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Sweden’s move to drop rape investigation did not comfort Assange, lawyer says

Assange’s lawyer also criticized the way a pre-trial investigation had been handled in Sweden

STOCKHOLM, November 19. /TASS/. Sweden’s decision to drop a rape investigation into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange did not comfort him, Assange’s Swedish layer Per Samuelsson said in an interview with the TT new agency.

"Given the situation he is in at the moment, I don’t know if it makes any difference. He is fully focused on resisting the United States’ extradition request. I think that he lost trust in the Swedish judicial system years ago," Samuelsson pointed out.

Read also

WikiLeaks to focus on preventing Assange’s extradition to US

Assange’s lawyer also criticized the way a pre-trial investigation had been handled in Sweden. "This is not the way it should be. It’s not an adult manner to treat allegations against such a well-known person. Everything went wrong from the very beginning and I don’t see any other explanation but his being a prominent figure," he noted.

Earlier on Tuesday, Sweden’s Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Eva-Marie Persson announced a decision to drop the Assange rape investigation. She said that the evidence was not strong enough for an indictment.

Assange affair

Julian Assange founded the WikiLeaks portal in 2006 to publish classified information about the activities of a number of governments, including that of the United States. After harassment charges had been brought against him in Sweden in 2012, Assange sought refuge in London's Ecuadorian Embassy to escape extradition. In April 2019, Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno withdrew his asylum and Assange was arrested by the United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police over his failure to appear in court in London in 2012, as well as on a 2018 extradition request from Washington.

On May 1, Assange was sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching his British bail conditions. If extradited to the United States and found guilty on all charges, Assange could face 175 years in prison.

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Sweden Julian Assange

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