Assange Arrested In London, Charged For Computer Hacking Conspiracy By The US

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks who was staying at embassy of Equador located in London since 2012 to avoid being extradited to Sweden has finally been arrested. Though the charges of assault have been dropped against him the Magistrates court of Westminister found him guilty of not surrendering himself to court. Now it remains to see if he will be extradited to US as DoJ has accused him of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst of downloading classified information. If he is convicted on these charges he could face 5 years in prison.

His lawyer Jennifer R. stated that an extradition order would be fought as it would start a dangerous precedent where journalists would fear about revealing truth about government to the people. She told that she had already met Assange at the prison cell and he had thanked supporters saying that he had predicted about likelihood of getting extradited to United States if he ever stepped out of the embassy. On stepping out of the embassy the Australian citizen was taken to a London police station before being presented in court where he pleaded not guilty to the charges of 2012 for failing to make a court appearance as directed.

Dressed in black he waved to the supporters waiting outside the court. Judge Michael Snow found him guilty of the charges and likened his behavior to that of a selfish narcissist. He has been sentenced to Southwark Crown Court where he is likely to face prison sentence of 12 months for resisting arrest during when he was picked up from the embassy.  Assange’s wiki leaks was established in 2006 for acquiring and publishing confidential government information and it earned notoriety in 2010 when it released videos of US soldiers shooting down civilians from a chopper in Iraq. Chelsea Manning was arrested for sharing nearly 700,000 documents of confidential data comprising of videos and diplomatic messages to the website.