Jose Luis Magana / Reuters file

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted in handcuffs as he leaves the courthouse in Fort Meade, Maryland, on June 6.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning released classified documents to WikiLeaks in an effort to "spark a domestic debate on the role of our military and foreign policy in general," according to a statement he will seek to read in a court hearing Thursday.

The lengthy statement, which Manning has already submitted to the judge presiding over his case at Fort Meade, Md., will be his first public account of his motivations for leaking hundreds of thousands of battlefield reports relating to U.S. operation in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as State Department diplomatic cables.

The statement appears intended to bolster the defense his lawyer plans to use at his court martial now slated for June -- that Manning was acting as a whistleblower intending to expose government misconduct.

Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, is facing 22 criminal charges that include "aiding the enemy" and could result in a life sentence. He will seek to plead guilty to lesser charges -- such as unauthorized use of his government computer -- at the pre-trial hearing Thursday.

Prosecutors have objected to Manning's partial plea -- it is not the result of a plea bargain -- and made clear that they fully intend to bring him to trial.

See more investigative reports at The Isikoff Files

In reading his statement, Manning also "will speak to larger issues affecting his case" and will expand upon his guilty plea to establish that he acted from a “noble motive,” according to a news release Wednesday by the Bradley Manning Support Network. 

Although the group did not release the text of the statement, it cited an exchange in a hearing earlier his week in which prosecutors objected to Manning being allowed to read some portions of his statement -- including the passage in which he talks about his desire "to spark a domestic debate."

Prosecutors quoted some of the wording in Manning's statement during the hearing, saying the passage -- and another one relating to leaking information about corruption within the Iraqi Federal Police -- should not be allowed because it would be an admission by Manning to "uncharged misconduct." For example, admitting that he intended to provoke a public debate could expose Manning to an additional charge of intending to "discredit" the U.S. military, prosecutors argued. 

Manning's case has been shrouded in secrecy by the military. On Wednesday, the Pentagon released 84 pretrial documents, bowing to public records requests by news organizations, including NBC News. The documents are the first of about 500 that the Pentagon said it will release in response to the requests.

But in the documents released so far, the name of the presiding judge, Col. Denise Lind, has been redacted.  

More from Open Channel

• Deaths among beginning drivers on the increase
• Horse meat in the US? Unlikely, but tests are rare
• Feds say neo-Nazi with guns was tracking community leaders
• Expert: US in cyberwar arms race with China, Russia

Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook 

Michelle Shephard / Pool via Reuters file

The flag over a war crimes courtroom in Camp Justice at US Naval Base Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on October 17, 2012, day three of pre-trial hearings for the five Guantanamo prisoners accused of orchestrating the 9/11.

The WikiLeaks website began publishing on Thursday what it said were more than 100 U.S. Defense Department files detailing military detention policies in camps in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in the years after the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets.

In a statement, WikiLeaks criticized regulations it said had led to abuse and impunity and urged human rights activists to use the documents, to be released over the next month, to research what it called "policies of unaccountability."

The statement quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as saying: "The 'Detainee Policies' show the anatomy of the beast that is post-9/11 detention, the carving out of a dark space where law and rights do not apply, where persons can be detained without a trace at the convenience of the U.S. Department of Defense."

"It shows the excesses of the early days of war against an unknown 'enemy' and how these policies matured and evolved," it said, and led to "the permanent state of exception that the United States now finds itself in, a decade later."

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in London said it had no immediate comment.

In January, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said the United States was still flouting international law at Guantanamo Bay by arbitrarily and indefinitely detaining individuals.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in 2001 when militants from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

Then President George W. Bush set up a detention camp at a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo in Cuba after U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan to expel al-Qaida following the September 11 raids. Of the 779 men held there, 167 remained as of mid-September 2012.

Interrogation
WikiLeaks said a number of documents it was releasing related to interrogation of detainees, and these showed direct physical violence was prohibited.

But it added the documents showed "a formal policy of terrorizing detainees during interrogations, combined with a policy of destroying interrogation recordings, has led to abuse and impunity".

A number of what can only be described as "policies of unaccountability" would also be released, it said.

