Swedish prosecutors are dropping their investigation into Julian Assange

Swedish prosecutors said on Friday they would drop a preliminary investigation into an allegation of rape against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Friday, bringing to an end a 7-year legal stand-off.

"Chief Prosecutor Marianne Ny has today decided to discontinue the preliminary investigation regarding suspected rape concerning Julian Assange," the prosecutors office said in a statement.

Julian Assange responded to the news on Twitter by posting a smiling photo.

Assange, 45, has lived in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, after taking refuge there to avoid extradition to Sweden over the allegation of rape, which he denies.

Assange has maintained that if he went to Sweden to answer questions about the allegations, he would then be extradited to the US for his activities on Wikileaks.

The publishing platform has repeatedly drawn the ire of the American government for its publication of highly classified documents, including internal memos from US embassies and its "Collateral Murder" video. In the run-up to the US election last year, it released emails documents taken from the Democratic Party in the US which experts believe were stolen by Russian hackers.

This story is developing...