Court says ‘there is still probable cause for suspicion’ against WikiLeaks founder who has taken refuge in London embassy

A Stockholm district court has upheld an arrest warrant against Julian Assange, saying there is still “probable cause for suspicion” against the WikiLeaks founder.



Assange is wanted in Sweden over allegations of rape dating from 2010, which he denies, but he has not been charged. He has been confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London since July 2012, when he sought asylum to avoid extradition.

Lawyers for the Australian sought to have the warrant quashed after a United Nations working group determined in February that Assange was subject to arbitrary detention at the embassy.

But the district ruled on Wednesday that the warrant against him should stand, saying: “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.”

Marianne Ny, the director of public prosecutions at the Swedish Prosecution Authority, said in a statement: “In our opinion, the public interest to continue the investigation still carries weight. The efforts to conduct an interview and take DNA samples continue, and we are still awaiting a response to the application for legal assistance which was submitted to Ecuador in March 2016. The court shares our view that a continued detention complies with the principle of proportionality.”

Per E Samuelson, one of Assange’s Swedish lawyers, told the Guardian he was “disappointed, of course”, and had already received instructions to appeal.

He said he believed the judge had made “numerous” mistakes, principally in ignoring the UN working group’s finding and its request to restore Assange’s freedom of movement. “This is not even discussed by the judge, it is ignored. Of course it is astonishing that a Swedish court disobeys United Nations fundamental international regulations on human rights.”

Samuelson said he was aware of a new request to interview Assange in London, “but she [Ny] is very late”. The request was still being considered by the Ecuadorean authorities, he said, “so we don’t know the outcome of that yet”.



