Sweden drops rape investigation into Julian Assange

Prosecutors in Sweden have dropped an investigation into a rape allegation made against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange in 2010.

“I want to inform about my decision to discontinue the preliminary investigation,” deputy chief prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson told a news conference on Tuesday.

The decision follows a ruling in June by a Swedish court that Assange – who denies the accusation – should not be detained.

Two months earlier, the 48-year-old Australian was evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had been holed up since 2012. He was immediately arrested and is currently serving a 50-week sentence in Belmarsh prison in London for jumping bail in 2012.

He is also fighting extradition to the US, which accuses him of publishing secret documents.

Assange had reportedly lived part-time in Sweden. Back in 2010 he had told Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in an interview that he had chosen Sweden to host several servers for WikiLeaks because of the country's privacy laws.

He had also told the paper that he had been in Sweden because he wanted a safe place to go after the high-profile leak of US documents related to the war in Afghanistan.

READ MORE: WikiLeaks founder accused with rape, molestation in Sweden