A lawyer representing the Swedish victim in a rape investigation involving WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange has urged Swedish prosecutors to move quickly with their inquiries, with a statute of limitations looming next year.

“She is going to be forced to take steps quickly to ensure that we have time to get a potential criminal charge in this case,” lawyer Elisabeth Massi Fritz told a news conference on Monday.

“My client feels great gratitude and she is very hopeful about getting restitution and we both hope that justice will win.”

Earlier Monday, Prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson told a news conference she would continue and conclude a preliminary investigation that was dropped in 2017 without charges being brought as Assange had taken refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

Assange was arrested in Britain last month after spending seven years inside the embassy and is serving a 50-week jail sentence in Britain for jumping bail on an arrest warrant stemming from the sex-crimes case.

The United States is also seeking his extradition on charges relating to the public release by Wikileaks of a huge cache of secret documents.

The Swedish prosecutor’s office said it would shortly request Assange be detained in his absence on probable cause for an allegation of rape and that it would issue a European arrest warrant – the process under which his extradition would be sought.

“I have today taken the decision to reopen the preliminary investigation” Ms Persson said at a news conference.

Assange’s Swedish lawyer said his client wants to help put Swedish rape allegations to bed and only fears being extradited to the United States, calling Sweden’s decision to reopen the investigation “an embarrassment”.

“I’m surprised. It’s embarrassing for Sweden to reopen the investigation,” Per E Samuelson told Swedish TV.

“He has always wanted to help solve this Swedish issue, his big predicament in life is that he risks being extradited to the United States because of his journalistic work.”

WikiLeaks response

Following the announcement, WikiLeaks said the investigation would give Assange a chance to clear his name.

“Since Julian Assange was arrested on 11 April 2019, there has been considerable political pressure on Sweden to reopen their investigation, but there has always been political pressure surrounding this case,” Kristinn Hrafnsson, WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief, said in a statement.

“Its reopening will give Julian a chance to clear his name.”

If convicted in Sweden, Assange could face a prison sentence of up to four years. 

Extradition battle

Reopening the investigation became an option after Assange was arrested on April 11 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had been holed up for nearly seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden to face the sexual assault accusations against him.

The decision to reopen the investigation poses the question of whether Assange will be moved to the United States to face conspiracy charges for hacking into classified information or to Sweden.

The US wants to prosecute him on charges that he conspired to help US Army Private Chelsea Manning download and leak a massive trove of classified military documents.

“I am well aware of the fact that an extradition process is ongoing in the UK and that he could be extradited to the US,” Ms Persson said.

The British courts will have to rule on any extradition request and Home Secretary Sajid Javid would decide which one takes precedence once Swedish prosecutors file theirs.

Nick Vamos, lawyer at London-based firm Peters & Peters and former head of extradition at Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service, told Reuters before Monday’s decision that he expected a Swedish request would take supremacy.

“In the event of a conflict between a European Arrest Warrant and a request for extradition from the US, UK authorities will decide on the order of priority,” a Swedish prosecutor’s statement said.

Officers from Scotland Yard had moved in on Assange on after the government of Ecuador revoked his asylum, saying it had had enough of Assange and what they called his rude, aggressive and unsanitary behaviour inside their embassy in London’s upscale Knightsbridge neighbourhood.

Assange is expected to serve at least 25 weeks of his UK sentence before he can be released, Ms Persson said.

Following his arrest, the lawyer for one of the two women who have accused him of sexual assault asked for resumption of the investigation, which had been shelved because Assange was unavailable for questioning in person.

He denies the allegations.

Stockholm had first issued a European warrant on Assange in 2010 after the two women accused him of sexual molestation and assault, and British police arrested him.

But before his scheduled extradition to Sweden in 2012, he bolted into the Ecuadorean embassy.