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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 14 2019, @11:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the now-you-don't-see-it,-now-you-do? dept.

Swedish prosecutor reopens Assange rape investigation, will seek extradition

Sweden's state prosecutor said on Monday she would reopen an investigation into a rape allegation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and seek his extradition from Britain.

Prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson told a news conference she would continue and conclude a preliminary investigation that was dropped in 2017 without charges being brought as Assange had taken refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

[...] The Swedish prosecutor's office said it would shortly request Assange be detained in his absence on probable cause for an allegation of rape and that it would issue a European arrest warrant - the process under which his extradition would be sought.

Please extradite me to Sweden and not the U.S.?

Also at BBC:

Wikileaks said the reopening of the rape case would give Assange "a chance to clear his name". "There has been considerable political pressure on Sweden to reopen their investigation, but there has always been political pressure surrounding this case," its editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said in a statement.

A lawyer for Assange told Swedish broadcaster SVT that the decision was "embarrassing for Sweden", adding that his client wanted to resolve the case but feared being extradited to the US.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Tuesday May 14 2019, @02:41PM

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 14 2019, @02:41PM (#843423) Journal

    Something stinks.

    There were never any charges. He was wanted for questioning. He answered the questions. The prosecutor decided there was nothing to pursue and gave him permission to leave Sweden. So he did. Then hours later another prosecutor in another part of the country picked up the case, reopened it and issued an emergency type of alert after him. He offered to be questioned in person or over the phone, as is accepted and even somewhat frequent practice in Sweden. The new prosecutor refused for many years. He even offered to go back to Sweden on the guarantee that they would not extradite him to the US. Sweden refused to make that guarantee and to even question him in the UK, all the while making misleading and disingenuous statements against him in the press.

    Yes, the whole thing stinks. And it is meant to distract from the excellent and important work that Wikileaks did years ago in publishing exposés war crimes. "They" keep pounding the rape drum and many in the public now associate him with charges that never existed for a crime he was never accused of.

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