julian Assange
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said he will turn himself over to British police on Friday if a UN panel rules he has not been arbitrarily detained, after spending more than three years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
“Should the UN announce tomorrow that I have lost my case against the United Kingdom and Sweden I shall exit the embassy at noon on Friday to accept arrest by British police as there is no meaningful prospect of further appeal,” he said in a statement Thursday. The police said they would arrest him if he exited the embassy.
“However, should I prevail and the state parties be found to have acted unlawfully, I expect the immediate return of my passport and the termination of further attempts to arrest me.”
Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in west London since 2012 in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden over rape allegations, charges he has denied.
Ecuador has granted him asylum, but he faces immediate arrest if he steps onto British soil and for years police have been posted around the clock outside its doors at a cost of millions of pounds.
Separately, the Australian fears he could eventually face extradition to the United States to be put on a trial over the leak of hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents by his anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
