Assange mother: extradition “gang rape”

The mother of Julian Assange has condemned the decision to extradite her son to Sweden as “political and legal gang rape”. Christine Assange made the comment to the Australian Associated Press after a British judge ruled on Thursday that the 39 year-old Wikileaks founder would face sexual assault and rape charges in the Scandinavian country.

“I would say that what we’re looking at here is political and legal gang rape of my son,” Ms Assange said. “It’s a real David and Goliath situation,” she continued. “You’ve got misuse of the European arrest warrant – first time ever that it’s been used this way.”

The Australian former hacker is denying the charges made against him by two women he met in Sweden last year during a seminar for the whistleblowing website. Assange claims that the allegations are part of a smear campaign to discredit the work of Wikileaks, which infuriated the world’s diplomatic institutions last year by publishing 250,000 secret cables sent by US embassy staff.

“What Julian, through his site, is proving (is) the need for WikiLeaks,” his mother said. “I’m obviously scared for him as a mother but the world ought to be scared for its democracies.” She added that she feels rules are being broken in order to silence her son, who has just ten days to appeal the ruling.

“The greatest fear I have is that the Western world, in its effort to shut up someone who’s telling the truth to the people of their countries, will breach every piece of legislation in order to get him and will co-operate across borders to do so.”