One such document was a 2005 document "Policy on Assigning Detainee Internment Serial Numbers," it said.

"This document is concerned with discreetly 'disappearing' detainees into the custody of other U.S. government agencies while keeping their names out of U.S. military central records — by systematically holding off from assigning a prisoner record number," the WikiLeaks statement said.

WikiLeaks did not elaborate. But human rights activists say that after the September 11 attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency used "black sites" in friendly countries to interrogate and sometimes torture suspected militants beyond the reach of normal legal protections.

Playing on 'love' and 'fear'
While Bush acknowledged the existence of a CIA program for detaining and questioning militants outside of the United States in speech in September 2006, the government has never publicly confirmed the location of the sites.

Some of the policies applied to other countries' personnel, Wikileaks said, citing what it said was a 13-page interrogation policy document from 2005 for U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq.

It said the document detailed techniques such as the "Emotional Love Approach: Playing on the love a detained person has for family, homeland or comrades". In contrast, in the "Fear Up (Harsh)" approach, it said "the interrogator behaves in an overpowering manner with a loud and threatening voice in order to convince the source he does indeed have something to fear; that he has no option but to co-operate."

The documents released on Thursday date from 2001 to 2004.

Assange, whose website previously angered the United States by releasing thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in central London since June to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations. He denies wrongdoing.

More content from NBCNews.com:

• Federal jury acquits cousins of gay hate crime in landmark case
• Bullet in chest doesn't stop N.Y. cop from catching suspect
• Surprise intruder: 300-pound deer breaks into Philadelphia home
• Hurricane Sandy could be a 'Nor'easter on steroids'
• Illinois hoarder ordered to get rid of hundreds of birds

Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Gan Golan, of Los Angeles, dressed as the "Master of Degrees," holds a ball and chain representing his college loan debt.

Suzanne Plunkett / Reuters

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaks to the media outside the High Court in London in this December 5, 2011 file photo.

Supporters who put up nearly $320,000 to bail out WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have lost their money, the Guardian of London reported.

Assange’s backers -- who include Jemima Khan, a writer, movie directors Ken Loach and Michael Moore and publisher Felix Dennis – had to forfeit their money because Assange skipped bail in June to avoid being extradited to Sweden where he is wanted on rape charges.

Assange, 41, has repeated that the Swedes would send him to the U.S., where he believes he would face the death penalty for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents through the website WikiLeaks.

Foreign Secretary William Hague has said those claims are “without foundation,” according to the BBC.

Instead, Assange moved into the Ecuadorean embassy, where British officials cannot arrest him, according to the Guardian. President Rafael Correa of Ecuador extended an open invitation to Assange to stay at the embassy, where, according to Reuters, he resides in a small, sequestered room with a vitamin D light and a treadmill to blow off steam.

A district court in Westminster, England, will convene again in October to determine whether nine other backers should also lose their money

Those financial supporters had promised to pay the court $31,732 each, the Guardian reported. Total, the backers stand to lose $539,444. Other backers include Assange’s girlfriend Sarah Harrison, along with a journalism critic and a Nobel Prize winning biologist, according to the Independent.

The conditions of Assange’s bail required that he wear an electronic tag and stay at the home of businesswoman Sarah Saunders. Saunders, who told the BBC in 2010 that Assange was a family friend, also put more than $30,000 toward his bail.

None of Assange’s financial supporters attended court, which frustrated Judge Howard Riddle. The judge said those backers had a month to convince Assange to turn himself in.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Chinese media: 'Many Chinese people dislike Hillary'
• In parts of China, BYO school supplies include desks
• Pistorious sorry for timing, not content, of Paralympics outburst
• 77-year-old Japanese man asks US mayor to look for items lost in tsunami
• Sun Myung Moon, founder of Unification Church, dies at 92
• Girl accused of blasphemy in Pakistan may have been framed by Muslim cleric

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Goodnight with George Galloway

George Galloway talks about the Julian Assange case during one of his regular video podcasts.

LONDON -- As U.S. Congressman Todd Akin fights for his political life over his "legitimate rape" comments, a high-profile British politician has ignited a storm on the other side of the Atlantic over the definition of rape.

