LAWYERS FOR WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange claim that the Australian could end up being held prisoner by the United States in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – or even being put to death – if he is extradited to Sweden.

Law firm Finers Stephens Innocent, which is representing Assange as he resists the extradition warrant to Sweden where he is wanted on rape and sexual molestation charges, yesterday released their ‘provisional skeletal argument’ outlining their arguments ahead of the full extradition hearing on February 7 and 8.

Those arguments included a claim that Assange’s extradition had been sought for the purposes of further questioning, and not because Sweden was willing to bring charges against him – a fact which they claim is an abuse of the extradition process.

But the lawyers also argue that the there is “a real risk that, if extradited to Sweden, the US will seek his extradition and/or illegal rendition to the USA, where there will be a real risk of him being detained at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, in conditions which would breach Article 3″ of the European Convention of Human Rights, to which the UK and Sweden are both signatories.

It continues that if Assange was sent to the USA without prior guarantees that the death penalty would not be sought, “there is a real risk that he could be made subject to the death penalty”.

The legal defence also includes quotes from Mike Huckabee, “one of the favourites as Republican candidate, for the 2010 [sic] Presidential election” who called for the source of the leak of over 251,000 US diplomatic cables to be executed, and from Sarah Palin who had said Assange “should be hunted down just like al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders“.