Let's start out with some nice reading material here:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/europe/julian-assange-ruling/index.html (CNN)WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange declared victory Friday, expressing vindication over a U.N. panel's judgment that the Swedish and UK governments have "arbitrarily detained" him since 2010.
But does this decision mean Assange will become a free man? Or that anything about his status has changed?
Not if you ask Sweden and the United Kingdom. And Assange doesn't appear ready to test them, remaining at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he first sought refuge in 2012.
Assange is wanted in Sweden on rape allegations, and the UK arrested him in 2010. He has said he's afraid that if he leaves the embassy, he could end up being extradited and facing the death penalty in the United States over allegations of revealing government secrets through his site, WikiLeaks.
Obviously there's a link to the ruling itself in the article. For those of you who can't be bothered to read it, I'll sum it up: a UN panel says Julian Assange is being arbitrarily detained by the UK and Sweden, and they gotta let him move around freely. The UK and Sweden pull an Andrew Jackson and say "okay, come and enforce it". Obviously opinion on this is going to be divided, primarily based on whether you think the rape charges Sweden currently has against Assange are legit or not. Me, personally, I don't think they are, because I know Sweden is a US ally and will probably bend over backwards to help us, and the US 99.9% likely wants this guy locked up in Guantanamo getting screws stuck into his kidneys or something. So obviously I side with the UN panel over this, but what do you guys think?