Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrested in London
By ANITuesday, December 7, 2010
LONDON - The founder of the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has been arrested by the Metropolitan Police on charges of assaulting two women.
The 39-year-old Australian has denied allegations that he sexually assaulted two women in Sweden.
Scotland Yard said Assange was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant by appointment at a London police station at 9.30 a.m. LOndon time.e is due to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court later.
Assange is accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010.
WikiLeaks is an international new media non-profit organization that publishes submissions of otherwise unavailable documents from anonymous news sources and leaks.
Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press.Within a year of its launch, the site claimed a database that had grown to more than 1.2 million documents.
The organization has described itself as having been founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.
The Guardian newspaper describes Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, as its director.
Assange has been accused of leaking secret American and other international diplomatic cables in the public domain, which reveal how the US was viewing its ties with various countries across the globe. (ANI)
