Subsequent to the interviews with John Pilger and Mark Stephens below, it has been reported that Sweden is NOT behind the decision to deny bail.
The Crown Prosecution Service will go to the high court tomorrow to seek the reversal of a decision to free the WikiLeaks founder on bail, made yesterday by a judge at City of Westminster magistrates court.
It had been widely thought Sweden had made the decision to oppose bail, with the CPS acting merely as its representative. But today the Swedish prosecutor’s office told the Guardian it had “not got a view at all on bail” and that Britain had made the decision to oppose bail.
Lawyers for Assange reacted to the news with shock and said CPS officials had told them this week it was Sweden which had asked them to ensure he was kept in prison…
…The CPS’s formal grounds of appeal for the hearing tomorrow morning, seen by the Guardian, will say that Assange must be kept in prison until a decision is made whether to extradite him, which could take months.
Assange’s attorney Mark Stephens joins Democracy Now to discuss extradition and says he has been advised by the US, contrary to earlier reports, no grand jury is convening to bring charges against his client.
John Pilger, reminds us that ‘information is the currency of democracy’ and that current attempts to ‘shoot the messenger’ are resulting in significant push back from the. “…genuine powers in the world. We know about U.S. power. But that great sleeper, world public opinion, world decency, if you like, if I’m not being too romantic about it, is waking up”.
JOHN PILGER: Well, what Julian Assange and WikiLeaks is doing is what journalists should have been doing. I mean, I think you mention the reaction to him. Some of the hostility, especially in the United States, from some of those very highly paid journalists at the top has been quite instructive, because I think that they are shamed by WikiLeaks.
