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Russia Today Sat26Feb11 Assange extradition reveals political bias of British justice

182 views · Published 27 February 2011 · 4:36 · Indexed 25 September 2026

Channel: Public Enquiry · 2011 · News & Politics

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Assange extradition reveals political bias of British justice
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http://rt.com/news/uk-refuses-become-safe/
Published: 26 February, 2011, 07:05
Julian Assange is preparing to appeal a London court's ruling that he be extradited to Sweden over rape allegations. The WikiLeaks founder says the charges are baseless and if extradited, he believes he will not face a fair trial.
A "rubber-stamping process" -- that is how the founder of WikiLeaks, whistleblower Julian Assange, described a London court's decision to extradite him to Sweden to face questions over rape allegations.
He said the ruling did not catch him by surprise, and that he is planning to appeal.
http://www.thisweek.org.uk
Assange posed some interesting questions: "Why is it that I am subject, a non-profit free-speech activist, to a US$360,000 bail? Why is it that I am kept under electronic house arrest when I have not even been charged in any country?"

And he is not the only one asking those questions, particularly as the British government has a history of granting asylum to some fairly controversial characters, including Russian business tycoon Boris Berezovsky.

"It shows here the hypocrisy of the British court. Berezovsky has quite clearly been involved in the mafia over the years. All sorts of very serious offences, which you may actually, quite literally, equate with terrorism, and yet he is not being extradited," says investigative journalist Tony Gosling. "And yet we see here, what appears to be anyway, a trumped-up charge of rape, which hasn't actually even come to charges in Sweden. Assange appears anyway being taken over to Sweden and there's going to be an appeal, so we will see, but there certainly does appear to show blatant political interference into the court system here in Britain and total hypocrisy from the British justice system."

Around 40 people wanted by Russian law enforcement agencies are resident in the UK and the list of the rich and powerful wanted by Interpol is even longer.

The UK is even harboring suspected terrorists. In 2003, alleged Chechen terrorist Ahmed Zakayev was granted political asylum. The same year, asylum was granted to Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a case that took two years and severely damaged Russia's relationship with the UK. Berezovsky later said he had been trying to overthrow the Russian government, using the UK as his base.

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