The Swedish government is planning to issue an international arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on charges of rape and molestation, the court said today.
If you're feeling déjà vu, it's not all in your head.
In August, the Swedish courts issued another arrest warrant after indicting Assange of raping two women. However a judge threw out the ruling within the same week due to insufficient evidence.
Today, a district court in Stockholm has approved another a request from the alleged victims' prosecutor, Marianne Ny, to detain Assange in his absence. He has been indicted for "rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion," the statement said.
The court's "next step" is to issue an international arrest warrant, the court said in a statement. Such a warrant would allow the prosecution to seek help from other countries in foricbly returning Assange to Sweden for a hearing.
Assange's counsel has fired back accusing Ny of "persecution," rather than "prosecution." Assange's London counsel, Mark Stephens, said in a letter that Ny has repeatedly turned down Assange's attempts to either meet in person or discuss the accusations over the phone.
Stephens added that the rape charges were insubstantial to begin with.
"As various media outlets have reported 'the basis for the rape charge' purely seems to constitute a post-facto dispute over consensual, but unprotected sex days after the event," he wrote. "Both women have declared that they had consensual sexual relations with our client and that they continued to instigate friendly contact well after the alleged incidents. Only after the women became aware of each other's relationships with Mr. Assange did they make their allegations against him."
According to The Telegraph, Assange is currently hiding in London. Scotland Yard apparently hasn't seen an international arrest warrant yet.
Assange fled to Sweden in August after his whistleblowing site Wikileaks.com leaked thousands of war documents relating to the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. In October, Wikileaks released another 400,00 war papers, this time about the conflict in Iraq.