Published 19:35 IST, November 19th 2019
Sweden drops rape investigation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
Assange had denied the accusations earlier and has also avoided extradition to Sweden for seven years after seeking refuge at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.
Prosecutors in Sweden have dropped the rape investigation launched in 2010 against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange on November 19. Assange had denied the accusations earlier and has also avoided extradition to Sweden for seven years after seeking refuge at the Ecuadorean embassy in London in 2012. The 48-year-old Australian was evicted in May and has been sentenced for 50 weeks in jail for breaching his bail conditions. Julian Assange is currently held at Belmarsh prison in London.
Deputy Chief Prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson who had earlier issued a formal request to hold Assange on suspicion of rape, updated on Tuesday that Swedish court will not detain Assange which means he will not be extradited or questioned in Britain. The Whistleblower is facing 18 charges in the United States and was arrested in April and dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London after living under political asylum for 7 years. Assange was arrested on April 11, 2019
Julian Assange extradition
The WikiLeaks publisher looks in the face of US extradition after being prosecuted by the government for publishing information that divulged war crimes, serious human rights violations, abuse, torture, and murder. Along with the Nils Melzer, experts and supporters across the world have maintained that Julian Assange's access to legal counsel and documents have been blocked. Undermining his fundamental right to prepare for his defence against the US extradition, a week ago, the whistleblower lost his legal bid to extend the US extradition hearing scheduled for February 2020.
WikiLeaks
Wikileaks, an anti-secrecy organisation, was founded in 2006 as a platform for whistleblowers to release classified information anonymously. By 2015, Wikileaks became a portal to publish over 10 million documents, including top-secret documents. Ever since its launch in 2006, Wikileaks has published thousands of classified documents, disclosing the details from national security, war, politics to the film industry.
In 2010, WikiLeaks published thousands of classified documents on the US military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The organisation published a video from a US military helicopter that killed civilians in Iraq's Baghdad. A voice of US soldiers saying, "light them all up" could be heard as the troops opened fire on the civilians. Two Reuters journalists were also killed in that attack. Former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning provided data to WikiLeaks pertaining to the Afghan war, wherein civilians were killed by US troops. While investigators linked those revelations as an effort by US President Donald Trump's campaign to damage US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign, however, Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating Russian collusion in the campaign did not file charges against Assange.
Updated 19:59 IST, November 19th 2019