Sweden Cancels Warrant for Arrest of WikiLeaks Founder

(Aug. 21) -- Swedish authorities withdrew an arrest warrant today for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, saying that there is no basis for suspicions that he is guilty of rape.

"I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape," chief prosecutor Eva Finne said, according to The Associated Press.

Authorities issued the warrant late Friday, charging the Australian in connection with two separate cases of rape and molestation.

Assange, an Australian with no fixed address, spends much of his time in Sweden to take advantage of its legal protections for his whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

The site has tangled with U.S. authorities over its recent leak of classified documents detailing the war effort in Afghanistan, as well as a controversial video in which U.S. military personnel are shown killing a dozen people, including two journalists, from a helicopter.

Assange had denied the charges via the WikiLeaks Twitter account.

"The charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing," he tweeted today.

WikiLeaks did not immediately respond to calls or an e-mail from AOL News seeking comment on the withdrawal of the warrant.

The allegations were first printed in the Swedish newspaper Expressen. WikiLeaks dismissed the publication as "a right-wing tabloid," saying that WikiLeaks had many enemies.

Assange "didn't know of the charges until he read them in the right wing tabloid Expressen this morning", Kristinn Hrafnsson, a colleague of Assange's at WikiLeaks, told Agence France-Presse. "There are powerful organizations who want to do harm to WikiLeaks."

Last month, WikiLeaks leaked thousands of classified documents about the war in Afghanistan to newspapers including The New York Times and The Guardian.

The documents showed a stumbling war effort, with fraught relations between U.S. authorities and Pakistan. Officials called the leak one of the biggest security breaches in American military history.

U.S. authorities argued against WikiLeaks publishing further documents from the tens of thousands it had obtained.

Online, some worried that the charges against Assange were part of an attempt to discredit him as he prepares to publish yet more classified documents.

"Julian Assange has become the focus of a smear campaign," blogger Paul Hales wrote on technology blog Thinq.

Assange and WikiLeaks have insisted that they plan to go ahead publishing a further 15,000 or so classified documents relating to the war in Afghanistan, despite possible legal action from U.S. authorities.

"The documents are likely to lift the lid on more atrocities committed by forces in Afghanistan in the polluted name of freedom," Hales wrote.

In a Twitter post early this morning, WikiLeaks said, 'We were warned to expect "dirty tricks.' Now we have the first one," with a link to the Expressen story.

Assange is not believed to have turned himself in to authorities. He was in Sweden when the charges were made public, having attended a press conference and spoken at a seminar in recent weeks.

Before the warrant was withdrawn, Hrafnsson told AFP that Assange was planning to turn himself in.

Assange attended 37 different schools as a child, moving frequently thanks to his parents' work in a touring theater company, according to a profile in The Daily Telegraph.

Assange has no home address, though he frequently is found in Iceland and Sweden, countries whose laws protect Internet anonymity.