Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy organization who was released from a British jail late last week, is facing a new challenge: the leak of a 68-page confidential Swedish police report that sheds new light on the allegations of sexual misconduct that led to Mr. Assange’s legal troubles.
The Swedish report traces events over a four-day period in August when Mr. Assange had what he has described as consensual sexual relationships with two Swedish women.
Their accounts, which form the basis of an extradition case against Mr. Assange, are that their encounters with him began consensually, but became nonconsensual when he persisted in having unprotected sex with them in defiance of their insistence that he use a condom.
The case has prompted widespread controversy, with supporters of Mr. Assange alleging that he is the victim, and the women are complicit, in an American-inspired vendetta for WikiLeaks’ posting of hundreds of thousands of secret American documents on the Internet.
Conspiracy, supporters of Mr. Assange have said, is the explanation for what they described as an improbable coincidence — that he should be facing potential criminal charges just as he is taking on the United States government. These critics have also pointed to Swedish prosecutors’ flip-flopping in the case — reviving allegations that had at one point been mostly dropped — as more evidence of the manipulation of the case.
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