Julian Assange: UK tells Ecuador that harbouring WikiLeaks founder is not

“Ecuador must recognise its decision to harbour Mr Assange has prevented the proper course of justice”. He feared he could eventually be extradited from there to the U.S.to face charges for publishing thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables on the WikiLeaks website.

Swedish prosecutors on Thursday dropped cases of lesser sexual misconduct against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange but said they still want to question him on accusations of rape made after his visit to Stockholm five years ago.

“Now that the statute of limitations has expired on certain offences, I am obliged to drop part of the investigation”, prosecutor Marianne New York said.

“I am extremely disappointed. I am an innocent man”, Assange said, in a statement issued after the prosecutor’s decision. He ha been under investigation of United States.

After failing to fight extradition to Sweden through the British courts, Assange took refuge in June 2012 inside Ecuador’s small diplomatic mission.

But Sweden and Ecuador have been at loggerheads over how the interview should be conducted.

A statement from Julian Assange, presumably typed at his computer, which has been set up along with a treadmill and a sun lamp-the embassy has no garden-in a small back office at the embassy in Knightsbridge, expressed his dismay at the continuing farce.

Ecuador’s government “deplores the continued inaction of British and Swedish authorities over nearly 1,000 days”, read the statement.

“During that time, the Ecuadoran foreign ministry’s proposals and calls for dialogue have fallen on deaf ears”, it said in a statement.

Claes Borgstrom, a lawyer for one of the two women who accused Assange of assault in 2010, said his client was trying to come to terms with the likelihood that the case will never be tried. But at the same time a weight has been lifted.

Swedish authorities told daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter that a judicial treaty with Ecuador is required before the case can proceed, but that one would not be in place before the three charges expire on Thursday.

Assange has compared living inside the embassy to life on a space station.