Wikileaks Julian Assange arrives at Court

The British police arrested WikiLeaks founder and owner Julian Assange on an arrest warrant from Sweden, where Assange is accused of sexual crimes.

“Julian Assange (…) was arrested on a European arrest warrant by appointment at a London police station at 9:30 [a.m.] today. He is accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010,” the Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement.

Assange was recently placed on the Interpol’s wanted list. The warrant for his arrest stems from accusations of sexual assault by two women Assange had met in Sweden during a business trip to the country. The charges of rape were initially dropped, but the case was reopened and an appeals court has upheld the original accusations.

Assange surrendered to the police himself, stating earlier he has agreed to meet with the UK police with regards to the outstanding warrant and the rape accusations in Sweden. He is due to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court later.

Assange’s arrest is just one in a long line of troubles for WikiLeaks and its founder. The site itself has been the victim of DDoS attacks ever since it started leaking secret embassy cables, and several U.S.-based web companies, including Amazon, PayPal, and its DNS service provider, EveryDNS.net, have denied WikiLeaks service. The site is now functioning mostly as series of mirrors, set up by sympathizers around the globe, but it’s still leaking new secret cables on a daily basis.

[via msnbc.com]