[ Australians Rally to Support WikiLeaks Founder – NTD ]
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, was granted bail on Tuesday. But the 39-year-old Australian was put back behind bars as the court waits to hear an appeal against the bail by Swedish prosecutors.
Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks organization, was arrested last week by British police on an international arrest warrant by Sweden. Swedish prosecutors seek to question Assange on accusations of rape and sexual molestation of two women in Sweden. The prosecutors have until Thursday afternoon to present their appeal against the bail.
The bail was set at 200,000 pounds (US$315,340) by Judge Howard Riddle. If released on bail, Assange will need to wear an electronic tag, stay at a home of which the address is known by police, report to a police station every evening, and be subjected to a curfew twice a day.
Speaking outside the Westminster magistrate’s court, one of Assange’s lawyers, Mark Stephens, said Swedish prosecutors were “sparing no expense” to keep him in jail.
According to Stephens, the trial was turning into a “show trial.” He said it would take days for the cash for the bail to be gathered.
Around 100 protesters stood outside of the court, holding banners and chanting slogans calling for Assange’s release.
The website of the Swedish prosecution office could not be accessed on Tuesday, and appeared to be not functioning. Hackers supportive of WikiLeaks have previously threatened to take down the office’s website if Assange were to be extradited. The website was already shut down on Dec. 7 as a result of a “deliberate attack,” according to a statement from the Swedish prosecution office.
Assange has been in a confined cell in a U.K. jail for a week. While he has been imprisoned, WikiLeaks has continued to release hundreds of U.S. diplomatic cables. The organization started to release a total of 251,287 diplomatic cables 17 days ago. To date, 1,112 classified documents have been published on the website.
On Tuesday, Assange issued a statement via his mother from his London prison cell, according to Australian Seven News.
The exclusive statement was passed on by Assange’s mother, Christine, who runs a puppet theater in the tropical beach resort Noosa Heads, Queensland, but has flown to London—her first-ever trip overseas—to support her son during the bail hearing.
“My convictions are unfaltering,” Assange told his mother. “I remain true to the ideals I have always expressed.”
“These circumstances shall not shake them,” Assange said. “If anything, this process has increased my determination that they are true and correct.”
This is the first time Mrs. Assange has spoken publicly since her son was arrested on Dec. 7. She has not yet been able to see her son face-to-face, but was able to talk to him during a 10-minute phone call when he made the statement.
“I came here to be with my son,” she told her local newspaper, the Sunshine Coast Daily. “I want to see him, I want to see how he is.”
“I told him how people from all over the world, all sorts of countries, were standing up with placards and screaming out for his freedom and justice, and he was very heartened by that,” she said.
Mrs. Assange said her son is being monitored with CCTV cameras due to fears he might be assassinated for his role in releasing the 250,000 confidential U.S. government documents, the Sunshine Coast Daily reported.
