WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reacts through the tinted window of a prison van as he arrives at the High Court in London for his bail appeal hearing, Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010. A judge freed the WikiLeaks founder on $300,000 bail.(AP Photo/Sang Tan)
WIRED: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reacts through the tinted window of a prison van as he arrives at the High Court in London for his bail appeal hearing, Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010. A judge freed the WikiLeaks founder on $300,000 bail.(AP Photo/Sang Tan) After nine days in jail, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was freed on bail Thursday after an appeal by Swedish authorities failed. Assange was granted bail Tuesday but was remanded in custody pending the outcome of the appeal. Now he can remain free while he fights extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on sex-crime allegations. Bail for Assange was set at about $315,000. He will have to surrender his passport and wear an electronic tracking device. He will also have to remain at a Suffolk mansion and check in with a local police station nightly. Assange’s attorney, Mark Stephens, told reporters before the hearing that money for Assange’s bail was ready. “We believe that we will have the money today. It appears to be in the banking system,” Stephens said. “We certainly have pledges from the people who stood behind him on previous occasions.” MORE
NEW YORK TIMES: WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange for his role in a huge dissemination of classified government documents, are looking for evidence of any collusion in his early contacts with an Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information. Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them. Among materials prosecutors are studying is an online chat log in which Private Manning is said to claim that he had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files. Private Manning is also said to have claimed that Mr. Assange gave him access to a dedicated server for uploading some of them to WikiLeaks. MORE
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