Mark Stephens (solicitor) be released, noting that anonymity orders had become "deeply ingrained" in court cases in the UK. After the ruling Stephens commented, "No court henceforth should grant an anonymity order in a significant case unless it is satisfied that the litigant, if identified, would be in serious danger of physical attack." Towards the end of 2010, Stephens was invited by the Jamaican Government to review that country's libel laws and appear before a Parliamentary Select Committee. Shortly after his return Stephens began to defend the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, against extradition to Sweden, where allegations had been made against Assange.
Julian Assange ongoing criminal investigation" into WikiLeaks. It emerged from legal documents leaked over the ensuing months that Assange and others were being investigated by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia. An email from an employee of intelligence consultancy Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor) leaked in 2012 said, "We have a sealed indictment on Assange." The US government denies the existence of such an indictment. In December 2011 prosecutors in the Chelsea Manning case revealed the existence of chat logs between Manning and an alleged WikiLeaks interlocutor they claimed to be Assange; he denied this, dismissing the alleged connection as "absolute nonsense".