As of 19 November 2019, the prosecution dropped the case because "the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed" although they were confident in the complainant.

[9][10] According to the police report filed in response to a complaint by Anna Ardin [sv],[11] she had arranged Assange's trip to Sweden and he stayed at her flat while she was out of town.

Ardin told police she realised he was trying to have unprotected sex with her, held her down and stopped her from reaching for a condom before agreeing to use it, but she said he had "done something" to it that made it rip, which he denied.

[26][29][30] On 1 September 2010, Överåklagare (Director of Public Prosecution) Marianne Ny decided to resume the preliminary investigation concerning all of the original allegations.

[19][20][34] On 18 November 2010, Marianne Ny ordered the detention of Julian Assange on suspicion of rape, three cases of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.

[3][38][39] Assange presented himself to and was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police Extradition Unit at Scotland Yard on 7 December 2010,[40][41][42] and was remanded to London's Wandsworth Prison.

"[83][84][85] Assange remained in the Ecuadorian embassy until 11 April 2019, when he was arrested for violating his 2012 bail conditions after the Metropolitan Police Service were invited in by the Ambassador of Ecuador to the United Kingdom.

[86] On 24 June 2014, The Guardian reported that Assange's lawyers filed a request to Stockholm District Court to release controversial telephone evidence, based on an update to Sweden's code of judicial procedure (1 June 2014) to conform with EU law including a new provision that those arrested or detained have the right to be made aware of "facts forming the basis for the decision to arrest".

[90] Ecuador immediately issued a statement: "The Ecuadorian Government reaffirms its offer of judicial cooperation to the Kingdom of Sweden, to reach a prompt solution to the case.

In this sense Ecuador keeps its invitation to judicial officers visit the London Embassy so that Julian Assange can be interviewed or via videoconference.

[88][92] The court issued a statement saying the detention order hadn't been enforced because Assange was in the embassy and criticising the prosecution for not having done more to advance the case by examining alternative avenues.

[111] According to the BBC, this may explain the Swedish prosecutor's reluctance to question Assange in London, insisting it would "lower the quality of the interview".

[112] On 12 August 2015, Swedish prosecutors announced that, as the statute of limitations for the less serious allegations had run out, and they had not succeeded in interviewing Assange, they would end part of their preliminary investigation.

[100] On 5 February 2016, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights announced that the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had found that the UK and Swedish governments were holding Assange in arbitrary detention by initially keeping him in isolation at Wandsworth prison and because the Swedish prosecutor was conducting its investigation with a "lack of diligence".

[119] The UK Foreign Office said "an allegation of rape is still outstanding and a European Arrest Warrant in place, so the U.K. continues to have a legal obligation to extradite Mr. Assange to Sweden" should he leave the embassy.

[120] On 1 March 2016, 500 prominent Assange supporters, including Nobel prize winners, politicians and human rights organisations, signed an open letter accusing the UK and Sweden of undermining the UN.

This followed public statements made by CIA Director Mike Pompeo that Wikileaks was a "hostile intelligence service" and Attorney General Jeff Sessions that the U.S. was stepping up its efforts against leaks of sensitive information when asked about Assange.

[5][6] Swedish Justice Minister Morgan Johansson blamed Assange for the lack of progress in the case and said he "did not want to come to Sweden to explain and to be interrogated".

[132][133] Swedish Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Eva-Marie Persson applied to have Assange detained as a prelude to the issue of a European arrest warrant and extradition to Sweden.

[135][136] In 2013, prosecutor Marianne Ny wrote to the CPS and said that she was obliged to consider to lift the detention order and withdraw the European arrest warrant if the actions were not proportionate to the time passing, the costs and seriousness of the crime.

[135] Stefania Maurizi, the journalist who sought the correspondence under Freedom of Information legislation, stated in 2023 that the CPS has never produced a written policy justifying the destruction of the documents.

Melzer criticised Swedish prosecutors for, among other things, allegedly changing one of the women's statements without her involvement, to make it sound like a possible rape.

Melzer described the Swedish rape investigation as "abuse of judicial processes aimed at pushing a person into a position where he is unable to defend himself".

In an open letter, they said that on the issue of sexual violence, Melzer's intervention was "both legally erroneous and harmful to the development and protection of human rights law."

[144] Assange suggested that the Swedish allegations were trumped up in retaliation for his WikiLeaks work and part of a Pentagon programme of "dirty tricks to ruin us".

[145][146][147] Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Assange would be safer in Sweden than the UK and the suggestion that "the Swedes are after him as a CIA conspiracy to get him to Stockholm and allowing him to be bundled off to Langley, Virginia is sheer fantasy".

[28] Kate Harding, wrote in Salon that "[y]ou don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to find the timing of Interpol's warrant for the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ...

[154] Kate Harding, wrote in Salon that, as far as she could tell, the only source for the CIA claim was a Counterpunch article by Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett "that reads like a screenplay treatment by a college freshman who's terrified of women.

"[150][155] Alex Gibney wrote that Shamir's son Johannes Wahlström "helped to engineer a vilification campaign against the two women who accused Mr. Assange of sexual assaults.

[161] Assange told journalist Raffi Khatchadourian that Sweden had a "very, very poor judicial system" that he said was driven by a "crazed radical feminist ideology".