Swedish court rejects request to detain Assange

A Swedish court yesterday rejected a request to detain Julian Assange over a 2010 rape case, dashing the prosecutor’s hopes of having him swiftly extradited from Britain. The Uppsala district court said that while it considered the WikiLeaks founder “a suspect” in the case, the fact that Assange was currently in prison in Britain meant he does not need to be formally detained in Sweden to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors. Swedish deputy director of public prosecutions Eva-Marie Persson said the WikiLeaks founder had not cooperated with the Swedish investigation previously, fleeing from an extradition order, and therefore needed to be detained and questioned in Sweden. She asked the court to order Assange’s detention in his absence, a standard part of Swedish legal procedure if a suspect is outside the country or cannot be located, and which would be the first step to having him extradited. Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Per E Samuelson, meanwhile argued that a detention order was “meaningless” as Assange is currently imprisoned in Britain.