Swedish prosecutors announced today that they were dropping their investigation of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange into allegations of rape.

Director of Public Prosecutions Marianne Ny and Chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren held a press conference in Stockholm today to discuss the decision, saying it was made not because they believe Assange to be innocent necessarily, but because they were unable to formally serve him the allegations during an interview at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, UK in November 2016, where Assange has been in exile since 2012.

During the press conference Ny asserted that the US had applied absolutely no pressure on Swedish prosecutors about the case. Asked after the conference if they had received any communication or inquiries from the US government about the case, Isgren and Ny said that at the end of March, they received an email from someone purporting to be from the FBI seeking information about the case. They said the inquiry was vague and they simply directed the person to the prosecutor's web site for public information about the case.

Asked who the FBI person was, both said they had no memory of the name and had deleted the email. They asserted that because the email did not have anything to do with advancing the case, they had no reason to retain it. Swedish reporters questioned the legality of this decision, but Isgren and Ny insisted that they acted entirely within the law and regularly delete any communication that doesn't advance a case or help it.