George Galloway, a member of the U.K. parliament and former leader of the left-wing Respect Party, waded into the debate around the allegations faced by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

During a 31-minute podcast, Galloway discussed the claims made by two Swedish woman against Assange in graphic detail, claiming that his alleged behavior was at worst "bad manners" but "not rape."

The colorful Galloway -- who has been dubbed "Gorgeous George" by some U.K. tabloids  -- is no stranger to controversy. He grabbed headlines around the world after he shook hands with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1994 and praised him for his "strength, courage and indefatigability." He also appeared as a contestant on "Celebrity Big Brother" -- where he famously pretended to be a cat.

Ina / INA via AP, file

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein receives visiting MP George Galloway on Aug. 8, 2002, in Baghdad.

This week's "Goodnight with George Galloway" video podcast put him back in the spotlight.    

"Some people believe that when you go to bed with somebody, take off your clothes, and have sex with them and then fall asleep, you're already in the sex game with them," Galloway said, gesticulating emphatically. "It might be really bad manners not to have tapped her on the shoulder and said: 'Do you mind if I do it again?' It might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not rape or you bankrupt the term rape of all meaning."

Cue gasps all around.

His comments provoked a furious response on Twitter and were blasted by women's groups and newspaper columnists.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, British broadcaster and journalist Christina Odone said that Galloway "should be punished at the ballot box" for his views. "When it comes to rape, misogyny is rife in politics," she added.

Assange in balcony appeal to Obama: Release leak suspect Bradley Manning

Scotsman columnist Emma Cowing wrote that Galloway's comments were "about men redefining serious crimes against women to suit a political agenda."

"Rape victims have a history of being ignored and accused of lying," she added. "They have a history of feeling terrified of speaking out in case they are not believed, or are ridiculed, or have to face their attacker and relive the crime. This is why so many rape victims never report their crimes and why so many find it difficult to speak out in court."

Telegraph assistant comment editor Tom Chivers wrote that "the situation Galloway has just described is absolutely, 100 per cent, no-ifs-or-buts definitely rape."

He added: "Listen, George: it is possible to think that WikiLeaks have done some good things without believing that Assange can do no wrong, or that all attempts to make him face trial are some sort of grand conspiracy."

Galloway is not the first British politician to get himself into hot water over the issue of rape.

A year ago, U.K. Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke kicked off a similar controversy when he differentiated date rape from "serious rape."  Calls for his resignation came in fast, but the storm settled after he clarified the comments.

'Both have acted like fools'
It remains to be seen if the same will be true in the U.S. for Rep. Todd Akin. 

An editorial in the left-leaning Guardian newspaper compared Akin and Galloway. "They have three things in common. Both are men. Both encourage rape deniers. And both have acted like fools."

NYT: Akin controversy may endanger GOP chances in the fall

The messages about rape from the highest echelons of political life come just after the 20th anniversary of legislation that made marital rape in the U.K. a crime. 

Victoria Derbyshire, the British radio host who took Clarke to task on his views a year ago made one point that resonates as the debate rages on both sides of the Atlantic this week.

"With respect," she told him in a flat tone, "rape is rape."

On Tuesday, the 58-year-old Galloway sought to clarify his comments and released a statement.

"No never means yes and non-consensual sex is rape. There's no doubt about it and that has always been my position," he said.

"Julian Assange, let's be clear, has always denied the allegations. And this has all the hallmarks of a set-up. I don't believe, from what we know, that the Director of Public Prosecutions would sanction a prosecution in Britain. What occurred is not rape as most people understand it."

More world stories from NBC News:

• Israelis fret over 'lynching' of Palestinian
• Video: Poaching surge threatens survival of rhinos
• Anti-tanning 'Facekinis' cause stir on China beach
• Reports: Kim Jong Un will travel to Iran
• Slideshow: Migration in the Americas
• Reports: Olympic sprinter drowned when migrant boat sank
• With wife's conviction, what is next for China's Bo Xilai?

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Kerim Okten / EPA

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange addresses the media and supporters while British policemen stand outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Sunday.

