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| Assange |
TIME
In what has become a complicated subplot to the fallout from the recent publication of some 250,000 diplomatic cables on whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, Swedish prosecutors confirmed on Friday, Dec. 3, that they had reissued international and European arrest warrants against the site's founder, Julian Assange, for alleged sex crimes.
Assange was originally sought for questioning in September in relation to accusations by two women in Sweden whose various claims include having sex with him that was not fully consensual. A prosecutor dropped the investigation, and then a more senior prosecutor reopened it after reviewing the evidence, but Assange has not been formally charged with any crime and denies any wrongdoing. He left Sweden earlier this summer without being interviewed but was summoned back by an arrest warrant in November, a move Assange tried to appeal. On Thursday, the country's highest court refused Assange permission to appeal the arrest order, which lead prosecutors to once again seek his arrest.
The Australian-born Assange, 39, is reportedly in hiding in the U.K. —he told the Guardian newspaper on Friday that he fears assassination plots by authorities and governments angered by his website's publication of the largest unauthorized release of contemporary classified information in history. He has also said he believes that the sex-crime accusations — which, media reports in Sweden suggest, are not violent in nature — are politically motivated.
Read more (TIME) : http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2035032,00.html?xid=newsletter-daily
