Julian Assange of WikiLeaks to Appeal Extradition at British Supreme Court LONDON - Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was set to appear on Wednesday at Britain's Supreme Court to appeal an order from a lower court approving his extradition to Sweden to answer accusations of sexual misconduct. Seven Supreme Court judges have allocated two days to the hearing and are expected to announce their conclusions some time later - a decision likely to be critical in determining Mr. Assange's own future and that of his beleaguered anti-secrecy group. It could also weigh on the broader question of extradition procedures in Europe. If the Supreme Court rejects his argument, Mr. Assange will still be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, according to a statement in December by Britain's Crown Prosecution Service, acting for the Swedish prosecutors" office. If that court declined to take the case, he would be returned to Sweden, where prosecutors want to question him about allegations of sexual molestation, unlawful coercion and rape by two WikiLeaks volunteers in Stockholm who said that consensual encounters with Mr. Assange in August, 2010, became nonconsensual. The appeal will revolve around whether the Swedish public prosecutor had the legal power to seek Mr. Assange's extradition. His lawyers maintain that public prosecutors are not judicial authorities and are not entitled to sign arrest warrants. When they agreed in December to hear the case, the Supreme Court judges said they were doing so "given the great public importance of the issue raised." The current case has been dragging on for over a year, during which Mr. Assange has been living under house arrest at a friend's country mansion in eastern England. In earlier hearings, his lawyers claimed that sending him to Sweden would be "unfair and unlawful." But three lower courts approved the extradition. The Supreme Court agreement to hear the case in December was made public on the same day that Bradley Manning made his first appearance for preliminary hearings in a military courtroom at Fort Meade, Md. An Army private, he is accused of leaking the classified American documents that became the most famous of the WikiLeaks disclosures. Prosecutors have charged him with aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act by providing Mr. Assange's organization with hundreds of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables, military field reports and war videos. Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington, commander of the Military District of Washington, is to decide whether to order a trial for Private Manning, 24, on up to 22 counts after two lower-ranking officers said he should face court-martial. In 2010, WikiLeaks" release of the documents dominated the front pages of newspapers across the world, including The New York Times. Mr. Assange depicted those releases as a means of seeking publicity for documents he hoped would reshape the very nature of government. Mr. Assange was surfing a wave of celebrity when the sexual abuse charges were made in August 2010. He appeared for an initial interview with the police there that month, but fled to London before further questioning could be completed, a court here was told. Swedish prosecutors later decided to issue an Interpol red notice and a European arrest warrant to compel him to return but Mr. Assange, who denies the charges, has fought the warrants. He was briefly jailed in London in late 2010, before being released on bail and placed under house arrest at the mansion in eastern England. Protesters and celebrity supporters - including the socialites Jemima Khan and Bianca Jagger and the journalist John Pilger - have often represented the case as a battle for free speech. Mr. Assange himself has suggested that government forces might be behind the accusations of sexual wrongdoing as a means of silencing him.