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Swedish prosecutors have dropped a rape investigation into Julian Assange, the founder of anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, bringing to an end a seven-year legal stand-off.
Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, after taking refuge there to avoid extradition to Sweden amid fears that he would have been handed over to the US to face prosecution over the publication of classified documents by WikiLeaks.
“Director of Public Prosecution, Marianne Ny, has today decided to discontinue the investigation regarding suspected rape by Julian Assange,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Friday.
Shortly after the announcement, Assange posted a picture of himself smiling broadly, without comment.
http://pic.twitter.com/dDvB1Vekhg
— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) May 19, 2017
After the Swedish prosecutors’ decision, British police said they will arrest Assange as soon as he walks out of the embassy because he has broken his conditions for bail by failing to surrender on June 29, 2012 for extradition to Sweden.
“Now that the situation has changed and the Swedish authorities have discontinued their investigation into that matter, Mr Assange remains wanted for a much less serious offence,” it said in a statement.
“The Metropolitan Police Service is obliged to execute that warrant should he leave the Embassy.”
Long-running standoff
The rape accusation against Assange dates from August 2010 when an alleged victim, who says she met him at a WikiLeaks conference in Stockholm a few days earlier, filed a complaint.
Assange has repeatedly reiterated his innocence and said the sex was consensual, insisting that the accusations are “politically motivated”.
Assange’s Swedish lawyer last month filed a new motion demanding that the arrest warrant be lifted after US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in April that arresting Assange would be “a priority”.
The probe has suffered from endless procedural complications since it began in 2010.
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In a letter sent to the Swedish government on May 8, Ecuador condemned “the obvious lack of progress” despite Swedish officials questioning Assange at the embassy in November 2016.
“The Ecuadorian government have been putting pressure on the Swedes to bring about some sort of solution to this long-running standoff,” Al Jazeera’s Neave Barker, reporting from London, said.
Barker added that the US was preparing to press charges against Assange.
“We believe the sealed indictment has been prepared,” he said. “Although we don’t know what is in it.”
“The Obama administration felt charges couldn’t be brought and things were very much in flux and they seem to be in flux even now.”
Jeff Sessions, the US Attorney General, has meanwhile said Assange’s arrest is a “priority”.
Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies
