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Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#171

Post by crdoconnor »

notahacker wrote: post #90
coldtea wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it was a shady "character assassination" attempt without real standing in the first place... "*The woman of whom Mr. Assange is accused of the offence of "lesser rape" (a technical term in Swedish law) sent an SMS to a friend saying that she "did not want to accuse JA [of] anything" and "it was the police who made up the charges". The other woman tweeted in 2013 that she had never been raped. Both women’s tes…

Strangely, the women's lawyers had a slightly different view of their desire to pursue the matter through the court than the Assange campaign to prevent the matter going to trial. It stretches credulity to argue that responsibility for the affair lies more with the "big powers" than the decision of two apparently major fans to report him to the police after comparing notes on his sexual behaviour. And suggesting the…

>Strangely, the women's lawyers had a slightly different view of their desire to pursue the matter through the court than the Assange campaign to prevent the matter going to trial.

You mean the politician-lawyer Claes Borgstrom who was subsequently fired by the woman in question because he wasn't representing her and "he just wanted to be attached to a high profile case"?

Yeah, nothing suspicious about that.

>It stretches credulity to argue that responsibility for the affair lies more with the "big powers" than the decision of two apparently major fans to report him to the police

"They are trying to arrest him on suspicion of XYZ … It is definitely a fit-up… Their timings are too convenient right after Cablegate." -- GCHQ officer, "straining credulity" with their wacky conspiracy theory.

>And suggesting the "bad apple" most at fault for the whole affair is somehow the second prosecutor to look at the case is just unhinged.

Because cases being dropped and then picked up again suddenly by people much higher up the political food chain isn't at all suspicious. That's just unhinged...

>If the state wanted to railroad Assange, he'd have been in jail a lot quicker on much more straightforward charges

Aside from the whole "first amendment" problem which prevented the straightforward charges, rape is a much better charge than treason if you can make it stick. It kills his credibility and prevents him from being martyred (like happened to Chelsea Manning).

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#172

Post by nailer »

efraim wrote: post #152
mihular wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it does. Not wanting to interview him, not having any valid evidence, dubious victims, etc.

It really doesn't. They wanted to question him, he fled and locked himself up in an embassy. You don't know what evidence they have but rape cases such as this rarely have any physical evidence but they should still be investigated.

They had five years to question him before they finally did. The Swedish prosecutor's bluff was called by the prosecutor refusing to question him without extraditing him first.

Edit: not normally one to complain about downvotes on HN but Assange inviting Nyberg to the embassy repeatedly over the last 5 years is factually provable and not in dispute by anyone pro or anti Wikileaks.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#173

Post by cjrp »

contingencies wrote: post #75

Congratulations Julian! It's been a long time coming. On a related note, for those unaware, the asylum seekers who helped Snowden escape Hong Kong are currently under threat of being sent back to their own countries (which they left for various reasons including violence, torture and rape). Snowden has called for people to help them. 56% of the €100k goal has been raised so far. https://www.gofundme.com/snowdenguardi…

Really? We're congratulating people who successfully skip bail now?

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#174

Post by rorykoehler »

timwaagh wrote: post #161

i dont like it when a rapist goes free. what i like less is his apologists. it is like with trump. if you have enough followers it is apparantly ok to mistreat women. i suppose 5 years of sitting in an ecuadoran embassy is no fun but he still escaped justice.

If i believed for one second that he committed rape there is no way i would defend him. This was an attempt to frame him due to his political journalism. To infer otherwise is to be malicious or incredibly naive. The people out to get him have a war machine behind them that has millions of deaths on their hands and somehow we're supposed to believe he would be treated fairly. If you believe that I've got a rich deceased uncle in Nigeria who wants to send you a few million.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#175

Post by mcv »

dalbasal wrote: post #118

I suppose the ball is now in the US' court . Assange is a strange case, hes (Wikileaks is) really a journalist, and should be protected by laws and conventions protecting journalists. But he doesn't seem to identify too strongly with the press and presents more like a political dissident. I used to live in Melbourne (where wikileaks is sort of based). I stopped to sign a petition in his support. The petition mentione…

When he still was just a journalist receiving and disseminating leaked information, I supported him. But after the Manning leaks, his power seems to have gone to his head, and he thought he could get away with anything.

Journalists need to be protected from persecution for their work as journalism, but they don't get a free license to violate laws in completely unrelated cases. Rape is still rape.

