LONDON, April 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange woke up in a British jail Friday at the start of a likely lengthy extradition battle after a dramatic end to his seven-year stay in Ecuador’s London embassy.
Within hours of police hauling him out of the embassy, the 47-year-old Australia appeared in court for breaching his British bail conditions back in 2012 and to face a subsequent US extradition request.
After Assange was arrested and dragged into a police van in the British capital, American officials unsealed an indictment against him for computer hacking as part of his WikiLeaks whistleblowing activities.
He was being held in Wandsworth prison in south London, where he spent nine days in 2010 following an investigation over alleged sexual assault in Sweden that has since been dropped.
Assange was remanded into prison custody Thursday at a short hearing in front of a London judge, who pronounced him guilty of disobeying his bail terms by fleeing to the embassy in June 2012.
He could receive up to a year in prison when sentenced at an as yet undetermined later date.
His separate extradition case is set to be next heard by video-link at Westminster Magistrates Court on May 2.
Assange’s London lawyer Jennifer Robinson confirmed he would be “contesting and fighting” his long-feared extradition to the United States.
WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson warned he fears the US will add more charges, meaning he could face decades in an American prison.
Assange sought asylum at Ecuador’s premises in London’s chic Knightsbridge district after a British judge ruled he should be extradited to Sweden to face the sexual assault allegations.
However, relations with his Ecuadoran hosts gradually soured and pro-US President Lenin Moreno on Thursday pulled his asylum, cancelled his citizenship and permitted British police to remove Assange.
Legal experts said on Friday that the case could take several years mired in British courts and, if appealed, potentially go all the way to the European Court of Justice.
Previous comparable cases have taken several years.
Two British judges last year agreed to block the extradition of accused hacker Lauri Love to the US, on the grounds it would be “oppressive”, in a ruling hailed a “landmark judgement”.
The US first requested Love’s extradition in 2013.
Meanwhile Gary McKinnon, a hacker wanted by American authorities for allegedly breaking into military computer systems, waged an ultimately successful decade-long legal battle against his extradition. — NNN-AGENCIES
