with Anne Ramberg, head of the Bar Association, calling the current impasse a “circus”.
In October, the British Foreign Office said it would welcome a request by the Swedish prosecutor to question Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy and would be happy to facilitate such a move.
The supreme court must decide whether to grant their request for the appeal to be heard. While it is not essential for the court to request a response from the prosecutor, it has the powers to do so, said Charlotte Edvardsson, a registrar at the supreme court.
Samuelson said defence lawyers had widened and deepened their arguments against the arrest warrant.
“We have gone into greater detail on judgments and protocols of the European court of human rights, deepening our investigation beyond the boundaries of Swedish law and taken it much more into European law,” he said.
If they lose the case in Sweden, Assange’s lawyers are looking to appeal to the European court, where they say legal thinking on detention “speaks strongly” in their favour.
In January, Sweden agreed at the United Nations to a request by Ecuador to consider taking “measures to limit the time of pretrial detention or the equivalent situation of deprivation of liberty without charges and for investigation purposes”.
Assange says that his asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy amounts to deprivation of liberty under Article 5 of the European convention on human rights.
Sweden also agreed to a request by Argentina to consider measures to ensure that a guarantee forbidding the rendering of a victim of persecution to their persecutor can be given to “any person under the control of the Swedish authorities while considered a refugee by a third country”.
Assange has requested a guarantee from the Swedish state that he would not be extradited to the US should he agree to be questioned in Sweden. (PL)