Swedish prosecutors on Friday dropped a seven-year rape investigation into Julian Assange, a legal victory for the Wikileaks founder who has been holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in london since 2012.
But British police said they would still arrest Assange if he tried to leave the Embassy, saying he had breached the terms of his bail by refusing to turn himself in when an arrest warrant was issued in 2012.
Friday was the deadline for the public prosecutor’s office to either renew the pan-European arrest warrant or lift it.
“Director of Public Prosecution, Marianne Ny, has on Friday decided to discontinue the investigation regarding suspected rape by Julian Assange,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. Shortly after the announcement, Assange posted on Twitter a picture of himself smiling broadly, without comment.
lawyer says dropped case is ‘end of nightmare’
london: A lawyer for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange welcomed the decision of Swedish prosecutors today to drop a seven-year rape investigation against him, saying it was the “end of his nightmare”. “We have been waiting a long time for this decision,” Christophe Marchand, a member of Assange’s Brussels-based legal team, told AFP.