LODNON, November 19. /TASS/. Sweden’s decision to drop a rape investigation into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will make it possible for his team to focus on efforts to prevent his extradition to the United States, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said on Twitter on Tuesday.

"Let us now focus 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," the tweet reads.

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.