Участники нашей группы помешаны на пастиле, сыре и виноградном соке.

For Mr. Assange and his supporters, as well as for those who have condemned him for the brazen leak of American secrets, there was a bizarre twist in the fast-moving events at a London courthouse. Instead of being arrested for punching a gaping hole in the secret worlds of American military and diplomatic power, an outcome he has long predicted, Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, found himself ensnared in allegations stemming from brief sexual encounters this summer with two young Swedish women.

What lies ahead, beyond a new court appearance on Dec. 14, when Mr. Assange’s bail bid will be renewed, is a legal battle that could last weeks, or much longer.

That contest will focus on whether the Swedish request for Mr. Assange’s extradition to face questioning on charges of “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion” is unrelated to WikiLeaks, as Swedish prosecutors and the women themselves say — or whether they are linked, in what Mr. Assange has called a smear campaign to punish him for his WikiLeaks activity.

The reaction among those Mr. Assange has made his adversaries was predictably enthusiastic. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who was in Afghanistan, reacted to the arrest by saying, “I hadn’t heard that, but it sounds like good news to me.”

But how Mr. Assange’s arrest on the Swedish charges might affect the Obama administration’s continuing deliberations about how — or whether — to charge him for publicizing leaks of classified information remains uncertain. It is also unclear whether Mr. Assange will follow through on his past threats to retaliate for an arrest by releasing new batches of secret information, possibly in a less measured way than the organization has to date.

Officers from Scotland Yard arrested Mr. Assange after he went to a central London police station by agreement with the authorities. In a packed courtroom hearing lasting nearly an hour, Gemma Lindfield, a lawyer acting for the Swedish government, outlined some of the detailed allegations made by the Swedish women, both WikiLeaks volunteers. They involved three incidents in August, including one in which Mr. Assange was alleged to have had unprotected sex with one of his accusers as she was asleep.