Not an expert on the story, or Julian Assange, but if he's innocent - why did he leave the country? He says that the allegations are false, so why did he feel the need to leave? If he was innocent (I don't really have a leaning either way), then it seems like it would have been a better idea to face the music, go through some discomfort, have the charges dropped, then get on with life. If someone gets accused of a crime, and they flee the country, that doesn't make them look exactly innocent. Did he flee so he could continue WikiLeaks? Even then, there's likely other people that could have picked up the slack if he had to go away for a while. Was it going to be an unfair trial? At that point, if there was no way of challenging that in court, leaving the country would be understandable.
If you believe the sexual misconduct allegations, and I do, it is difficult to feel sorry for Julian Assange.
Wow. Or... "disgusting libel", as he and poor, poor Sarah might say. Relevant to the above article:
‘I have been detained,’ he said, ‘without charge, for 1000 days.’ And there it is, the old conflation, implying that his detention is to do with his work against secret-keepers in America. It is not. He was detained at Ellingham Hall while appealing against a request to extradite him to Sweden to answer questions relating to two rape allegations. A man who conflates such truths loses his moral authority right there: I tried to spell this out to him while writing the book, but he wouldn’t listen, sometimes suggesting I was naive not to consider the rape allegations to have been a ‘honey trap’ set by dark foreign forces, or that the Swedes were merely keen to extradite him to America. Because he has no ability to see through other people’s eyes he can’t see how dishonest this conflation seems even to supporters such as me.