WikiLeaks founder talks about sex case

LONDON — Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, offered a public account on Wednesday of events that led to a rape accusation against him in Sweden, saying he was innocent and had engaged in “consensual and enjoyable sex” with the accuser.

Last month, questions prepared by Swedish prosecutors were posed to Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has been living since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over the rape accusation. The questions were asked by an Ecuadorean prosecutor under an agreement made by the two countries in August.

Assange on Wednesday released the answers he gave during the interview.

Assange, 45, has refused to go to Sweden to face the rape accusation for fear, he says, of being extradited to the United States. No formal charges have been filed against him.

In the statement detailing his account of his relationship with his accuser, referred to as “SW,” whom he met in August 2010, Assange railed against Swedish authorities, saying he had been forced to endure “six years of unlawful, politicized detention without charge.”

He said that, as a result of the U.S. government’s aggressive stance toward WikiLeaks, his bank cards were blocked after he arrived in Sweden in 2010.

During his trip, he said, he met a woman, who “made it very clear that she wanted to have sexual intercourse with me.” After having sex several times that night and the next morning, he said, they parted amicably. Several days later, he told investigators, he woke up “to the news that I had been arrested in my absence for ‘rape’ and that the police were ‘hunting’ all over Stockholm for me.”