Wikileaks founder Julian Assange freed on bail

[DaBees-Knees]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12005930

The founder of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has vowed "to continue my work and to protest my innocence" after being freed on bail.

The 39-year-old was granted bail on Tuesday but prosecutors objected. He is fighting extradition to Sweden over sex assault allegations made by two women. He denies any wrongdoing.

Mr Justice Ouseley ordered Mr Assange be released on payment of £240,000 in cash and sureties and on condition he resides at an address in East Anglia.

Speaking on the steps of the High Court to dozens of journalists, Mr Assange said: "It's great to feel the fresh air of London again." He went on to thank "all the people around the world who had faith" in him, his lawyers for putting up a "brave and ultimately successful fight", people who provided money in the face of "great difficulty and aversion", members of the press and the British justice system.

"If justice is not always an outcome, at least it is not dead yet," he added. "I hope to continue my work and continue to protest my innocence in this matter and to reveal as we get it, which we have not yet, the evidence from these allegations."

Mr Assange had spent the past eight nights in prison. He will now stay at a manor home on the Norfolk-Suffolk border owned by Vaughan Smith, journalist and owner of the Frontline Club in London.

Mr Assange's solicitor, Mark Stephens, said after the court appearance the bail appeal was part of a "continuing vendetta by the Swedes".

But the question of who decided to appeal against the granting of bail remains cloaked in contradiction.

A CPS spokesman said on Thursday: "The Crown Prosecution Service acts as agent for the Swedish government in the Assange case. The Swedish Director of Prosecutions this morning confirmed that she fully supported the appeal."

But earlier Nils Rekke, from the Swedish Prosecutor's Office, claimed it was "a purely British decision".

This case is getting more convoluted the longer it goes on.