The High Court decision reversed a ruling two days ago to deny bail. The terms Thursday included strict conditions on where he may live until another hearing on Jan. 11.

The hearing was formally separate from Mr. Assange's role in the publication of some 250,000 American diplomatic documents and came as federal prosecutors in Washington looked for evidence that would enable them to charge him with helping with an Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is back in court today, and has been granted bail by a British judge. He has been in a British prison for a week after being denied bail last week. Assange is wanted for questioning for alleged sex crimes involving two women in Sweden. It is thought that one of the women, Anna Ardin, may no longer be cooperating with prosecutors.

LONDON — After a week in detention facing possible extradition, Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group, was released on $310,000 bail by a court on Tuesday as he challenges a Swedish prosecutor's demand for his extradition to face questioning about alleged sex offenses.
Judge Howard Riddle ordered that Mr. Assange appear again in court on Jan. 11. He also said that, between then and now he must reside at Ellingham Hall, a Georgian mansion in Bungay, eastern England, owned by Vaughan Smith, the founder of the Frontline Club, which is used mainly by journalists. Mr. Assange must spend every night at the mansion and will be electronically tagged so that police can track his movements, the judge said.

Anna Ardin, one of the two complainants in the rape and sexual assault case against WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, has left Sweden, and may have ceased actively co-operating with the Swedish prosecution service and her own lawyer, sources in Sweden told Crikey today.

The move comes amid a growing campaign by leading Western feminists to question the investigation, and renewed confusion as to whether Sweden has actually issued charges against Assange. Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf, and the European group Women Against Rape, have all made statements questioning the nature and purpose of the prosecution.

"Our position of course is that we don't believe it applies to Mr. Assange and that in any event he's entitled to First Amendment protection as publisher of Wikileaks and any prosecution under the Espionage Act would in my view be unconstitutional and puts at risk all media organizations in the U.S.," Assange's attorney Jennifer Robinson told ABC News.

Robinson said a U.S. indictment of Assange was expected soon.

Assange is already in custody in London on sexual assault charges including rape originating out of Sweden. He is being held in solitary confinement with restricted access to a phone and his lawyers, Robinson said.

While the Obama administration has done nothing in the courts to block the publication of any of the leaked documents, or even, as of yet, tried to indict the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, for any crime, American officials and politicians have been widely condemned in the European news media for calling the leaks everything from "terrorism" (Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York) to "an attack against the international community" (Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton). Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates called the arrest of Mr. Assange on separate rape charges "good news." Sarah Palin called for him to be hunted as an "anti-American operative with blood on his hands," and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate, said that whoever leaked the cables should be executed.