Wikileaks founder Assange granted bail

Julian Assange, the founder of whistleblower website Wikileaks, was granted conditional bail by the Westminster Magistrate Court this afternoon with the bail money set at £240,000.

As we go to print, it is learnt that the Swedish government, which is on the prosecution side in this case, is being given about two hours to appeal against the latest ruling by the court in London.

Assange was charged with sexual assault on two women in Sweden in the third week of August this year, a case originally dismissed by the Swedish authorities but resurrected earlier last last week.

Several public figures including John Pilger, well-known Australian journalist, Ken Loach, British film director, and Jemima Khan, British socialite, have come forward to help Assange and his team to raise the bail money. Also, Vaughn Smith, a former army captain who founded Frontline Club, has offered his 600-acre country estate as a bail address as well as financial surety for Assange.

It is expected that Assange’s lawyers will have to come up with £40,000 immediately to deposit in the court today.

Though Assange was granted bail today, he is unlikely to be a free man tonight. Reports said he might be taken to a jail to be released only tomorrow. This has, however, not been officially confirmed yet.

Today's court proceedings were also marked by a large number of protesters outside the venue offering Assange and Wikileaks their moral support. Talking to the international media outside the court, John Pilger said with the granting of the bail a grave injustice of putting an innocent man behind bars had been averted.

Assange and his team at Wikileaks have been in the eye of a storm over several thousand US diplomatic cables being leaked, many of which pertain to the earlier war in Iraq and the ongoing struggle in Afghanistan. Several governments across the world, most prominently the US government, have faced major embarrassment over the content of the leaked cables.

Earlier last week several prominent commercial websites including those of MasterCard, Visa and Paypal among others were under attack by a group of hackers for denying Wikileaks their services. Though it was alleged that the websites' refusal to provide services was due to US government pressure, that has been denied by the corporations. Owing to the denial of services, Wikileaks has also suffered financially as the flow of donations to it has now been restricted.