Updated at 10:14 a.m. ET: LONDON -- From a second-floor window of his refuge at the Ecuadorean embassy, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Sunday called on President Obama to release Bradley Manning, the United States intelligence analyst accused of leaking masses of confidential information.

In his  first public appearance in two months, the former hacker thanked his supporters gathered outside the London embassy and appealed to the U.S. not to prosecute WikiLeaks staff and supporters.

"I call on President Obama to do the right thing - renounce the witch-hunt against Wikileaks," he said in a provocative address in which he appeared to invoke the support of dozens of Latin American countries.

The U.S. administration’s “war on whistleblowers must end,” he said.

Ecuador on Thursday granted political asylum to the former computer hacker who incensed the United States and its allies by using his WikiLeaks website to leak hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic and military cables in 2010.

Assange paid tribute to Manning, who is the suspected source of those leaks and faces 22 criminal charges which, if he is convicted, could land him in jail for life.

"If Bradley Manning did as he is accused, he is a hero and one of the world's foremost political prisoners," Assange said.

Investigators have determined that Manning allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands of documents onto his own computer and passed them to an unauthorized person, but have not been able to make a link between those files and Assange.

Assange spoke from a balcony at the embassy because Britain has made it clear it will arrest him the moment he steps out of the property.

The west London embassy is in a building shared with other tenants and has no vehicular access except via the street, meaning Assange could not even appear in the entrance hall without risking immediate arrest.

UK refuses WikiLeaks' Assange safe passage to Ecuador

With a police helicopter hovering overhead and protestors using megaphones, the international legal row over Assange's future has become a spectacle in what is an upscale area of London, just a few meters away from department store, Harrods.

The former hacker is wanted in Sweden for questioning regarding allegations of rape and sexual assault and Britain has said he will not be granted safe passage out of his Ecuadorean embassy refuge, which enjoys diplomatic status.

Baltasar Garzon, a Spanish jurist and prominent human rights investigator who heads Assange's legal team, was also expected to speak in a separate address outside the building ahead of Assange's appearance.

A group of about 20 Assange supporters, many of whom have slept on sheets of cardboard outside the building since Wednesday, have decorated barriers with messages of support for Assange.

Army is pressed on why it kept trusting Manning

Assange's attempt to avoid extradition has provoked a diplomatic tussle between Britain and Ecuador, which said London had threatened to raid its embassy and cast the dispute as an arrogant European power treating a Latin American nation like a colony. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Russian top clerics forgive Pussy Riot, ask for mercy
• Tropical Storm Helene slams Mexico; Hurricane Gordon heads for Azores
• Video: Chaos follows Syrian airstrikes
• Could teddy bears unsettle 'Europe's last dictator'?
• Report: 211 die during drugs trials in India

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Martin Alipaz / EPA file

A composite file photo of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange , left, and Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, right.

"We are not a British colony," Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said in an angry statement.

"Under British law we can give them a week's notice before entering the premises and the embassy will no longer have diplomatic protection," a Foreign Office spokesman said. 

"But that decision has not yet been taken. We are not going to do this overnight. We want to stress that we want a diplomatically agreeable solution."

The decision on Assange's asylum request would be announced on Thursday at 7 a.m. (12 GMT), Reuters reported.

Former computer hacker Assange, who enraged Washington in 2010 when his WikiLeaks website published secret U.S. diplomatic cables, is wanted in Sweden to face trial for rape.

Assange has been taking refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since June 19. The Australian anti-secrecy campaigner says he fears he could be bundled to the United States where his life would be at risk.

President Rafael Correa, who is openly sympathetic to Assange, said via Twitter on Tuesday that a "rumor of asylum for Assange is false. A decision has not yet been made. I am awaiting a report from the Foreign Ministry." Britain's Guardian newspaper had earlier quoted an unnamed Ecuadorean official as saying asylum had been granted for the Australian.

However, granting asylum would offer no legal protection in Britain where police will arrest him once they get a chance. 

Assange has no way of leaving his refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London without being arrested, even if Quito grants him asylum shortly, lawyers say. 

Watch World News videos on NBCNews.com 

"I can't see the UK backing down and just allowing him safe passage out of the country," said Rebecca Niblock, an extradition specialist at London law firm Kingsley Napley.

