Sweden withdraws Assange warrant, but UK sticks to arrest

The Swedish justice system has closed the investigation into WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange because it sees no opportunity to hand him the formal charges. However, the London police maintain the position that Assange should be arrested for the time being.

The Public Prosecution Service of Sweden says it has exhausted all options for conducting the investigation. “In order to proceed with the case, Julian Assange must be formally notified of what he is suspected of. We cannot expect Ecuador to help us with this,” the statement read. Swedish law obliges the Public Prosecution Service to discontinue the investigation if the investigation cannot be continued. As a result, the European arrest request against him has also been withdrawn.

The Public Prosecution Service reserves the right to restart the investigation immediately as soon as Assange leaves the Ecuadorian embassy in London. It is unlikely that he will do this in the short term. In that case, the Metropolitan Police of London arrest him as there is still a warrant for his arrest.

That order was issued by a British court, because Assange did not turn himself in to the police on June 29, 2012 to be extradited to Sweden. “The Metropolitan Police Service is obliged to execute that arrest warrant as soon as he leaves the embassy,” the police said.

Assange was arrested in the United Kingdom in December 2010 at the request of Sweden. He is said to have been guilty of sexual offenses several times in the Scandinavian country. In 2012, he holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy. The Australian said he was afraid of being extradited to the US via Sweden, because of the various WikiLeaks publications of US military secrets, including the Collateral Murder video.