Swedish prosecutors have offered to end a four-year stand-off with Julian Assange by questioning the WikiLeaks founder in London as time runs out to file charges over sex assault claims.
Marianne Ny, the lead prosecutor investigating allegations that Mr Assange raped one woman and sexually assaulted another in Sweden in 2010, had previously suggested that it was illegal to interview him outside Sweden.
Lawyers for Mr Assange welcomed the move but gave no guarantee that he would leave the Ecuador embassy. Sweden refuses to meet Mr Assange’s demand that, if he went there for a trial, he would not face extradition to the US over the leak of millions of secret government documents.
Ms Ny said that she could hold the interview in London because she wanted to avoid falling foul of Sweden’s statute of limitations law, which allows five years for sexual assault and ten for rape.
Her sudden volte face drew a furious reaction from Ecuador, with Mr Assange due to spend his 1,000th day in the embassy on Monday. “If they had accepted Ecuador’s offer to question him [at the embassy] 1,000 days ago, it would have saved us all a lot of money and trouble,” Ricardo Patiño, the Ecuadorean foreign minister tweeted.
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Ms Ny defended her decision saying an interview in London “would lower the quality”, but she added: “Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies in the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward.”
Mr Assange’s supporters fear any charges will be used to detain him in Sweden while the US seeks to extradite him for the release by WikiLeaks of embarrassing diplomatic cables.
Per Samuelson, a lawyer for Mr Assange, denied that there had ever been a plan for him to sit out the Swedish statute of limitations in the embassy.
“We do not think about legal time limits; the only thing we think about is proving that Julian Assange is innocent,” he said. Mr Assange was likely to accept the offer made by Ms Ny. “This is something we have demanded for over four years,” Mr Samuelson said. “Julian Assange wants to be interviewed so he can be exonerated.”
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Ms Ny has also requested to take a DNA sample from Mr Assange with a swab. The British Foreign Office said it was “ready to assist the Swedish prosecutor as required”.
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