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Sweden has withdrawn an arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who had been wanted on suspicion of rape and molestation, the National Prosecutor’s Office said today.
It said in a statement on its website that Chief Prosecutor Eva Finne had determined there were not enough grounds for the warrant.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office said Assange (picture), whose whistle-blowing website last month published secret US military files on Afghanistan, was no longer wanted by Swedish authorities.
“She (Finne) has come to the decision that he is no longer suspected of rape. All the charges concerning rape have been lifted,” she told Reuters.
Najibullah Zazi was arrested by F.B.I. agents in Aurora, Colo., late Saturday.
Najibullah Zazi is accused of making false statements to officials about an alleged bomb plot in the United States.
Najibullah Zazi arrives for questioning at the Byron G. Rogers Federal Building in downtown Denver. Worked as airpost shuttle bus driver.
* Najibullah Zazi's arrest followed 3 days of questioning
* All three men accused of lying to federal agents
* FBI: laptop instructions would yield explosive charge
A Colorado man, his father and an accused accomplice in New York are to appear in federal court on Monday on charges of lying to federal agents about a plot to blow up unspecified targets in the United States, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Najibullah Zazi, 24, a native of Afghanistan who works as an airport shuttle bus driver, was questioned by the FBI for three days. He and his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53, were taken into custody on Saturday at an apartment in the Denver suburb of Aurora.
Also arrested was Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, a native of Afghanistan who was living in the Queens borough of New York City, a Department of Justice spokesman said.
Authorities today pressed an urgent investigation into whether a Denver-area airport shuttle driver, his father and associates in New York were part of the first operational Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist plot on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and what the alleged targets might have been.
Najibullah Zazi, 24, an Afghan emigre, and his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53, were arrested late Saturday at their town house in the Denver suburb of Aurora. They had undergone three days of questioning by the FBI but had stopped cooperating, authorities said. Also arrested was Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, of Flushing, N.Y., who was described in court documents as an informant for the New York Police Department.
The court documents suggest that Afzali tried to warn Zazi about authorities' interest in him and his alleged associates in New York. "I was exposed to something yesterday from law enforcement," Afzali said, referring to an interview he had with police, in a call that was intercepted, the documents said. "And they came to ask me about your characters."
While in New York this month, Zazi's vehicle was pulled over and searched. Authorities also raided three apartments in Queens and questioned residents, including an Afghan immigrant who grew up with Zazi.
Reason for being are suspects ?
FBI agents alleged in court documents today that Zazi had admitted receiving weapons and explosives training from Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan last year. In court documents and interviews, they also alleged that a handwritten recipe for homemade explosives was found on Zazi's laptop computer, and said it would have produced a bomb of the same size and type used in the deadly 2005 attacks on London's subways and buses. Authorities said they had seized nine new backpacks during last week's raids in New York.
In announcing the charges early this morning, Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. David Kris said agents are working around the clock, domestically and internationally, in "an ongoing and fast-paced investigation."
Kris acknowledged that authorities "have no specific information regarding the timing, location or target of any planned attack." But he said the alleged plot focused on an effort to detonate explosive devices somewhere in the United States.
When authorities interviewed him Sept. 16, Zazi denied knowing about the handwritten notes about explosives on his laptop, and said he did not write them, court documents say.
And Zazi maintained his innocence on at least one phone call that was secretly intercepted on an FBI wiretap last week. In a conversation with Afzali, Zazi said he had "just [gone] to Pakistan, I didn't do anything wrong."
What is the alleged target of bombing ?
According to news reports, authorities also searched a New York truck rental company, looking for evidence that some of Zazi's alleged associates were plotting a truck bomb.
Other information suggests the men were targeting a sports arena, mass transit hub or other "soft" civilian target with huge crowds of people, authorities said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"The arrests ... are part of an ongoing and fast-paced investigation," David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.
The plot may have been targeting a major transportation center, like a large railroad or subway station, sources close to the investigation told CNN on Thursday. There were plans for an attack, presumably in the New York area, where crowds are large and security screening for nonairport travelers is lax, the sources said.Two sources familiar with the investigation said the younger Zazi had video of New York's Grand Central Terminal, a massive junction of rail and subway lines, as well as shops and restaurants, which see an average of more than a half million visitors per day.
Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley, far left, listens as a multiracial group of officers and union leaders, including Cambridge Police Patrol Officers Union President Steve Killion, foreground right, hold a news conference in Cambridge, Mass. Friday, July 24, 2009 to show support for Crowley, who was the arresting officer of Harvard Prof. Lewis Gates at his home. At center is Sgt. Leon Lashley, who was with Crowley at the scene of the arrest, said later he supports "100 percent" how Crowley handled the situation.
In this photo taken by a neighbor Thursday July 16, 2009, Henry Louis Gates Jr. center, the director of Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research, is arrested at his home in Cambridge, Mass. Cambridge police officers attending are, Sgt. James Crowley, right, and Sgt. Leon Lashley, front right.
President Barack Obama smiles as he talks to the media in the briefing room at the White House in Washington, Friday, July 24, 2009.
FILE - This Aug. 23, 2006 file photo shows Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., during a book signing moments before the screening of a segment of the Spike Lee documentary called "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard.
President Barack Obama pauses as he talks to the media in the briefing room at the White House in Washington, Friday, July 24, 2009.
President Barack Obama gestures as he talks to the media in the briefing room at The White House in Washington, Friday, July 24, 2009.
President Barack Obama pauses as he talks to the media in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, Friday, July 24, 2009.
Cambridge Police Sergeants James Crowley (L) and Leon Lashley stand together at a news conference with representatives of various police unions in Cambridge, Massachusetts July 24, 2009. Sergeant Lashley was on the scene last week when Sergeant Crowley arrested prominent black scholar and Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. after responding to a call about a break-in at Gates' home in Cambridge.
