WikiLeaks founder, Assange starts 5th year in London embassy


WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has started his fifth year camped out in the Ecuadoran embassy in London on Sunday, an occasion his supporters marked with events celebrating whistleblowers.

The 44-year-old is wanted for questioning over a 2010 rape allegation in Sweden but has been inside Ecuador's UK mission for four years in a bid to avoid extradition.

The anti-secrecy campaigner, who denies the allegation, walked into the embassy of his own free will on June 18 2012, with Britain on the brink of sending him to Stockholm and has not left since.

His lawyers say he is angry that Swedish prosecutors are still maintaining the European arrest warrant against him.

The Australian former computer hacker fears that from Sweden he could be extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks' release of 500 000 secret military files and could face a long prison sentence there.

A hero to supporters and a dangerous egocentric to detractors, Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and has been portrayed in two movies in recent years.

Assange has compared living inside the embassy, which has no garden but is in London's plush Knightsbridge district, near Harrods department store, to life on a space station.

Last month a Stockholm district court maintained a European arrest warrant against Assange, rejecting his lawyers' request to have it lifted.


SOURCE: News24