Sweden drops arrest warrant for Assange

Swedish authorities issued an arrest warrant Saturday for the founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks on suspicion of rape, but then swiftly withdrew it.

Chief Prosecutor Eva Finne determined there weren't enough grounds for the warrant for Julian Assange, whose website last month published secret US military files on Afghanistan, the Swedish Prosecution Authority said on its website.

"He is no longer suspected of rape. All the charges concerning rape have been lifted," a spokeswoman for the office said, adding that a police inves-tigation continues into another accusation, of molestation.

In an interview in the Expressen newspaper, which broke the story, duty prosecutor Maria Haljebo Kjellstrand said that she "did not regret her de-cision."

Assange, who is Australian by birth, said through WikiLeaks' Twitter page that the charges were "without basis" and that their timing was "deeply disturbing."

Assange said in an interview published Sunday that he believed the Pentagon could be behind the rape accusation against him.

The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet quoted Assange as saying that he did not know who was "hiding behind" the claims, which came amid a standoff with the United States over the website's publication of secret Afghan war documents.

Assange said he was shocked by the allegations against him and that he had never had sexual relations with anybody in a way that was not consensual, the tabloid said.

However, he said he had been warned previously that groups such as the Pentagon "could use dirty tricks" to destroy the whistleblower site - adding that he had been particularly warned against sexual scandals.

Assange was in Sweden last week to discuss his work and defend his intent to publish more documents on the Afghan war.

Sweden has some of the world's strictest laws on protection of sources, and WikiLeaks keeps many of its Web servers there.

US officials said WikiLeaks' release of more than 70,000 documents detailing the war in Afghanistan was one of the biggest security breaches in US military history.

The Pentagon said this month it would be the "height of irresponsibility" if WikiLeaks went through with a new threat to publish further documents on the Afghan war.

Assange told Aftonbladet that, despite the lifting of the warrant, his enemies would still use the claims to damage Wikileaks, which is set to publish thousands more secret papers about the war in Afghanistan in coming weeks.

He refused to give more details about the two women whose claims sparked the furore, saying that it would impinge on their privacy.

Agencies