Assange Demands Access to Prison Computer
The Huffington Post reports:
Since he first landed in a London jail upon his arrest on Tuesday, the only thing that WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has been requesting is access to a computer.
Of course -- what else would you expect the mastermind behind the online whistleblowing operation that has exposed the closely-guarded secrets of the world's most powerful countries to want?
In a wide-ranging telephone interview with The Huffington Post on Friday, Assange's lawyer Mark Stephens described his jailhouse visit with his client, claimed that the U.S. State Department may be prepared to work out a deal with Swedish prosecutors amid reports of a grand jury meeting in Virginia to consider charges against Assange and expressed his fears that his own family is being intimidated by unknown security personnel. And Stephens said he has not discussed the allegations of rape and sexual molestation made by two women with Assange yet, though he criticized the Swedish prosecutors for resurrecting the charges after they were initially dropped by the country's chief prosecutor.
Assange, who has been kept in the same cell once occupied by Oscar Wilde, is in good spirits and upbeat, "though he's not chuffed to be in jail where he's being kept in Victorian conditions," according to Stephens, who visited his client on Thursday at London's Wandsworth prison, where he was recently transferred from the main section to an isolation unit. Since he didn't bring three sets of clothes, as required in the British penal system, Assange wears a grey tracksuit provided by the jail. He has no material to read -- "it hasn't been library day" and the jail removed several treadmills in recent years so he has been unable to exercise, says Stephens -- and British daytime TV bores him ("he's not a TV watcher anyway").
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