Stay informed with the latest headlines; sign up for our newsletter

"I think the UK will see their obligations under the European extradition system as overriding any diplomatic relations with Ecuador, who haven't really been considering their diplomatic relations with the UK, apparently."

Assange would be protected from arrest if travelling in a diplomatic car, but the embassy is on the first floor of a building that is being watched by police day and night.

The tall red-brick block just behind the Harrods department store also houses the Colombian embassy and private apartments. A police van was parked outside the main entrance on Wednesday and police officers were patrolling the area in pairs.

The property has several gated entrances and a private car park, but the Ecuadorean embassy is not linked internally with any of them, making the front entrance its only point of exit, a security manager at the building told Reuters.

"There is no other exit. He is going to have to come out of the main entrance," said the manager, who asked not to be named. "There is no way to bring a vehicle in because the car park is private and it is not connected in any way to their premises."

He added: "He can climb out of a window, of course, but there are CCTV cameras everywhere."

Even if he somehow managed to get out of the building and into a waiting car unnoticed by police, he would have to leave the vehicle at some point to board a flight out of Britain, offering more opportunities for his arrest.

Other scenarios lawyers are discussing on the Internet include smuggling him out in a diplomatic bag, which would be illegal, or appointing him as an Ecuadorean diplomat to give him immunity. But lawyers and diplomats said neither was realistic.

Even if Assange were willing to try his luck packed in a crate all the way to Quito, a risky plan by any measure, it seems unlikely Ecuador would attempt such a scheme.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related stories:

WikiLeaks' Assange defiant over UK police request

NBC News partner ITV News's coverage of Assange: 'Not going near a police station soon'

More world stories from NBC News:

• Report: 30 dead in Syrian air strike; strife spills into Lebanon
• I'd like a beer, 70-year-old says after icy 6-day ordeal in Alps
• Germany arrests 4 suspected of violating Iran embargo
• Study: Japan nuclear disaster caused mutated butterflies
• Restaurateur claims Games cost her business $140,000
• Video: Virtual tour of the next Olympic city

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Geoff Caddick / AFP - Getty Images

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is shown in December speaking to the media outside the High Court in London.

Updated at 4:17 p.m. ET: WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange has taken refuge in the Ecuador Embassy in London and has asked for political asylum, Ecuador's foreign minister said on Tuesday.

"Ecuador is studying and analyzing the request," Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told reporters in the capital Quito.

The Ecuador Embassy issued the following statement:

This afternoon Mr Julian Assange arrived at the Ecuadorian Embassy seeking political asylum from the Ecuadorian government.

As a signatory to the United Nations Universal Declaration for Human Rights, with an obligation to review all applications for asylum, we have immediately passed his application on to the relevant department in Quito.

While the department assesses Mr Assange's application, Mr Assange will remain at the embassy, under the protection of the Ecuadorian Government.

The decision to consider Mr Assange's application for protective asylum should in no way be interpreted as the Government of Ecuador interfering in the judicial processes of either the United Kingdom or Sweden.

Assange faces extradition to Sweden for questioning over alleged sex crimes after Britain's top court said last week that it had rejected a legal request to reconsider his case.

Assange is wanted for questioning in Sweden after two women accused him of sexual misconduct during a visit to the country in mid-2010. His legal struggle to stay in Britain has dragged on for the better part of two years, clouding his website's work exposing the world's secrets.

In a brief, five-point judgment, the British court rejected arguments that Assange's legal team hadn't been given the chance to properly cross-examine the evidence that justices relied on to deny the Australian native's appeal against extradition.

Claes Borgstrom, the lawyer for Assange's accusers, told The Associated Press that Thursday's ruling is "an obvious and expected decision that has been delayed for too long."

The development effectively exhausted Assange's legal options in Britain, and he could be sent to Sweden by the end of the month. Assange could still apply to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, but legal experts say the 40-year-old stands little chance there.

The former computer hacker gained international prominence in 2010 when WikiLeaks began releasing secret video footage and thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, many of them about Iraq and Afghanistan, in the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history.

