We just don't know, do we?
We were not there and to be honest it is the first I have heard.
When did all of those who have posted first know about this case?
Perhaps you can give everyone here the short version of all actual events.. Thanks.
It's a famous case.
Julian Assange was the leader of an organisation called Wikileaks that publishes secret squirrel stuff on the Internet. In particular they published some US top secret stuff leaked by a soldier now called Chelsea Manning. She has just been released from prison.
While in Sweden he had relationships with two women who allege he raped them. The most well known alleged incident is one woman consented to have sex with him only if he wore a condom and one morning she woke up to find him having sex with her without a condom.
Before he could be arrested, he fled Sweden to the UK. Sweden put out a European arrest warrant and he was arrested here. He appealed to the British courts not to be extradited to Sweden. I can't remember exactly what his grounds for the appeal was but he claimed Sweden would extradite him to the US for publishing the secret stuff.
The British courts rejected Assange's appeal and ordered him to submit to arrest for extradition. Instead of doing that, he fled to the Ecuador embassy in London and claimed political asylum. He has been there for the last five years.