Sweden drops Assange rape case
Its inability to arrest him prompts move after seven years
STOCKHOLM // Sweden’s top prosecutor yesterday dropped an investigation into a rape claim against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after nearly seven years.
Prosecutor Marianne Ny said the case was being dropped because there was no possibility of arresting Mr Assange “in the foreseeable future”. The decision means that Mr Assange, who has spent the past five years in Ecuador’s embassy in London, no longer faces sex crime allegations in Sweden, although British police said he was still wanted for jumping bail in 2012.
Speaking from the embassy’s balcony, Mr Assange said his legal ordeal “is not something that I can forgive”.
He said his battle was not over and “the proper war is just commencing”. Mr Assange, 45, believes that the United States wants him to be extradited and arrested in connection with WikiLeaks’ publication of classified US documents.
He nonetheless called Sweden’s decision to drop the rape investigation “an important victory for me and for the UN human rights system”.
It does not clear Mr Assange’s name, however, and some experts said it placed him in an even more precarious legal situation if the US has – as some suspect – a sealed indictment for his arrest.
Mr Assange took refuge at the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning after two women accused him of rape. He said he feared Swedish authorities would hand him over to the United States for his role at the helm of WikiLeaks, which has enraged governments around the world by publishing tens of thousands of leaked classified US documents. Mr Assange said yesterday that his lawyers would contact British officials about resolving his status. He said he would be “happy” to discuss the case with the US department of justice despite US attorney general Jeff Sessions saying that his arrest was a priority.
“We’ve already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail,” Mr Sessions said last month. US president Donald Trump had said he would support any decision by the justice department to charge Mr Assange, who contends that the US should recognise his First Amendment rights as a journalist.
It is not known if US officials have asked British police to arrest Mr Assange because of a possible sealed US indictment against him. A justice department spokesman yesterday declined to comment on the case.
After the Swedish announcement, WikiLeaks tweeted: “UK refuses to confirm or deny whether it has already received a US extradition warrant for Julian Assange. Focus now moves to UK.”
British prime minister Theresa May said yesterday that “any decision that is taken about UK action in relation to him [Assange] would be an operational matter for the police”.
The allegations of sexual crimes against Mr Assange surfaced after two women accused Assange of sexual misconduct during a visit to Stockholm in 2010.
There were initially two separate allegations of sexual crimes by Mr Assange , but one was dropped in 2015 because the statute of limitations ran out. The rape allegation, the more serious claim, remained under investigation. Mr Assange said the sex was consensual. Ms Ny said prosecutors had been unable to make a full assessment of the case and were not making a finding on whether Mr Assange was guilty or innocent of the allegations, and the case could be reopened if he returned to Sweden before the statute of limitations expired in 2020.