That made him a hero to anti-censorship campaigners, but Washington was furious about the release of classified documents.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Report: Russian shipment of attack helicopters for Syria halted off Scotland
• 20 years on, will world make good on Rio Earth Summit's 'broken promises'?
• Bangladesh reportedly closes border to refugees from Myanmar violence
• EU chief at G20 Summit: We're not here to 'receive lessons from nobody!'
• Taliban bans Pakistan polio vaccinations over drone strikes
• Luka Magnotta, suspected dismemberment killer, extradited to Canada

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

Geoff Caddick / AFP - Getty Images, file

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is wanted in Sweden for questioning over allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Updated 4:42 a.m. ET: LONDON -- Britain's Supreme Court on Wednesday backed the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden where he is accused of sex crimes -- the latest chapter in the saga of the self-styled Internet whistle-blower. 

Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange over claims of rape and sexual assault made by two female former WikiLeaks volunteers, and he has been fighting a lengthy legal battle against extradition since his arrest in Britain in Dec. 2010.

Seven judges at Britain's highest court rejected by a majority of 5-2 that Assange's claim that a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) under which his extradition is sought was invalid.  Two lower courts have already ruled he should be extradited.

The former computer hacker gained international prominence in 2010 when WikiLeaks began releasing secret video footage and thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables about Iraq and Afghanistan, in the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history.

That made him a hero to anti-censorship campaigners but a menace to Washington and other governments. Assange also faced widespread criticism that he had put lives at risk by blowing the cover of sources who spoke to diplomats and intelligence agents in countries where it was dangerous to do so.

WikiLeaks published intelligence firm's emails

Since then, WikiLeaks has faded from the headlines due to a dearth of scoops and a blockade by credit card companies that has made donations to the site almost impossible. Assange's personal standing has been damaged by the Swedish sex case and he has lost support from most of his celebrity backers.

Since his detention, he has mostly been living under strict bail conditions at the country mansion of a wealthy supporter in eastern England. His associates say that amounts to 540 days under house arrest without charge.

The flamboyant Australian's appeal hinged on a legal technicality rather than the substance of the allegations of sexual misconduct or his claims that the United States has been putting pressure on Britain and Sweden to take action against him.

His lawyers argued the EAW was invalid because it was issued by a prosecutor and not a judge or a court as required in Britain. Prosecutors acting for Sweden say different countries have different legal procedures which are allowable under the agreed EAW format. 

Another appeal still possible

Assage can still take his case further, to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). 

If that court agrees to hear his challenge, a decision which must be made within 14 days, he can lodge an injunction to have the extradition process put on hold, and it could be months at the very least before any conclusive verdict.

"If the ECHR declines to take the case then he will be extradited to Sweden as soon as arrangements can be made," Britain's Crown Prosecution Service said.

Should he win the case, a spokeswoman for Sweden's prosecutors said the EAW would still be valid in any other European country.

Assange's personal travails have accelerated WikiLeaks' slide toward irrelevance since its heyday.

Army is pressed on why it kept trusting Manning

The suspected source of the site's biggest and most dramatic 2010 leaks, U.S. intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, is now facing 22 criminal charges which, if he is convicted, could land him in jail for life.

Manning's predicament has not encouraged any new sources to come forward, and to compound WikiLeaks' problems the blockade by the likes of U.S. credit card firms Visa and MasterCard has starved it of cash.

Assange once enjoyed support from socialite Jemima Khan, film director Ken Loach and crusading journalist John Pilger, but most of his high-profile backers have since distanced themselves from him. Many former friends and associates have turned against Assange also, describing him as a megalomaniac. 

However, he still has loyal followers and rallies are planned in several countries in the wake of the court's verdict. 

Instantly recognisable with his unusual white-blond hair, Assange has appeared in an episode of "The Simpsons". He has also launched a talk show on Russia Today, a Kremlin-funded English language TV station.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Greek tragedy: Economic crisis sparks brain drain
• US expels Syria diplomat after UN finds Houla victims were 'executed'
• Teenager allegedly held as slave in Bosnia for years
• Britain's PM eats humble pie over snack tax
• Brother of doctor who worked with CIA in bin Laden hunt seeks US protection

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world