Sweden drops rape charges against Wikileaks boss

Prosecutors in Sweden have defended their decision to issue and then withdraw an arrest warrant on rape charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. According to the chief prosecutor, the allegations were dismissed after additional information was received.

Mr Assange, whose organisation publishes leaked confidential documents on the internet, said the reputation of Wkileaks could still be damaged by the unconfirmed claims. The 39-year-old added, however, that he had been warned to expect “dirty tricks”.

The controversial website recently published thousands of secret US military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. The decision to release the 75,000 war logs was strongly criticised by the Pentagon, which said the website was putting the lives of US soldiers at risk. Mr Assange has, however, vowed to release another 15,000 previously unseen papers in the coming weeks.

Swedish prosecutors confirmed on Saturday that they were dropping the rape charges against Mr Assange, but added that a separate allegation of molestation is still under investigation. Defending the U-turn, the country’s national prosecutors’ office said that the arrest warrant had been withdrawn because chief prosecutor Eva Finne had “more information available to decide on Saturday than the duty prosecutor on Friday evening.”

“A decision regarding restrictive measures, such as this, must always be re-evaluated in a preliminary inquiry,” the statement added. A spokeswoman for the prosecutors’ office also said she was confident that no errors were made during the handling of the case.

Mr Assange has denied the charges and said their timing is “deeply disturbing”. Speaking to Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, he said, “I don’t know who’s behind this but we have been warned that, for example, the Pentagon plans to use dirty tricks to spoil things for us. I have also been warned about sex traps.”

Wikileaks partly relies on servers in Sweden and was in the country last week to talk about the site’s activities. Assange has also said that he plans to apply for a Swedish publishing licence in order to benefit from laws that allow journalists to protect their sources.