Julian Assange's Swiss bank account closed - The Guardian

According to reports, Scotland Yard had received the paperwork required to arrest Julian Assange over allegations in Sweden. Photograph: Lennart Preiss/AP

The international pressure on Julian Assange increased today after the banking arm of the Swiss post office announced that it had closed the WikiLeaks founder's account because he had given "false information".

"PostFinance has ended its business relationship with … Julian Paul Assange," the bank said in a statement.

"The Australian citizen provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process."

It said that although Assange had given his residence as an undisclosed address in Geneva, he could offer no proof of being a Swiss resident.

WikiLeaks had advertised the PostFinance account details online to "donate directly to the Julian Assange and other WikiLeaks Staff Defence Fund," giving an account name of "Assange Julian Paul, Geneve".

A spokesman for the bank told the Associated Press the account was closed this afternoon, but added that there would be "no criminal consequences" for misleading authorities.

"That's his money, he will get his money back," he said. "We just close the account and that's it."

PostFinance is the latest institution to sever its ties with Assange and WikiLeaks. Last week, Amazon.com withdrew its hosting of WikiLeaks' cables site and the WikiLeaks.org domain was taken offline by Everydns.net. On Saturday, PayPal, which is owned by the auction website eBay, froze WikiLeaks' account, saying it was being used for "illegal" activity.

It was also reported this afternoon that Scotland Yard had received the paperwork required to arrest Assange over allegations of sexual assault in Sweden.

But the Metropolitan police declined to comment on the claim, attributed by Press Association to unnamed sources.

Swedish prosecutors have sent an international arrest warrant to the Met, seeking the extradition of Assange for questioning on allegations – which he strongly denies – of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.

Jennifer Robinson, one of his lawyers, said his legal team had heard nothing from the police to suggest that their client's arrest was imminent.

Assange, who is staying in Britain, has come under criticism from politicians in the US and around the world after his site started publishing excerpts from a cache of more than 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables last week.

Another of Assange's lawyers, Mark Stephens, yesterday denounced the extradition warrant as a "political stunt" and said his client would fight deportation to Sweden on the grounds that it could lead to him being handed over to the US, where senior politicians have called for him to be executed.

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San Francisco Bay Bridge closed in police standoff - Reuters

The Bay Bridge, linking Oakland to the east with San Francisco, is shown in San Francisco, California August 18, 2008.

Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith

SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Nov 11, 2010 1:50pm EST

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The San Francisco Bay Bridge was shut down for over an hour on Thursday after an apparently suicidal man claiming to have a gun and explosives stopped his car and threatened to blow it up, authorities said.

Traffic was halted on the bridge, a major commuter route into the city, when the man called in his threat at 6:58 a.m. It resumed flowing just over an hour later, after he was taken into custody.

Authorities said the unidentified man had his 16-year-old daughter in the car with him and may have been upset over marital issues.

The man threatened to blow up the Bay Bridge, but upon initial approach police determined he "wasn't much of a credible threat from an explosives standpoint," Highway Patrol spokesman Trent Cross said.

No explosives were recovered from the car and the man's daughter was being interviewed by authorities.

CHP Officer Shawn Chase said police on the scene witnessed the man, a resident of nearby Antioch, California, throw something into the bay.

"He said he had a fake gun, a toy gun that he threw over the rail," Chase said.

Shortly after the call, authorities stopped traffic to the bridge, designated as part of Interstate 80, at the westbound toll plaza, and asked westbound drivers already on the span to turn around and drive east.

Traffic on the bridge was lighter than normal because of the Veterans Day holiday in the U.S., Cross said.

The 8.4 mile Bay Bridge connects San Francisco to Oakland. Over 40 million vehicles crossed the span in the 2008-09 fiscal year, bringing in over $43 million in base tolls, according to the Bay Area Toll Authority.

(Reporting by Jonathan Oatis and Dan Levine; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Jerry Norton)

Really ruined the commute this morning – I’m back at home trying to rescue some of the day by working from here. I hope the police ‘help’ him to let us know why he did this, perhaps he needs a little trip to Guantanamo… Just the amount of fuel wasted as hundreds of thousands of people sat there with their engines running was enough of a disaster to warrant a good investigation. The East Bay was a parking lot.

fiendish Report As Abusive

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