Assange allegations ‘a mess’, says Swedish judge

A SENIOR Swedish judge has said the sex-crime allegations against WikiLeaks founder ­Julian Assange are “a mess”.

In a speech at the University of Adelaide yesterday, Justice Stefan Lindskog, chairman of the Supreme Court of Sweden, listed legal obstacles to extraditing the 41-year-old Australian to the United States to face prosecution for exposing thousands of classified documents.

Assange has taken asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has remained since last June, to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations made by two women. Assange says their allegations are a ploy to get him to Sweden, from where he would be extradited to the US. The US Department of Justice has been investigating Wiki­Leaks since it began distributing hundreds of thousands of classified US documents.

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Judge Lindskog was critical of the Swedish criminal investigation. “I think it is a mess,” he said. “Basically, I think there are some misunderstandings, especially when it comes to the issue of extradition,” he added.

He also suggested that Sweden’s extradition treaty with the US would not apply to Assange.

“Extradition shall not be granted when alleged crimes [are] military or political in nature,” he said.

US soldier Bradley Manning last month admitted sending Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports, State Department diplomatic cables, other classified records and two battlefield video clips to WikiLeaks in 2009 and 2010.

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