Swedish court upholds warrant for Assange

HELSINKI -- A Swedish court Wednesday rejected a request to overturn the arrest warrant of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange because there were no new circumstances to consider.

The Stockholm District Court said it made the decision because Assange still is wanted for questioning in a case of suspected rape, and "there is still a risk that he will depart or in some other way evade prosecution or penalty."

The court said it saw no reason to hold another detention hearing, saying he would remain "detained in absentia."

Thomas Olsson, Assange's lawyer in Sweden, said he would appeal the ruling because "the passivity of the prosecutor had delayed the investigation in an unacceptable" way.

"The prosecutor ought to have arranged for an interview with Mr. Assange at a far earlier stage and she hasn't presented any reasons for not arranging an interview," he said.

Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, is wanted for questioning by Swedish police over rape allegations stemming from his visit to the country in 2010. He denies all the accusations against him made by two women.

He has refused to go back to Sweden for fear of being extradited to the United States because of an investigation into WikiLeaks' dissemination of hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. documents.

Last year, a U.S. federal court confirmed there are "active and ongoing" attempts to prosecute him and WikiLeaks in an investigation involving espionage, conspiracy, and computer fraud.

Referring to an earlier hearing by a U.N. panel that Assange's stay at the embassy constitutes arbitrary detention, the Stockholm court said it disagrees with the evaluation, and it does not consider his stay at the embassy as "a form of detention."

The British and Swedish governments have rejected the U.N. panel's non-binding findings.