A District Court in Stockholm upheld Wednesday an arrest warrant against Julian Assange, rejecting the WikiLeaks founder’s claims that Swedish prosecutors should abandon a probe launched as a result of a 2010 rape accusation.
Mr. Assange, 44, has refused to travel to Sweden to be questioned in person about sex crime allegations amid concerns he could be extradited to the United States and charged for his role in publishing secret government documents through WikiLeaks.
No charges against Mr. Assange have been announced with regards to either matter, and Ecuador’s decision to grant him asylum in 2012 has allowed him to reside in the country’s embassy in London for nearly four years while the Swedish probe lingers.
Attorneys for Mr. Assange asked the Stockholm District Court to null the arrest warrant after a United Nations working group concluded in February that the WikiLeaks chief has been “arbitrarily detained” in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Weighing in Wednesday, however, the court said that the warrant should stand because probable cause still exists with respect to the rape claim.
“The district court finds that there is still probable cause for the suspicion against JA [Julian Assange] for rape, less serious incident, and that there is still a risk that he will depart or in some other way evade prosecution or penalty,” the court said in a statement.
“Unlike the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention the district court does not consider JA’s stay at the Embassy of Ecuador in London a form of detention. There are therefore grounds for JA to remain detained in absentia,” the court said.
Mr. Assange’s legal team had asked the District Court earlier this month to hold a hearing in hopes of determining the case should be dropped altogether, but Swedish prosecutors have yet to be convinced as much.
“In our opinion, the public interest to continue the investigation still carries weight,” Marianne Ny, the Swedish Direction of Public Prosecution, said in a statement.
Mr. Assange has adamantly denied the rape allegations, and his attorneys said Wednesday that they will appeal the District Court’s decision.
“In defiance of the U.N.’s order to release Mr. Assange, Sweden’s lowest court is keeping him detained. We are appealing and are confident Sweden’s higher courts will finally put an end to this terrible injustice, which has seen Mr. Assange held without charge, for the last five and half years,” his legal team said in a statement.
“As far as I understand it, the court has not addressed the main issue in the case, whether the delay in the investigation is due to the inaction of the prosecutor, which we mean is a reason to overturn this [the arrest warrant],” attorney Thomas Olsson added to Reuters.
Wednesday’s decision in Sweden came one week after WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning formally appealed the 35 year prison sentence handed down by a military judge in 2013 as a result of her role in supplying Mr. Assange’s website with hundreds of thousands of military and State Dept. documents. Mr. Assange has said previously that he likely risks a similar fate if he leaves the embassy in London without being guaranteed same passage to Ecuador.
“The Swedish justice system only takes into consideration the Swedish bit, and not the whole situation given the tough sentence hanging over him in the United States,” one of his Swedish lawyers, Per Samuelsson, told AFP this week.
WikiLeaks, meanwhile, said it had published 30 new documents on Wednesday concerning the Trade in Services Agreement, or TISA, a multinational trade deal currently being negotiated by the U.S., E.U. and 22 other countries.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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