He maintained then, and ever since, that he was innocent of the accusations. He said if he was sent to Sweden he would be at greater risk of further extradition to the US to face espionage charges and a possible death penalty in connection with his work publishing classified information at Wikileaks. Those US charges were at last revealed earlier this year, and Assange was expelled from the embassy in April. He is now in Belmarsh Prison in London awaiting an extradition hearing next year. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video In a statement released on Tuesday, WikiLeaks said Assange had “always expressed his willingness to engage” in the Swedish investigation. “There has been no prospect for a fair hearing [in Sweden] for many years,” the WikiLeaks statement said. “An investigation into how the justice system failed to withstand the political and media pressure and lessons learned should be pursued.”

Loading Kristinn Hrafnsson, WikiLeaks' editor-in-chief, said the focus should now be on “the threat Mr Assange has been warning about for years: the belligerent prosecution of the United States and the threat it poses to the First Amendment”. He said the UK Crown Prosecution Service had “artificially prolonged the Swedish preliminary investigation” by advising Sweden against questioning Assange in the UK and pressuring Sweden into keeping the investigation alive. Assange gave a statement to Swedish prosecutors who visited him at the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge, London, in 2016. In his statement he rejected the rape allegation, saying his relations with the alleged victim had been consensual. In the statement Assange said he travelled to Stockholm in August 2010 because of “heightened concerns about US activities in the UK in relation to the WikiLeaks investigation”.

Loading While there, he said, he met a woman who came to a speech he gave on WikiLeaks who “appeared to be romantically interested in me” and invited him to her home. He said she initiated consensual sex and they later “enjoyed breakfast together”. According to a European arrest warrant, the woman alleged to police that Assange initiated sex while she was asleep “in a helpless state” and did not use a condom despite her “expressed wish”, in a sexual act “designed to violate the injured party’s sexual integrity”. Persson said evidence from the alleged victim and Assange was consistent in some areas and “in others they have entirely different perceptions of events”.