Sweden, Friday morning, announced it has decided to drop its investigation in to rape allegations made against WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, in a move his lawyer described as a “total victory”.
The dramatic decision was revealed by Sweden’s Director of Public Prosecution, Marianne Ny, who said the probe had been “discontinued” having effectively become a lost cause.
The 45-year-old Australian, who denies the 2010 rape claims, has been living inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for almost five years and has been granted political asylum.
The focus will now move to the governments of the UK and the US and whether Assange will attempt to fly to Ecuador to avoid extradition to America for trial over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret military and diplomatic documents.
It is unclear whether America has already requested his extradition or whether they would be able to obtain a warrant before Assange flees Britain.
Met Police, on Friday, confirmed there is a warrant for his arrest for not appearing in court in 2012, and that it was “obliged” to execute the warrant if he leaves the embassy.
But the offence is “much less serious” than the sex crimes claims, and police “will provide a level of resourcing which is proportionate to that offence,” the force said.
Moments after this morning’s decision, Assange tweeted a picture of himself smiling. It was immediately retweeted by actress, Pamela Anderson, who has visited him at the embassy several times.
Friday was the deadline for Sweden’s public prosecutor’s office to either renew the pan-European arrest warrant or lift it.
Its probe into Assange was ended because there was “no reason to believe that the decision to surrender him to Sweden can be executed in the foreseeable future”, prosecutors said.
However, it is not yet clear whether he will be arrested should he try to leave his London hide-out or whether he would be stopped at airport security if he attempted to leave the country.
He may even look to France for help after his lawyer, Juan Branco, said he was prepared to ask new president, Emmanuel Macron, to intervene.
Branco said: “We need a political intervention to make this situation end. He is the only political prisoner in Western Europe.”
Meanwhile Ecuador’s foreign ministry has said it will intensify its diplomatic efforts with the UK so that Assange can gain safe passage to enjoy his asylum in the South American country.
The statement by the Met police further said: “Whilst Mr Assange was wanted on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) for an extremely serious offence, the MPS response reflected the serious nature of that crime.
“Now that the situation has changed and the Swedish authorities have discontinued their investigation into that matter, Mr Assange remains wanted for a much less serious offence.”
The Met revealed in 2015 it had spent more than £12million of taxpayers’ money standing outside the Knightsbridge building and would scale down its round-the-clock presence there amid public criticism of the cost.
But the force added later: “The MPS will provide a level of resourcing which is proportionate to that offence.
“The priority for the MPS must continue to be arresting those who are currently wanted in the Capital in connection with serious violent or sexual offences for the protection of Londoners.”
This morning WikiLeaks said the ball was now in Britain’s court.
“UK refuses to confirm or deny whether it has already received a US extradition warrant for Julian Assange. Focus now moves to UK,” it said in a tweet.
A lawyer on Assange’s legal team, Per Samuelsson, told Swedish radio the decision was “a total victory”, saying that Assange was “of course happy and relieved”.
Samuelsson also said that the decision meant Assange “is free to leave the embassy whenever he wants”, though he later told the TT news agency that he did not know when Assange might leave.
Another lawyer, Christophe Marchand, told AFP that “We have been waiting a long time for this decision. Julian Assange has been a victim of a huge abuse of procedure. We are very pleased and very moved, as this marks the end of his nightmare.”
Assange’s Swedish lawyer last month filed a new motion demanding that the arrest warrant be lifted after US Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, said in April that arresting Assange would be “a priority”.
“This implies that we can now demonstrate that the US has a will to take action… this is why we ask for the arrest warrant to be cancelled so that Julian Assange can fly to Ecuador and enjoy his political asylum,” lawyer Samuelsson told AFP at the time.
The accusation against Assange dated from August 2010, when the alleged victim, who says she met him at a WikiLeaks conference in Stockholm a few days earlier, filed a complaint.
She accused him of having sex with her as she slept without using a condom despite repeatedly having denied him unprotected sex.
“I am entirely innocent,” Assange wrote in a 19-page testimony released in December 2016.
He argues that the sex was consensual and has denounced the accusations as “politically motivated”.
The picture Assange tweeted Friday morning 