The Swedish chief prosecutor Eva Finne dismissed a warrant for the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange less than a day after the warrant for charges of rape and molestation was issued. Finne declared, "I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape." She did not address the molestation charge, but presumably regards it as also unlikely.
When the warrant, involving two young women Assange had encountered in Stockholm and Enköping, was first issued, statements from Wikileaks called the charges "without basis" and charged that it was one of a series of "dirty tricks" aimed at Wikileaks, which is currently under fire for releasing over "the Afghan War Diary," a set of 75,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2010. The site reportedly is run by a team of 800 part-time volunteers and backed by over 70,000 supporters.
We were warned to expect 'dirty tricks.' Now we have the first one. -Wikileaks
Assange, whose whereabouts are unknown, had been in Sweden last week for a speaking engagement with the Swedish Social Democratic party as well as to push to make sure that the Wikileaks website is protected under Swedish laws covering the protection of whistleblowers. The Wikileaks servers were moved to Sweden in 2007 in order to take advantage of those laws. Assange is a native Australian with no permanent address who has become the public face of Wikileaks. Alternately described as a passionate campaigner for the truth and an irresponsible publicity-seeker, he spoke recently in Sweden on the topic of how "in war, the first victim is truth."
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