The search for Julian Assange is over. SkyNews reports that the WikiLeaks founder voluntarily appeared at a police station in central London earlier today, whereupon he was arrested. He is being held on suspicion of sexual assault, details of which are spelled out in an arrest warrant issued by Swedish authorities.
Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, warns that he is prepared to fight any efforts to extradite his client to the U.S., calling charges against Assange a "political stunt."
The call for Assange’s head on this side of the Atlantic have intensified since his threat on Sunday to go public with a “doomsday file” containing classified information that, Assange claims, could touch off an international incident.
Greg Milam, a U.S.-based correspondent for Sky, is reported as saying,
There is a growing clamour in the US for something to be done even if they're not completely sure what that should be. The big fear for everyone here is what comes next. What will be contained in the next leak of documents and how damaging will that be?
Since the most recent release of close to a quarter million classified documents by WikiLeaks two Sundays ago, both U.S. and Australian authorities have opened criminal investigations to determine what laws, if any, Assange may have broken. In the meantime, the website’s bank accounts have been canceled and the site itself attacked.
In spite of these setbacks, WikiLeaks has hung tough, vowing to keep operating. A spokesman for the organization, Kristinn Hrafnsson, is quoted by Sky News as asserting that the website would continue to make more releases in the face of what he called an "outrageous attack on the fundamentals of speech and the press."
Assange himself has written an op-ed to appear in tomorrow’s The Australian, titled “Don't shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths.”
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