UN Finds WikiLeaks Founder Assange Arbitrarily Detained and Should Be Released (February 5, 2016) [1]
On February 5, 2016, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arbitrarily detained by the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. According to a news report [3], Assange has been detained since December 2010, when Swedish authorities charged him with rape. In its statement [4], the Working Group noted that Assange had been “subjected to different forms of deprivation of liberty: initial detention in Wandsworth prison which was followed by house arrest and his confinement at the Ecuadorian Embassy.” It stressed that in addition to the “continuous deprivation of liberty . . . the detention was arbitrary because he was held in isolation during the first stage of detention and because of the lack of diligence by the Swedish Prosecutor in its investigations, which resulted in the lengthy detention of Mr. Assange.” Finally, the Working Group “considered that the detention should be brought to an end and that Mr. Assange should be afforded the right to compensation.”