On Tuesday, Swedish prosecutors said that would be dropping a nearly decade-old rape investigation against Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who has been under arrest in the United Kingdom since April. Assange, who lived inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 after being granted asylum while on the run from extradition to Sweden over accusations of sexual assault, was arrested by British police in April after Ecuadorian officials revoked his asylum. Who is Julian Assange? Born in Queensland in Australia, the 48-year-old computer programmer made headlines globally in the year 2010, when WikiLeaks published confidential material about American military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan over the course of several months. The leaks eventually turned into a major embarrassment for the Obama administration, resulting in the launch of a criminal investigation against Assange. Assange again became a point of conversation during the US Presidential election of 2016, when WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of hacked emails from inside Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. As a result, the WikiLeaks founder turned into a reviled figure among Clinton’s supporters. What were the charges against Assange in Sweden? In 2010, two Swedish women accused Assange of sexual assault and rape. A start-stop-start investigation led to the issue of a European arrest order. Assange, who feared Sweden would give him to the US, was given refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in the UK in 2012 by the leftwing politician who was then President, Rafael Correa. In 2015, the Swedish authorities closed the investigation into accusations of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion after they were time-barred. In May 2017, they dropped the rape probe without filing charges, saying it was unlikely they would get Assange any time soon. In April 2019, the British police were able to arrest Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy, with President Correa being replaced by the pro-West Lenín Moreno two years previously. After his arrest, Swedish prosecutors reopened the one sex crime case against Assange that had remained unbarred by limitation. On Tuesday, however, the prosecutors said that they would be dropping that investigation, and gave the reason that passage of time in the almost decade-old case meant there was not enough evidence to indict Assange. Although the prosecutors’ decision can be appealed, the dropping of the probe would probably end the case. From the beginning, Assange has maintained that the allegations were motivated, and that his arrest in Sweden would mean extradition to the US. What are the charges against him in the US? Assange is accused of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning — then known as Bradley Manning — to access classified information on computers of the US Department of Defense in 2010. In 2013, a court martial convicted Manning of supplying 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to WikiLeaks when she was an intelligence analyst in Iraq. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence in 2017, but she was jailed again this March for refusing to testify before a grand jury. Information published by WikiLeaks appeared to establish the killing of hundreds of civilians by the US in unreported incidents. In May 2019, a month after Assange had been removed from the Ecuadorian embassy, the US Justice Department significantly expanded Assange’s indictment, charging him on 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for his role in obtaining and publishing secret military and diplomatic documents in 2010. In June, British Home Secretary Sajid Javid confirmed signing an order following a request from the US government to extradite Assange to face espionage and hacking charges. Also read | UK court sets Julian Assange’s US extradition hearing for February 2020 What happens now? Assange will now go before an extradition hearing in February next year. Before Tuesday, the UK would have had to make a decision between competing extradition claims by Sweden and the US. Now that Swedish authorities have dropped the rape investigation, the British courts would no longer be in a dilemma. If a lower court orders his extradition, Assange has the option of appealing before London’s High Court and then the Supreme Court, if he can identify a challenge based on a point of law or a violation of human rights. Assange could argue that he has been slapped with so much notoriety already, that a fair trial in the US was impossible. Also read | Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok — How social media platforms handle political ads