The police union's combative press conference Friday was an example of how the profession closes ranks in times of trouble.
Mere hours after the police union of Cambridge, Mass., brazenly demanded an apology from the president of the United States, it – in essence – got it.
While President Obama's unscheduled appearance at a routine White House press conference was not an explicit apology, Mr. Obama acknowledged that he now regretted his choice of words in a Wednesday night press conference. He had said that Sgt. James Crowley "acted stupidly" for arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on his own front porch.
Hours earlier, a multiracial group of police officers had stood with Crowley in Massachusetts and said the president should apologize.
Obama conceded his words had been ill-chosen, but he stopped short of a public apology. He personally telephoned both Gates and Sgt. James Crowley, hoping to end the rancorous back-and-forth over what had transpired and what Obama had said about it. Trying to lighten the situation, he even commiserated with Crowley about reporters on his lawn.
Knocked off stride by a racial uproar he helped stoke, President Barack Obama hastened Friday to tamp down the controversy. Obama, who had said Cambridge, Mass., police "acted stupidly" in arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., declared the white arresting officer was a good man and invited him and the professor to the White House for a beer.
t was a measure of the nation's keen sensitivities on matters of race that the fallout from a disorderly conduct charge in Massachusetts — and the remarks of America's first black president about it — had mushroomed to such an extent that he felt compelled to make a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room to try to put the matter to rest. The blowup had dominated national attention just as Obama was trying to marshal public pressure to get Congress to push through health care overhaul legislation — and as polls showed growing doubts about his performance.
"This has been ratcheting up, and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up," Obama said of the racial controversy. "I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department and Sgt. Crowley specifically. And I could've calibrated those words differently."
"The fact that this has garnered so much attention, I think, is testimony to the fact that these are issues that are still very sensitive here in America," Obama said.
"I don't know if you've noticed, but nobody's been paying much attention to health care," the president said.
There were signs both that Obama's statement had helped to ease tensions and that his critics were not about to let that be the end of it: A trio of Massachusetts police organizations issued a statement thanking the president for his "willingness to reconsider his remarks." And a Republican congressman from Michigan, Thaddeus McCotter, said he would introduce a House resolution calling on Obama to apologize to Crowley.
He said the police officer "wanted to find out if there was a way of getting the press off his lawn."
"I informed him that I can't get the press off my lawn," Obama joked.
The case began on Monday, when word broke that Gates, 58, had been arrested five days earlier at the two-story home he rents from Harvard.
Supporters including Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson called the arrest an outrageous act of racial profiling. Public interest increased when a photograph surfaced of the handcuffed Gates being escorted off his porch amid three officers, two white and one black.
Cambridge police moved to drop the disorderly conduct charge on Tuesday — without apology, but calling the case "regrettable."
Meanwhile, the police union and fellow officers, black and white, rallied around Crowley, a decorated officer who in 1993 tried to give lifesaving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Reggie Lewis, a black Boston Celtics player who collapsed at practice. Lewis could not be revived.
Crowley, 42, had been selected to be a police academy instructor on how to avoid racial profiling.
A multiracial group of officers and union officials stood with Crowley on Friday at a news conference to show support and to ask Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who is black, to apologize for their comments. Patrick had called Gates' arrest "every black man's nightmare."
Obama's take on the situation: "My sense is you've got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in a way that it should have been resolved."
Prof Henry Louis Gates is a prominent Harvard scholar
The US president has said police acted "stupidly" when they arrested a black Harvard scholar outside his own home.
President Obama said Wednesday night that racial issues still haunt America, even as he noted "the incredible progress that has been made."
Obama was asked at the end of his news conference about the arrest last week of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. outside his home. The incident has sparked a national discussion about race relations.
Obama noted that "Skip Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here," and he referred to the professor's account of arriving home to find a jammed door, forcing it open and then being confronted by a white police officer looking for proof that Gates lived in the house. According to Gates's account, he showed the officer his ID and became angry when the officer would not identify himself.
The president said he understands the professor's outrage. If he were trying to "jigger into" his old house in Chicago, Obama said, he would assume that the police would be called on him as well. But once Gates showed his ID, he added, it seemed to him the officer should have considered the issue resolved.
"Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that," Obama said. "But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."
"What I think we know, separate and apart from this incident, is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact," Obama said Wednesday night. He said he had pushed for the passage of a bill in the Illinois legislature to address the problem.
Obama went on to say that he stood in the White House "as testimony to the progress that's been made."
"And yet the fact of the matter is . . . this still haunts us," he said. "And even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently, and oftentime for no cause, casts suspicion, even when there is good cause."
During the confrontation between the two men, the 58-year-old professor reportedly said: "This is what happens to black men in America."
His lawyer said Prof Gates had just returned from a trip overseas and, upon arriving at the property with a driver, found his front door jammed and had to force it open.
By the time police arrived at the house, he and the driver had managed to get inside the property.
According to police, Prof Gates shouted at the officer and accused him of racial bias.
Prof Gates has said he was "outraged" by the arrest and called the officer, Sgt James Crowley, a "rogue policeman". Sgt Crowley has refused to apologise.
Mr Obama said: "I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry.
"Number two... the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."
President Obama: "The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home"
An initial disorderly conduct charge was dropped and Cambridge police called the arrest "regrettable and unfortunate".
Mr Obama said federal officials should work with local police to "improve policing techniques so that we're eliminating potential bias".
He said that when he was in the Illinois state legislature, he had worked towards a racial profiling bill because there was indisputable evidence that African-Americans and Hispanics were being stopped disproportionately.
