What next for Julian Assange after Interpol releases wanted notice?

In the space of six months, 39-year-old Julian Assange has gone from being a little-known Aussie former hacker to one of the world's most notorious and divisive people. 

Sarah Palin has called for Assange to be hunted with "the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders," (so presumably she wants to bomb New Zealand), a senior advisor to Canada's Prime Minister flippantly called for his assassination, and Interpol has issued a wanted notice for him. 

Dated 30th November, Assange's addition to Interpol's worldwide wanted list gives 'sex crimes' as his offence, and says the warrant has been issued by the international public prosecution office in Sweden who is seeking his arrest.

Since the huge WikiLeaks release earlier this week, the US has announced it's investigating whether he's violated their espionage rules. A number of countries are either taking, or considering taking, aggressive legal action against him including his home country of Australia. At the moment Britain doesn't appear to be.
 

Where is Assange right now?

He's keeping a much lower profile compared to previous WikiLeaks releases. At the moment he's thought to be in hiding somewhere outside of London, protected by trusted connections. He tried to do an interview with Sky News but it had to be abandoned due to him experiencing internet issues. He did manage to talk to TIME over Skype in which he called for Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, to resign.

"She should resign, if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering US diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the US has signed up. Yes, she should resign over that," he said.

Will Julian Assange be arrested?

Nobody is completely sure as this is all so unprecedented. If he is, it's more likely to be related to allegations of sex crimes rather than a charge connected to the document release. 

The Metropolitan Police prioritises international arrest warrants involving allegations of murder of rape and if Assange's location became known, the force would apparently seek to arrest him.

Interpol's wanted notice isn't an international arrest warrant, since they don't have such authority, but it does make it a lot harder to Assange to travel around as freely as he did before its issue. In particular, Washington wants his scalp.

"I'm confident that the Justice Department is figuring out how to prosecute him," Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel, told The Washington Post. Whether a foreign national could be charged and brought to trial under America's espionage laws is up for debate.

In Sweden, where many of WikiLeaks' servers are based, prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for Assange for rape charges and Stockholm's immigration authorities have rejected his application for residency. He insists the rape accusations are fabricated and part of a smear campaign and he accuses the Swedish authorities of caving in to US pressure to crack down on his organisation.

Where next for Assange?

His British visa expires in early 2011 and his days in the UK are probably numbered, especially is the US wants to prosecute him. 

Ecuador has offered Assange residency, "without any kind of trouble and without any kind of conditions."
 

Will there be more WikiLeaks releases?

Definitely. WikiLeaks have already announced they're going after the big banks  and the site's admins have had to temporarily suspend submissions because they've been overwhelmed with the amount of information being submitted by whistle-blowers.