Swedish prosecutors have been caught in a long game of cat and mouse with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange over allegations of sexual assault. It has kept Assange locked down at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for three years.
On Thursday, prosecutors announced they are dropping allegations involving sexual molestation and coercion, as statutes of limitations in the investigation runs out this month.
Their disappearance may not change Assange’s predicament. The allegation of suspicion of rape still stands, and he may be investigated on it until 2020, Swedish prosecutors have said.
Fear of the U.S.
Assange appears still to be stuck at the embassy, where British police stand guard to see to it that he is extradited to Sweden, should he set foot outside the door.
The Australian national has never been charged and denies the claims against him in Sweden.
But a bigger fear is nagging at Assange. If apprehended, he believes he could eventually end up via Sweden in the United States, where he could be charged and tried over the leak of confidential U.S. documents to the public via the digital leak website Wikileaks.
If the case of Chelsea Manning, formerly Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, is any indication, Assange could face a heavy penalty in the U.S. justice system. Manning was sentenced to 35 years behind bars for stealing 750,000 pages of classified documents and slipping them to Wikileaks.
How we got here
Assange founded Wikileaks in 2006, and in December 2007, it posted a U.S. Army manual for soldiers dealing with prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. It drew outrage from critics of the United States’ handling of inmates and from the U.S. government, which condemned the leak as illegal.
In the coming years, Wikileaks exposed documents from the Church of Scientology, Sarah Palin, a far-right British party, and New Yorkers terrified by the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Then in 2010, the site posted a classified U.S. military video of an Apache helicopter mistakenly gunning down two journalists and Iraqi civilians. It was handed to Wikileaks by Manning along with the classified documents.
The U.S. military detained Manning, and Wikileaks little by little pushed out documents on the Afghanistan war, the hunt for bin Laden and the Iraq war. They followed with the publication of U.S. State Department cables dating back to 1966.
The leaks kept coming, and the consequences against leakers intensified.
Consequences
Credit card companies and money transfer services cut Wikileaks off, and the U.S. justice system started the process of putting Manning away.
Then, while he visited Sweden, women made allegations of sexual assault against Assange. British authorities arrested him on Sweden’s behalf, but he later went free on bail.
Fearing a series of extraditions could land him in the United States to face a similar fate to Manning’s, Assange sought and was granted asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy on July 19, 2012.
British police took up position outside the embassy, and the stalemate between Assange, Sweden, Britain and the United States began.
Neither Sweden nor Britain have ruled out extraditing Assange to the United States. The UK Foreign Office reiterated this week that a European Arrest Warrant remains in place for Julian Assange.
But Ecuador has steadfastly refused to budge.
Diplomatic tug-o-war
Assange has tried to get Sweden to drop the allegations against him to no avail.
Swedish investigators initially refused to interview Assange in Britain on the allegations but reversed that stance in the spring, as the statute of limitations on part of the investigation loomed.
But they could not come to an agreement with Ecuadorean authorities on the terms of that interrogation.
Assange recently sought diplomatic protection from France after Wikileaks alleged the National Security Agency spied on French Presidents, but Paris ultimately declined.
Assange remains holed up at the Ecuadorian Embassy.