WikiLeaks' Assange detained arbitrarily, says UN panel

Geneva

WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange should be allowed to go free from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and awarded compensation for what amounts to a three-and-a-half-year detention, a United Nations (UN) panel ruled on Friday.

Mr Assange, a computer hacker who enraged the US by publishing hundreds of thousands of its secret diplomatic cables, has been holed up in the embassy since June 2012 to avoid a rape investigation in Sweden.