Sweden defends rape charge against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange

LONDON - Swedish prosecutors have defended their decision to issue and then withdraw an arrest warrant against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on rape charges.

The prosecutors said that although the rape charges have been dropped, they are still investigating a separate allegation of molestation.

Defending its decision, the Swedish national prosecutors’ office said in a statement that chief prosecutor Eva Finne, who withdrew the warrant, had “more information available to decide on Saturday than the duty prosecutor on Friday evening.”

“A decision regarding restrictive measures, such as this, must always be re-evaluated in a preliminary inquiry,” the BBC quoted the statement, as saying.

Meanwhile, Assange has claimed that he had been warned about the “dirty tricks”.

“I don’t know who’s behind this but we have been warned that for example the Pentagon plans to use dirty tricks to spoil things for us. I have also been warned about sex traps,” he said.

He further stated that he had never had sexual relations with anyone that were not consensual.

US authorities, earlier, have strongly criticised the decision by Wikileaks to post more than 75,000 war logs online, saying it could endanger the lives of US soldiers and Afghan civilians.

Wikileaks is said to be planning to release a further 15,000 Afghan war documents in coming weeks. (ANI)