New extradition battle for Assange after prosecutors reopen rape case
THE inquiry into claims that Julian Assange raped a woman in Sweden is to be reopened, prosecutors have announced.
It sets the stage for a possible extradition battle with the US where the WikiLeaks founder is also wanted on claims he conspired to hack a government computer.
The move comes after he was dramatically ejected from the Ecuadorian embassy in London last month after almost seven years in hiding.
Assange sought asylum there in 2012 in an attempt to avoid being taken to Sweden and questioned over accusations of rape and other sex crimes.
The rape case against the 47-year-old was reopened after a request from the complainant’s lawyer Elisabeth Massi Fritz. Yesterday she said the decision ‘signals that no one stands above the law’.
Mrs Massi Fritz, whose client cannot be named, added: ‘We are not going to give up until a charge is brought and the case goes to court.
‘My client feels great gratitude and she is very hopeful of getting restitution and we both hope that justice will win.’
Eva-Marie Persson, Sweden’s deputy director of public prosecutions, said there was ‘ still probable cause to suspect that Assange committed a rape’ in 2010. The Swedish authorities have issued an European Arrest Warrant and want to interview him via a video link.
Investigators will have to act quickly, as under Swedish law, rape investigations close after ten years, giving them until August 2020.
The deadline for looking into the other sex offence accusations has already passed.
Assange is currently serving a 50- week jail term at highsecurity Belmarsh Prison, south-east London, for breaching bail conditions.
He is also being held on a US extradition warrant over the accusation that he conspired with military analyst Chelsea Manning to break into the Pentagon computer network.
WikiLeaks later released thousands of government documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them classified.
It will be up to the UK authorities to decide which extradition request takes priority. Assange is likely to attempt to delay legal proceedings by taking his case to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.
Sweden had dropped the rape case in 2017 because his retreat to the embassy meant ‘all poswith sibilities to conduct the investigation [had been] exhausted’.
But yesterday Miss Persson said: ‘Now that he has left Ecuador’s embassy, the conditions in the case have changed and...the conditions are in place once again to pursue the case.’
Assange has always denied the allegations dating back to a conference he attended in Stockholm in 2010.
He has argued against going to Sweden for questioning, claiming that he would be sent to America to face questioning or punishment over his WikiLeaks work.
Yesterday WikiLeaks editorin-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said reopening the case ‘will give Julian a chance to clear his name’. In a statement, he added that Swedish prosecutors had been under ‘intense political pressure’ to act and criticised the authorities for ‘mishandling’ the case from the start.
Assange was arrested in April after Ecuador revoked his asylum status, having grown tired of his poor behaviour and hygiene while he was living in the embassy in Knightsbridge. He was dramatically dragged out by eight policemen and bundled into a van.
As the scene unfolded, president Lenin Moreno released a statement saying: ‘The patience of Ecuador has reached its limit on the behaviour of Mr Assange. He installed electronic and distortion equipment.
‘He blocked security cameras. He has confronted and mistreated guards. He had accessed the security files of our embassy without permission.’
Interior minister Maria Paula Romo also accused Assange of smearing filth on the walls during his stay.
Yesterday Spanish newspaper El Pais said Ecuador had agreed to search one of the rooms which Assange occupied and give any documents, mobile phones, digital files or other devices to the US.
‘No one stands above the law’