The New York Times/Megan Specia: Sweden Reopens Rape Case Against Julian Assange

The New York Times
BREAKING
Sweden Reopens Rape Case Against Julian Assange


The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a police van after he was arrested by the British police at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London last month.CreditHenry Nicholls/Reuters
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The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a police van after he was arrested by the British police at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London last month.CreditCreditHenry Nicholls/Reuters

By Megan Specia

    May 13, 2019

The Swedish authorities announced on Monday that they would reopen an investigation into rape allegations against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, who is serving a prison term in Britain for jumping bail as the United States seeks his extradition for his role in a huge breach of classified data.

Mr. Assange was removed from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London last month and promptly arrested, seven years after seeking refuge to avoid extradition in an earlier Swedish investigation into the same rape case.

He was sentenced in Britain this month to 50 weeks for jumping bail, and the United States has begun the extradition process on a conspiracy charge — punishable by up to five years in prison — for Mr. Assange’s involvement in one of the largest leaks of classified materials in American history.

The process of extraditing Mr. Assange is expected to be prolonged and complex, experts say, and it could be further complicated by Sweden’s wish to reinstate its investigation. In the event there are competing claims, British officials would determine which extradition case takes precedence, according to a spokeswoman at the Swedish Prosecution Authority.

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The Swedish investigation began in 2010, after two women accused Mr. Assange of assaulting them during separate sexual encounters while he was visiting Stockholm. He had been living in London at the time, and the Swedish authorities issued a European arrest warrant in seeking his extradition for questioning over “suspicion of rape, three cases of sexual molestation and illegal coercion.”

Mr. Assange was arrested by the British police in 2011, and after a series of failed appeals while he was out on bail, he fled to the Ecuadorean Embassy to avoid extradition.

Sweden dropped the initial investigation in May 2017, having concluded that there was no way to proceed with the case as long as he was holed up in the embassy, and prosecutors made clear at the time that they had not cleared him and they reserved the right to reopen their inquiry.

Last month, days after Mr. Assange was removed from the embassy, having worn out his welcome with his hosts, Sweden announced that a lawyer for the two accusers had requested that the investigation be reopened into the accusation of rape brought by one of the women.

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The prosecution still falls within the country’s 10-year statute of limitations to restart it. The statute of limitations has already passed for sexual molestation and unlawful coercion accusations made by the other woman.

The same day he was removed from the embassy, the United States unsealed an indictment of Mr. Assange on a charge that stems from a leak of hundreds of thousands of documents, mostly related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were published by WikiLeaks.

The American authorities have accused Mr. Assange of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, to crack an encoded password that would have permitted her to log into a classified Pentagon network under someone else’s identity.

At Mr. Assange’s first hearing in the extradition case, held this month, he told the judge that he did not wish to surrender to the United States to be prosecuted for what he called “journalism that has won many awards.”

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Mr. Assange could face additional charges in the United States, although prosecutors have appeared to be wary of pursuing a case that would treat the act of publishing information as a crime, a move that would raise questions about whether his First Amendment rights to free speech were being violated.

Ms. Manning was recently released after being jailed for two months for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.

One of Mr. Assange’s accusers in Sweden has publicly identified herself, and the woman, Anna Ardin, told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Mr. Assange was “a man who has a twisted attitude toward women and a problem taking no for an answer.”

Last month, Ms. Ardin tweeted that she would be “very surprised & sad if Julian is handed over to the US.” She added, “For me this was never about anything else than his misconduct against me/women and his refusal to take responsibility for this.”

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But Mr. Assange and his supporters have long maintained that the rape accusations were attempts to discredit him, and he had maintained that the effort to extradite him to Sweden were a pretext to eventually send him to the United States.

Per E. Samuelsson, Mr. Assange’s lawyer, said he did not believe Sweden would succeed in extraditing client from Britain to face charges, since the American charges would most likely take precedent.

“This is about the U.S. It has never been about Sweden,” Mr. Samuelsson told the Swedish news outlet SVT in an article published last month.

Christina Anderson contributed reporting.

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Julian Assange Sentenced to 50 Weeks and Still Faces U.S. Charges
May 1, 2019
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How Julian Assange and WikiLeaks Became Targets of the U.S. Government
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