Yielding, Swedes agree to quiz Assange in U.K.
LONDON — Julian Assange and his supporters warily welcomed a surprise U-turn Friday by Swedish prosecutors, who said they were willing to go to London to question the WikiLeaks founder in a sexcrime investigation.
The reversal, however, doesn’t mean the anti-secrecy activist will soon be leaving the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has lived for almost three years.
Since 2010, Swedish prosecutors have sought to question Assange over sex allegations made by two women. Assange fought extradition through the British courts and, when that failed, holed up inside Ecuador’s small diplomatic mission. British police stand guard around the clock at the building, ready to arrest him if he steps outside.
Assange denies the allegations against him and has said he believes that extradition to Sweden is merely a first step in efforts to remove him to the United States, where he and WikiLeaks have been under investigation for publishing secret documents including 250,000 State Department cables in 2010. U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year sentence for passing those documents to WikiLeaks.
On Friday, Swedish prosecutors reversed their long refusal to question Assange in London, citing the five-year statute of limitations on some of the allegations against him.
One of Assange’s defense lawyers, Per Samuelson, called the about-face “a great victory for Julian Assange” and indicated that the 43-year-old Australian would likely agree to be questioned.
“This is something we’ve demanded for over four years,” Samuelson said after speaking to Assange on Friday. “Julian Assange wants to be interviewed so he can be exonerated.”
Sweden ordered Assange’s arrest in August 2010. He has not been formally indicted, but he faces allegations of rape, sexual molestation and illegal coercion involving two women. The latter two allegations expire after five years, and rape after 10 years.
Lead Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny said the looming deadline had prompted her change of mind.
“My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorean embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview, and that he would need to be present in Sweden in any case should there be a trial in the future,” Ny said in a statement.
“Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies in the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward.”
It was unclear how soon a prosecutor could go to London.
Ny said she had asked Assange’s legal team on Friday whether she could interview him in London and have his DNA sample taken with a swab. She said permission was also being sought from Ecuadorean authorities.
“We cannot say when we will go there,” said Karin Rosander, spokesman for the Swedish Prosecution Authority. “We cannot make any guesses, because it depends on circumstances that are outside our reach. We need to get a goahead from the British and the Ecuadorean authorities.”
Britain’s Foreign Office said it was “ready to assist the Swedish prosecutor as required.” British officials would like to see a resolution to the stalemate, which has cost taxpayers $15 million in police costs.
Britain has previously said that “voluntarily providing a statement or taking part in an interview are issues which should be agreed between the Swedish prosecutor, Mr. Assange and the Ecuadorean Embassy.”
Ecuador’s Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patino, said Ecuador had offered to have Assange questioned when he arrived at the embassy years ago.
“If Ecuador’s offer from 1,000 days ago to take a statement had been accepted, we would have all been spared a lot of money and a lot of annoyance,” he said on Twitter.
Friday’s move comes after Assange appealed his detention order to Sweden’s Supreme Court, which earlier this week asked the country’s prosecutor-general to issue an opinion.
Samuelson said the prosecutor-general had probably ordered Ny to move the case forward by traveling to London. Rosander declined to comment.