And his recent grandstanding trying to manipulate elections through mostly bluff, is really disgusting. I'm done with him. He doesn't stand for anything I support anymore.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#176

Post by kristianc »

vidarh wrote: post #108
r721 wrote: post #49

David Allen Green‏, Law and policy commentator at @FT: >It is now easier for US to obtain Assange's extradition, if they (ever) wanted it. >Now only UK's consent required, not UK and Sweden. https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/86550564980685619...

That assessment, though, is based on an assumption that Swedish authorities would have complied with Swedish law. Part of Assanges fear of going to Sweden, whether justified or not, is presumably that Sweden had a history of letting Swedish police get away with blatantly violating Swedish law in support of US rendition. One could argue that this risk is not real in his case, but that is/was not relevant to whether or…

> Part of that fear was presumably based in the unusual persistence of the Swedish prosecutor, which implied something odd was going on. But that "something odd" might simply have been the prosecutors ambitions.

The law is the law, and Assange stood accused of a serious crime in Sweden. The idea that Sweden would simply forget about it because Assange had holed himself up in an embassy for five years seems misplaced.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#177

Post by notahacker »

vidarh wrote: post #158
notahacker wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Assange truly feared the police blatantly violating Swedish law in support of rendition, then it would seem strange for him to base himself in Sweden, remain in the country whilst being well aware of the investigation under way against him and leave only on the day they notified him they'd received legal authorisation to detain him. And then repeat the whole thing in the UK...

They had closed the case, and notified him of that. Then a new prosecutor reopens the case and goes after him. The point is that Sweden might very well have seemed perfectly safe despite those past actions until a prosecutor took those steps which still seems exceedingly odd. To have one prosecutor say there was no case to answer, only to have another prosecutor specifically go after the case and reopen it, is uncomm…

(i)The case was very publicly reopened the week after it had been announced it was being dropped. I mean, it's not like headlines like this would have escaped Assange's notice http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/rape-investig...

Assange spent 26 more days in the country and then flew out hours after his arrest warrant was signed.

(ii) there's nothing particularly unusual about a more senior prosecutor overriding an earlier decision of a more junior prosecutor following an appeal from the alleged victims' lawyer and an interview with the accused. Especially when it's a one-party's word against another's case and the accusing party had initially seemed reluctant to pursue a prosecution.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#178

Post by ThomPete »

efraim wrote: post #141
belorn wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question was tested by the Swedish court, and they found that the prosecutor was able to continue the investigation by questioning Assange in the embassy through an agreement between the Ecuador and Sweden. This decision to drop the case was partial because of the result of that interview.

That interview was led by a prosecutor from Ecuador. The Swedish prosecutor and police was only allowed to be present, so they could not question Assange as they wanted.

Which means nothing unless you are talking about interrogation.

They could just have decided they didn't get good enough questions and kept the case open. They didn't because there isn't a case.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#179

Post by toyg »

PJDK wrote: post #146
toyg wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This absolutely should not be about politics but about the rule of law. But it is about politics. No other bail-skipper in recent memory was ever granted the attention and resources that the UK police granted to the Assange case. It's also pretty clear by now that the Swedish charges were overblown, with very strong suggestions that it was done for political reasons. Hiding behind procedures will not change that. A…

Has there been any kind of comparable instance though? Had he skipped bail by just not showing up we could compare the manhunt that happened with any other bail skipper. But his location was very publicly known - what would a reasonable government do in that situation in your view?

As you say, this is not a simple criminal case - criminals don't broadcast their location when skipping bail. So you have to deal with it politically. A reasonable government would have done that a long time ago, getting Sweden to change its stance sooner (as it eventually happened anyway, like most people asked for and predicted, since it had been done before). Once that is sorted, you can liquidate it all as "a big misunderstanding" without losing face.

Unfortunately now it's very late, and I find it hard to believe the person responsible for this stupid position in the first place, currently leading the country, will do anything smart to resolve this for good.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#180

Post by cjrp »

baby wrote: post #157
chx wrote: post #39

Is there a good article -- does even anyone know? -- on how did Wikileaks turn from a whistleblower into a mouthpiece of the Kremlin? Edit: some examples: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/... https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/03/...

> how did Wikileaks turn from a whistleblower into a mouthpiece of the Kremlin? Examples are not proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

He hosted a show on Russia Today; he was literally a mouthpiece of the Kremlin.
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