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In an update to this post, a British judge has denied bail to Julian Assange, who was arrested earlier on a Swedish warrant and is being held pending extradition. Assange stands accused of rape in Sweden, but has proclaimed his innocence and vowed to fight both the extradition and the charges.Â
WikiLeaks, the loose organization Assange founded and continues to run, has vowed to continue to release the US Diplomatic cables in its possession with or without Assange. Over the past few days, WikiLeaks has come under increasing public and private pressure as its website has had to move between servers and its financing has been shut down. PayPal, once a major conduit of money for the organization, has cut off users ability to send money to WikiLeaks. Since then, Assange’s Swiss Bank has closed his account and seized his assets, and today Visa and MasterCard both announced that they would no longer honor payments made to WikiLeaks.Â
US Attorney General Eric Holder has vowed to push any possible legal angle to put Assange in custody and to shut down the leaks, and US Senator Diane Feinstein is pressing for prosecution under the Espionage Act, but most commentators believe that such prosecution would be difficult at best, assuming the US could even gain custody of Assange.
