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JULIAN ASSANGE

ECUADOR

Lawyers: Assange’s texts may cast doubt on sex claims

Text messages sent between Julian Assange and the woman he's accused of raping need to be made public, his lawyers have argued.

Lawyers: Assange's texts may cast doubt on sex claims
Julian Assange is still at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth/TT
Julian Assange's lawyers have written to Stockholm District Court asking for the SMS conversation between the Wikileaks founder and the woman he's accused of forcing to have sex with him to be read out at the next court hearing discussing the claims.
 
In their request, Thomas Olsson and Per E. Samuelsson argue that the text messages will reveal that “there is probable cause to be suspicious of the alleged crimes”.
 
However they point out that prosecutors have so far denied both them and their client access to the texts, which the alleged victim saved and passed on to police.
 
The duo argue that while the claimant gave her version of the story years ago, Assange has still not been able to share his perspective and is in danger of not recieving a fair trial for the crimes he insists he is innocent of.
 
The lawyers' bid to access the text messages comes amid a long running tit-for-tat between Assange's team and Swedish officials. 
 
Prosecutors in Stockholm said last month that they were still seeking to question Assange over claims he raped a woman in Sweden in 2010, but argued he should not be allowed to walk free from his bolthole at the the Ecuadorian embassy in London in the meantime.
 
Last year Assange's team suggested that Swedish prosecutors had stalled the deadocked justice process by not questioning him in London, however it later emerged that Ecuador had rejected a request by the Swedes.
 
The fugitive sought refuge at the South American outpost in June 2012 after exhausting all his legal options in Britain against extradition to Sweden. He fears that if he were sent to the Nordic nation, he could be extradited to the United States to be tried over the publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents.
 
Earlier this year Assange's legal team asked the Stockholm court to lift the pan-European warrant for his arrest but had their request denied.