Wikileaks founder, Assange to leave embassy, accept arrest if UN case fails
Sydney: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he took refuge in June 2012 to avoid attempts to extradite him to Sweden, on Friday and accept arrest if a UN panel investigating his case rules against him, according to his statement on Thursday posted on the Wikileaks Twitter account.
Assange: I will accept arrest by British police on Friday if UN rules against me. More info: https://t.co/Mb6gXlz7QS pic.twitter.com/mffVsqKj5w
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 4, 2016
Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in west London for more than three years in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden over rape allegations, a charge he has denied.
The Australian WikiLeaks founder fears he could eventually face extradition to the US to be put on a trial over the leak of hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents.
In September 2014, he filed a complaint against Sweden and Britain to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention claiming his confinement in the embassy amounts to illegal detention.
Any decision by the group would not be legally binding, but other people have reportedly been released in the past on the basis of its rulings.
