Assange v Swedish Prosecution Authority the course of the legal proceedings was the claimed fear that Assange could ultimately be extradited to United States of America should he be sent to Sweden. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has stated that "the various forms of deprivation of liberty to which Julian Assange has been subjected constitute a form of arbitrary detention", calling for the case to be closed and Assange to be allowed to walk free. On 20 August 2010, two women, a 26-year-old living in Enköping and a 31-year-old living in Stockholm, jointly went to the Swedish police not seeking to bring
Julian Assange didn't think this was anything more than just distracting." Eventually, the plan was not pursued and, under Assange's advice, Snowden sought asylum in Russia. Paris newspaper "Le Monde", in its edition of 3 July 2015, published an open letter from Assange to French President François Hollande in which Assange urged the French government to grant him refugee status. Assange wrote that "only France now has the ability to offer me the necessary protection against, and exclusively against, the political persecution that I am currently the object of." In the letter Assange wrote, "By welcoming me, France would fulfill a humanitarian