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Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

bbc.co.uk

241–250 of 396 posts

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#241
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/...

You know, I harbour a lot of anti-American sentiment too (US government that is, the American people seem mostly fine) and I frequently speak up about it. Does that make me a Russian agent/mouthpiece/troll too?

It is not about being vocal with anti-American sentiment that makes one a Russian agent/mouthpiece/troll.

Conduct and intent have a lot to do with it. Do you use your anti-American sentiment to push a pro-Russian agenda? Do you use inflammatory rhetoric to derail anti-Russian conversations? Do you find yourself repeating pro-Russian propaganda? When you criticize America, is your intent to widen political divides and pit Americans against each other?

If you answered yes to most of the above, it is time to pause and reflect.

The important thing to understand here is that one does not have to be a foreign agent or in the payroll of a foreign government to spread their propaganda. Many people become mouthpieces of various governments unwittingly, usually over a period of time. Then when someone points out their obvious bias, they get genuinely offended.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#242
post #222
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Edited: You're right. The Swedish prosecutor and police were present but indeed the questions were posed on their behalf. > On Monday morning, a Swedish deputy chief prosecutor, Ingrid Isgren, and a police inspector, Cecilia Redell, arrived at the Ecuadorean Embassy, in the Knightsbridge section of West London, as journalists gathered outside. I don't think this means that Sweden didn't get the chance to ask question…

Did you read your link? Ecuador was the one that shut him out and the questions were asked by a prosecutor from Ecuador.

>The questions were prepared by prosecutors in Sweden, where an arrest warrant for Mr. Assange was issued in 2010, but were posed by a prosecutor from Ecuador under an agreement the two countries made in August.

>“For some reason that I am not aware of, I am not on the list of approved persons that Ecuador has established,” Mr. Samuelsson told Radio Sweden.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#243
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…

>than the decision of two apparently major fans to report him to the police after comparing notes on his sexual behaviour

OTOH, it stretches my credulity that the decision lies to the actual fans, with no external motive/pressure on them.

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

Yes, but character assassination works better even if you have no real charges. It even keeps working after/if one is cleared...

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#244
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the "unusual persistence" I was not referring to keeping the case open, but with e.g. continuing to refuse not to interview him for four years for no good reason, while giving reasons that she eventually proved were false by finally agreeing to do it anyway.

You ignore the procedural limitations imposed by Swedish law. The law is a perfectly "good reason" for authorities to act the way they did. It is a rather common meme to accuse Swedes of not conforming to concepts of British/U.S. law (common law system) when Swedish has another system, not any worse but somewhat different in the usage of terms like "charge".

> You ignore the procedural limitations imposed by Swedish law.

Can you clarify this? I'm honestly confused - the topic seems to be the refusal and then acceptance of an in-embassy interview. I could understand if the refusal was a procedural issue, but in that case why was it eventually accepted?

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#245
post #52

It should be noted that the prosecutor had three options: 1: Drop the charges. 2: Drop the arrest order but continue the investigation. To do so require a plan which would progress the investigation. 3: Charge Assange with rape, arguing that the evidence collected so far is enough for a case. And we got the first option, and thus we can conclude that the prosecutor don't have enough evidence to go to court and have n…

You don't have to conclude this since the prosecutor has spoken about it directly:

From https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/world/europe/julian-assan...

"“I can conclude, based on the evidence, that probable cause for this crime still exists,” she said on Friday, the deadline for prosecutors to respond to a court-ordered deadline in the case.

But prosecutors felt that they had no choice but to abandon the investigation because they had concluded that Ecuador would not cooperate, and because all other possibilities had been exhausted."

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#246
post #114
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the "Macron leak"?

What about them? That wasn't wikileaks.

For the downvoters:

Wikileaks weren't the originator of the Macron leaks. They were put up on pastebin anonymously.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/860577607670276096

Wikileaks investigated them to check the veracity of the contents but they weren't behind the leak or the ones who made it public.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#247
post #201
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should the Swedish authorities chase after everyone they want to interview and do it where it pleases that person? If someone is wanted for rape and travels to Thailand, should Swedish prosecutor and police fly to Thailand to question them? What if the interview leads to them wanting to arrest that person, should they arrest them while in another country?

That depends. Should the Swedish authority care more about convenience than about seeking justice? If they care about justice, and they are unable to get the person to Sweden, then it would seem the prudent recourse is to interview that person wherever they are. You'll note that they finally did end up interviewing Assange in London, so they have conceded that it is possible and acceptable to do so. So the question i…

So Assange should get special treatment? On what grounds? He was accused of rape, what if they decided after the interview to arrest him, should they ask nicely that he come along with them?

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really regrettable that he's swung hard into manipulative conspiracy theories and attacks on people he disagrees with or politicians he dislikes. It's much harder to defend his current conduct as journalism, and WL's conduct with more recent leaks and hacked documents (like Macron's campaign) leaves a lot to be desired. In the past, I think you could make a strong argument that he should've been protected as a p…

I don't think he swung. He and Wikileaks were politically fringe people all along, and they were rude and confrontational all along. All of that may make you dislike him/them, but it doesn't make him a criminal or an enemy (as the CIA director labels him).

I don't think anyone anywhere has seriously claimed he's a criminal because he was rude.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 stre…

> 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 No. I mean Elizabeth Massi Fritz, the lawyer who is currently making statements on their behalf that it is "a scandal that a suspected rapist can avoid the judicial system and thus avoid…

>actually undermines the Assangist theory that actually the whole thing was a conspiracy by the authorities that his accusers had no agency in.

The thing being a conspiracy and his accusers having agency in it, are orthogonal matters.

Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

#250
post #189
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Didn't they setup fake accusations to destroy his reputation and make it easier to let the US imprison him? I thought this all was pretty obvious :/

It's as obvious as electricity making people sick and chem trails being used to control peoples minds. And that the earth is flat of course.
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