No 'natural justice' awaits in Sweden– Wikileaks founder

Speaking in an interview for the BBC’s Today programme at the mansion in East Anglia where he is staying under strict bail conditions, Assange maintained that "I don't need to go back to Sweden.”

"The law says I... have certain rights, and these rights mean that I do not need to speak to random prosecutors around the world who simply want to have a chat, and won't do it in any other standard way."

He also said the Swedish authorities had asked, as part of their extradition application, that once extradited to Sweden, he and his Swedish lawyer would be gagged from speaking about the case.

"What is requested is that I be taken by force to Sweden and once there, be held incommunicado: That is not a circumstance under which natural justice can occur," Assange said.

The 39-year-old is currently in the UK free on bail while facing extradition proceedings to Sweden in relation to alleged ‘sex crimes’ that surfaced in the wake of the release of a plethora of diplomatically damaging US diplomatic cables.  He denies the allegations and says the case is politically motivated.

Assange also said it was possible that the allegations against him arose from the two women going to the police for advice rather than to make a complaint.

During the interview, Assange said "one description" of what that occurred was that after having discovered they had each been sexually involved with him, they had got into a "tizzy" about the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases, had gone to the police for advice "and then the police jumped in on this and bamboozled the women".

But he also said there were "other people making descriptions" that the women had deliberately abused a loophole in Swedish law, whereby if they went to the police for advice, they could not be charged with filing a false report. The same loophole also existed for approaching the police about sexually transmitted diseases, Assange said.

Referring to the massive cable leak by whistle-blower website Wikileaks, Assange maintained that his mission was "to promote justice through the method of transparency".

"The world has a lot of problems that need to be reformed - and we only live once," he said. "Every person who has some ability to do something about it, if they are a person of good character, has the duty to try and fix the problems in the environment in which they're in."

Assange maintained Wikileaks had already done a lot of good: "The gradual unfolding of the process of political reform is something that we cannot see immediately, but already we see that we have changed governments - we have certainly changed many political figures within governments.

"We have caused new law reform efforts. We have caused police investigations into the abuses we have exposed."