‘Assange won’t come’: Swedish MPs urge end to whistleblower case
Swedish MPs are calling on the prosecutors in the Julian Assange sexual assault case to travel to London and question the WikiLeaks founder at the Ecuadorian embassy, where he has been taking refuge since June 2012.
The members of the Swedish parliament say investigators should accept that Assange will not be leaving the embassy voluntarily.
“It is in the interest of everyone involved in this process that the prosecutor reaches a conclusion to either file charges or dismiss the case, and it is obvious that Assange will not come to Sweden,” Staffan Danielsson, from the Center Party, said, as quoted by the Times.
Anne Ramberg, the secretary-general of the Swedish Bar Association, said “You have to be a bit pragmatic to put an end to such a circus. They should have headed to London to interrogate him.”
However, Anders Perklev, the Swedish prosecutor-general, was convinced the lawmakers are interfering with the judicial matters.
“The fact that an MP openly questions a prosecutor’s decision-making in an individual case is remarkable,” he said.
The Swedish MPs statement comes just a day after Assange saying that one of the women involved in the case sent text messages admitting he never raped her.
The whistleblower quoted a few SMSs reportedly exchanged between his two alleged victims, with one of the messages saying "it was the police who made up the charges."
Plus, the alleged victim "did not want to put any charges on JA, but that the police were keen on getting a grip on him," according to the affidavit published on WikiLeaks website.
The whistleblower’s stay at the embassy began in June 2012 after Assange’s claims that Sweden would extradite him to the US over leaking secret documents.
Assange faces rape charges from one woman and sexual assault charges from another following a visit to Stockholm in 2010.
The operation to monitor the embassy in order to apprehend Assange should he emerge from it reportedly costs British taxpayers 6 million pounds a year.
