Sweden drops rape case against Assange

Swedish authorities announced Tuesday they would end an investigation into allegations of rape and sexual assault made against Julian Assange, the embattled WikiLeaks founder, that date from 2010.

“The evidence is not strong enough to form the basis of an indictment,” said Eva-Marie Persson, Sweden’s deputy director of public prosecutions. “In such a situation, the preliminary investigation should be discontinued, and that is what has happened.”

Assange, 48, is still in a British prison awaiting a U.S. extradition hearing, raising questions about whether the end of the Swedish investigation would clear the path for that process to continue.

Sweden began investigating Assange in 2010 after two women accused him of assaulting them during separate sexual encounters while he was visiting Stockholm.

When Swedish authorities issued a European arrest warrant seeking his extradition from Britain for questioning over “suspicion of rape, three cases of sexual molestation and illegal coercion,” he fled to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. Assange and his lawyers said they feared that if he returned to Sweden, he would then be extradited to the United States from there.

He remained in self-imposed exile in the embassy for seven years until his arrest in April after Ecuador revoked his asylum status.

Persson said investigators had questioned again the individuals who had been interviewed in 2010 and spoken to two additional people who had not previously been interviewed. She said the investigators had found the accusers credible and their statements reliable, but that some parts of the testimonies were contradictory.