Skeptic Project

LONDON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was refused bail and jailed for a week by a British court Tuesday, pending an extradition hearing over alleged sex offenses in Sweden.

Assange surrendered to U.K. police earlier in the day in the latest blow to his WikiLeaks organization, which faces legal, financial and technological challenges after releasing hundreds of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

Swedish prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant for the 39-year-old Australian, who is accused of rape and sexual molestation in one case and of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion in another.

Assange surrendered at 9:30 a.m. local time (4:30 a.m. ET) Tuesday. The U.K.'s Guardian newspaper reported that Assange later arrived at a London court accompanied by British lawyers Mark Stephens and Jennifer Robinson.

During his court appearance, Assange said he would fight extradition to Sweden and provided the court with an Australian address. Britain's Sky News reported that Assange was receiving consular assistance from officials at the Australian High Commission.

The next court hearing is scheduled to take place December 14, and Assange will remain in custody until then because he was deemed to be a flight risk.

Judge Howard Riddle told Assange that he had "substantial grounds" to believe he wouldn't turn up for subsequent proceedings.

In response, WikiLeaks tweeted: "Let down by the UK justice system's bizarre decision to refuse bail to Julian Assange. But #cablegatereleases continue as planned."

Several supporters gathered outside the court holding placards reading "Gagging the truth" and "Protect free speech," NBC News said.

Assange had been hiding out at an undisclosed location in Britain since WikiLeaks began publishing hundreds of U.S. diplomatic cables online last month.

The legal troubles for Assange stem from allegations leveled against him by two women he met while in Sweden over the summer. The arrest warrant under which he was detained by British police arrived on Monday this week.

Assange denies the allegations, which his lawyer Stephens says stem from a "dispute over consensual but unprotected sex." Assange and Stephens have suggested that the prosecution is being manipulated for political reasons.

'He is not violent'
One of the women involved in the sexual abuse allegations told the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet that she had had voluntary relations with him and had never wanted him to be charged with rape, the Guardian said.

"He is not violent and I do not feel threatened by him," she said — anonymously — according to the paper.

A spokesman for WikiLeaks called Assange's arrest an attack on media freedom and said it won't prevent the organization from releasing more secret documents.

"This will not change our operation," Kristinn Hrafnsson told The Associated Press.

Also on Tuesday, The Australian newspaper published an op-ed by Assange in which he says WikiLeaks is "fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public."

'Poison pill'
British police have been caught in the middle of the legal dispute over WikiLeaks and Assange's rape accusations, a former assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police told msnbc.com Tuesday.

"This is a set of circumstances that the Metropolitan Police will not want to get folded into," Andy Hayman said. "They got drawn into it.Ultimately it's between his lawyers, the Swedish authorities and possibly the Americans."

Hayman added that it was now up to Sweden to prove to the U.K. that there were grounds to extradite Assange.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, visiting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was pleased by the arrest.

"That sounds like good news to me," he said.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that WikiLeaks had no current plans to issue the code for an encrypted version of the rest of its documents — which has been called a "poison pill" — that would enable them to be published instantly, as it had threatened to do if its staff were arrested.

The organization's room to maneuver has been narrowing by the day. It has been battered by Web attacks, cut off by Internet service providers and is the subject of a criminal investigation in the United States, where officials say the release jeopardized national security and diplomatic efforts around the world.

But amid Assange's personal legal troubles, his website continued to reveal state secrets.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40544697/ns/us_news-wikileaks_in_security/

LOL!

Note to self: if you want to become a world hero for issuing scorching exposes, don't go around raping women.

Meh. If he's innocent, let the charges be dropped or let him be acquitted. If he's guilty, go to the hoosegow and good riddance.

I remain totally unimpressed by Assange. He's a webmaster, not a journalist, and anything "explosive" that's gotten onto his site has gotten there entirely by accident. I've read Wikileaks and 99.9999999% of it is boring inconsequential crap. Just from the law of averages he was bound to hit on something meaningful eventually, but that doesn't make him Daniel Ellsberg.

I don't see Wikileaks as a great step forward in journalism or free speech. In fact I see it as a dumbing down of what journalism should be and what values free speech should be serving. I also think Assange is mainly a self-promoter.

Everyone seems concerned with the site and its content, but rarely does anyone ask this question: Where the hell is this stuff leaking from and why does no one seem to give a damn?

One was that guy in the closet who even claimed he covered up his burning classified files by singing Lady GaGa and pretending it was one of her albums. Or maybe he was just caught and wasn't wrapped up in wikileaks, I'm not sure.

Is there a rape kit or anything for this girl(s)?

Funny, Brenton threatened to unfollow me on Twitter because I was talking shit about the Wikileaks guy.

It is. My tweets are so enjoyable and informative.