Assange has not been formally charged with any crime to date, though the possible charges against him have been variously described in journalistic shorthand as rape, sexual assault and/or sexual molestation.

Some of his defenders have written off the police investigation as being merely about his having had “unprotected sex” with two women.  Others, relying mostly on innuendo, have suggested a dark conspiracy with one of his accusers having supposed links to  “U.S. funded, CIA-Tied Anti-Castro groups.”

To some of his more strident detractors, Assange is nothing less than a “collateral rapist.”

None of these hasty polemics help much to explain all of the facts behind the Swedish case, a case on which more than just the personal future of Assange might be staked.

Perhaps the most comprehensive, thorough and dispassionate unpacking –detail by detail—of the events leading up to the Swedish sex accusations was penned by Richard Pendlebury in the London-based Daily Mail.

In a meticulously researched piece of reporting laced with a compelling narrative, Pendlebury presents all the nuanced facets of the story and lays out the exact timeline of events. 

While it would be unfair to the author and to the reader to try and summarize his findings (the central value of the piece is its hyper-detail), Pendlebury does conclude that the charges being considered by Swedish authorities “simply don’t ring true.”

Conceding that there might exist information possessed by police to which the public has no access, Pendlebury weighs what is available and says “there is scant evidence — in the public domain at least — of rape, sexual molestation or unlawful coercion."

Please read the entire piece and make up your own mind.

And here is a related piece with a different take, from Kate Harding at Salon, denouncing what she calls the “smear” on “Assange’s rape accuser.”