“The timing is too coincidental,” said one woman, who gave her name only as Timi, holding up the words “Exposing war crimes is no crime” on a placard.

In court on Tuesday, Gemma Lindfield, the lawyer for the Swedish authorities, emphasized that the extradition attempt was “not about WikiLeaks” but centered on crimes “of a serious sexual nature.” The two women informed the authorities that consensual relations with Mr. Assange in Sweden, over a four-day period, had turned nonconsensual. Last week, in the initial hearing, the court was told that the charges involved three incidents, including one in which Mr. Assange was alleged to have had unprotected sex with one of his accusers while she was asleep. Swedish authorities characterize the encounters as “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.”

Mr. Assange has repeatedly disputed the accounts, and Mr. Robertson told the court that, in a previous interview with the Swedish authorities on Aug. 30, Mr. Assange had denied any wrongdoing “fully, firmly and convincingly.”

His lawyer, Mr. Stephens, said in an interview with the journalist David Frost that the Swedish authorities had neither delineated the charges against Mr. Assange nor shown him the evidence. He added that the Swedish actions were “nothing more than a holding charge” to make Mr. Assange available to the United States, should it choose to seek his extradition in connection with the leaking of the American diplomatic and military cables.

Mr. Stephens asserted that the Swedish authorities had said that “they will defer their interest in him to the Americans,” and that a grand jury had been impaneled in Alexandria, Va., that was currently hearing evidence of Mr. Assange’s role in exposing the diplomatic cables. Justice Department officials have refused to discuss whether there is such a grand jury hearing the case.

The assertions could not be verified, and the Swedish prosecutors could not be immediately reached for comment. But in an earlier interview, one of them, Marianne Ny, referred obliquely to the possibility that Mr. Assange might end up in the United States. In discussing the procedure for extraditing a person who has been surrendered to Sweden, the prosecutor said the authorities would need the consent of the country that gave the prisoner up. “Sweden cannot,” she said, “without such consent extradite a person, for example to the U.S.A.”