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ReutersSwedish chief prosecutor Eva Finné aims to make a decision on how to move forward in the investigation of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange tomorrow, she said in a statement on Monday.
On Friday night, a warrant was issued for Assange's arrest on suspicion of rape and molestation -- which in Sweden can include many kinds of reckless behavior against another person -- by the prosecutor on duty. The decision to issue the warrant for Assange was in part made because he was considered a flight risk, according to the Prosecution Authority.
On Saturday, Finné took over the handling of the case and dropped the rape charge and warrant. Finné made that decision based on having access to more information on Saturday than the duty prosecutor had on Friday, she said.
However, that doesn't mean Assange is out of the woods yet. He may no longer be suspected of rape, but Finné will investigate the matter further, she said. Concerning the suspicion of molestation, Finné has not yet been able to make any decisions, she added
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http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS319709576520100823
New Details Emerge in the Case Against WikiLeaks Founder
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London's Guardian, a newspaper know for its liberal politics and freedom-of-information campaigns, published in its Tuesday edition what appears to be the most extensive account to date of events which led Swedish prosecutors to open investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct by WikiLeaks founder and frontman Julian Assange.
The newspaper says that the case is still "mired in conflicting claims." But it offers a basic chronology of events which offers more detail than any other account to appear so far in an English-language publication. The Guardian's take on events is particularly noteworthy because it was one of three media organizations -- the others being the New York Times and Der Spiegel magazine of Germany -- to which WikiLeaks granted advance access to a cache of roughly 92,000 classified Pentagon field reports about the war in Afghanistan which it had apparently obtained a U.S. government source. After reviewing the material for several weeks -- during which some journalists from the media organizations were in close contact with Assange -- the three publications ran lengthy stories based on the WikiLeaks material. WikiLeaks then posted around 76,000 of the Pentagon papers on its website for general inspection, attracting criticism from both U.S. officials and human rights groups for allegedly failing to delete the names of Afghans who might be cooperating with U.S. and allied forces. WikiLeaks is now threatening to release the balance of its Afghan document cache, though its representatives have asserted they are now reviewing the documents themselves for possible sensitive information before making them public.
According to the Guardian, the sequence of events leading up to a prosecutor issuing an arrest warrant for Assange -- now withdrawn -- began earlier this month, when two Swedish women reportedly engaged in sexual trysts with Assange. His encounter with one woman reportedly occurred on the morning of Saturday, August 14. His encounter with the second woman was allegedly on the morning of Tuesday, August 17.
more:
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/2010/08/24/new-details-are-reported-of-charges-against-wikileaks-founder.html