WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was convicted by a London court of breaking bail terms of 2012.
What is the case all about?
Julian Assange is the head of the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
Mr. Assange made international headlines in early 2010 when WikiLeaks published a classified U.S. military video.
It showed a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff.
Mr. Assange was facing charges related to theft of classified information from government computers, conspiring with former U.S. Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning.
In 2012, authorities from Sweden wanted to question him as part of a sexual assault investigation.
To avoid being extradited to Sweden, Mr. Assange took refuge in Ecuador's London embassy in June 2012.
Sweden dropped that investigation in 2017, but Mr. Assange broke the rules of his original bail (2012) in London.
Eventually, he had eluded authorities in the U.S. and the U.K. for nearly 7 years, to escape arrest.
Now, Ecuador President Lenin Moreno withdrew his country’s grant of asylum to Mr. Assange that was on for 7 years.
Ecuador had earlier limited Mr. Assange’s Internet access.
Asylum was withdrawn after repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols by Assange.
Mr. Assange was thus arrested by British police and carried out of the Ecuadorean embassy, paving the way for his possible extradition to the U.S.
Why is the arrest disputed?
His arrest has renewed a global debate on balancing between freedom of expression (or the right to information) and national security concerns.
There exists a question if Mr. Assange is a “journalist” and WikiLeaks a "news organisation" in the traditional sense.
But Whistleblower and former Central Intelligence Agency contractor Edward Snowden had condemned the arrest as “a dark moment for press freedom”.
He said that the charges pressed by the U.S. against Mr. Assange are incredibly weak.
WikiLeaks was producing things that people ought to know about those in power.
It had opened up the space for holding people in power accountable.
So despite the disputes, Mr. Assange’s indictment is seen to pose a threat to all journalists.
This could suppress whistle-blowers everywhere and ultimately weaken democracy itself.
What is the dilemma now?
Sexual assault charges against Mr. Assange have become less significant than the issues that link nation states with the Official Secrets Act.
Jess Phillips, a UK MP, argued that Mr. Assange’s case made it clear that women’s rights are still secondary to political games.
She emphasised that the first and most pressing case he should answer is the one where he has delayed and therefore denied possible justice to two Swedish women.
A Swedish lawyer representing the alleged rape victim too said she would push to have prosecutors reopen the investigation.
Jess Phillips thus called for the U.K. government to support his extradition to Sweden before even considering any pressure from the U.S.
The UK government will now have to decide on Mr. Assange's extradition.
