11 ms·

Julian Assange 'disappointed' as sex assault case dropped

• brodo 11y ago
  > He still faces the more serious accusation of rape. This should have been in the headline.
  • notahacker 11y ago
    I presume he is also "disappointed" his entourage has yet to accept the request the Swedish prosecution team claim they have submitted to interview him in the embassy... This seems significant too.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • lazyjones 11y ago
      There are many details regarding this claim and Sweden's (terrible) handling of the negotiations in the Guardian's article: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/11/julian-assange-case-progress-sweden-ecuador-negotiations-wikileaks http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/11/julian-assange-... Wikileaks published a cable from 2012 detailing Ecuador's invitation to question Assange in the embassy. What took Sweden so long?
      • rmc 11y ago
        Ecuador was requiring that Sweden agree to something that they legally cannot agree to. Update: > “As a condition to let Assange be heard they [Ecuador] have demanded a special agreement in which Sweden recognizes asylum status for Assange. But the government cannot make such a commitment because it is the Migration Board which decides whether or not a person has the right to asylum.” From: http://jackofkent.com/2015/08/assange-the-law-of-limitation-and-the-next-eight-days/ http://jackofkent.com/2015/08/assange-the-law-of-limitation-... and http://www.thelocal.se/20150807/sweden-hits-out-at-illegal-ecuador-demands http://www.thelocal.se/20150807/sweden-hits-out-at-illegal-e...
        • smcl 11y ago
          You've said that in another comment, but haven't stated what that exactly it was
          • rmc 11y ago
            I've updated the comment.
            • smcl 11y ago
              Thanks, it does seem a slightly strange request
        • spiralpolitik 11y ago
          Not quite. Ecuador made the offer to Sweden to interview Assange in the embassy as early as 2012. The Swedish prosecutor did nothing until March this year when she was prompted to do something by higher ups due to the statute of limitations. Sweden then made the formal request in June which led to what you describe. If Sweden was serious about getting this sorted out then they could have done so years ago. Instead they've been unusually inflexible about the whole affair which makes the whole thing smell even more than it did at the beginning.
          • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
            Swedes, inflexible? Incredible.
          • pionar 11y ago
            Or, one could argue that Ecuador changed the deal when Sweden finally took them up on the offer. (I don't have a dog in this fight, I just find the whole situation interesting.)
            • spiralpolitik 11y ago
              I suspect that the terms and conditions didn't start getting thrashed out until Sweden made the formal request. At this level of play there is usually a lot of red tape to work through as two legal systems collide. Which is why you don't leave it to the last minute. (While I admire the work WikiLeaks has done, I find Assange to be an egotistical idiot but given the number of unusual events that have occurred during this whole affair one can't help being interested.)
  • Sone7 11y ago
    The two women say they were not raped, and were railroaded by Swedish police. So why exactly should that have been the headline?
    • obstacle1 11y ago
      >So why exactly should that have been the headline? Because the actual headline doesn't support or agree with the SJW agenda.
    • hahainternet 11y ago
      [citation-needed]
      • Sone7 11y ago
        "On a point of law, the Swedish Supreme Court has decided Ny can continue to obstruct on the vital issue of the SMS messages. This will now go to the European Court of Human Rights. What Ny fears is that the SMS messages will destroy her case against Assange. One of the messages makes clear that one of the women did not want any charges brought against Assange, "but the police were keen on getting a hold on him". She was "shocked" when they arrested him because she only "wanted him to take [an HIV] test". She "did not want to accuse JA of anything" and "it was the police who made up the charges". (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been "railroaded by police and others around her".) Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, "I have not been raped." -from http://johnpilger.com/articles/assange-the-untold-story-of-an-epic-struggle-for-justice http://johnpilger.com/articles/assange-the-untold-story-of-a...
        • hahainternet 11y ago
          I can't find any primary sources for the witness statement quote. Do you have anything with direct citations? Obviously googling for this is almost impossible.
          • 11y ago
  • gadders 11y ago
    Presumably he would also face some sanction by British authorities for breaching his bail conditions.
• rmc 11y ago
  The Ecudardian embassy/Assange demanded from the Swedes that they agree to something that they legally cannot agree to before interviewing him. It's not really fair to blame the Swedish authorities for that.
  • fred2133 11y ago
    Yeah, but the BBC are rewriting an Assange press-release, not a Swedish press-release.
  • wereHamster 11y ago
    > that they agree to something that they legally cannot agree I'm curious what that was.
    • rmc 11y ago
      > “As a condition to let Assange be heard they [Ecuador] have demanded a special agreement in which Sweden recognizes asylum status for Assange. But the government cannot make such a commitment because it is the Migration Board which decides whether or not a person has the right to asylum.” From: http://jackofkent.com/2015/08/assange-the-law-of-limitation-and-the-next-eight-days/ http://jackofkent.com/2015/08/assange-the-law-of-limitation-... and http://www.thelocal.se/20150807/sweden-hits-out-at-illegal-ecuador-demands http://www.thelocal.se/20150807/sweden-hits-out-at-illegal-e... Basically they want the Government to interfere in another body's decision. Could you imagine if the someone asked the US government (or Obama) to agree that the Supreme Court will find a certain way?
    • cmdkeen 11y ago
      That Sweden recognise his asylum claim in Ecuador as valid, which the Swedish prosecutor does not have the legal authority to do. There is a good writeup from a British legal blogger at http://jackofkent.com/2015/08/assange-the-law-of-limitation-and-the-next-eight-days/ http://jackofkent.com/2015/08/assange-the-law-of-limitation-... It's worth picking out as well that Assange faces British legal issues from breaching his bail conditions. The bail set during his very lengthy legal process which validated the Swedish process as just. The British legal system isn't perfect but when you're a high profile individual with access to plenty of fine legal minds it's about as good as you're going to get.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• youngtaff 11y ago
  Oh such crocodile tears… He could have avoided disappointment by allowing the Swedish authorities to question him! All that time he was stuck in a Norfolk mansion he could have travelled to Sweden been questioned and if he was innocent as he claims be free to travel the world again.
  • BasDirks 11y ago
    But wasn't he afraid of extradition?
    • fwn 11y ago
      Yep. But that is often left out. (No accusation intended. It's just something people forget.)
      • mike-cardwell 11y ago
        They don't forget. They leave it out on purpose because it destroys their argument. Oh. If only he'd have done this thing that I'm telling you, without mentioning the well known reason why he is against doing that thing!
      • cmdkeen 11y ago
        Well he became afraid of extradition conveniently at the point at which he was facing extradition. Before then he was quite happy to spend lots of time in the West apparently unconcerned by the threat. Something that is often left out... The UK was happy to extradite him to Sweden, we extradite people to the US as long as they aren't going to be executed. So quite why the UK extraditing him to Sweden who would then extradite him to the US is a plausible conspiracy never really gets explained.
        • PJDK 11y ago
          Particularly since he could still appeal back to the UK if Sweden tried to extradite him. Also weird this wasn't an argument he brought up while fighting the initial extradition to Sweden.
• belorn 11y ago
  From the perspective of fact finding and evidence collecting, the case was for all practical purposes finished August 31, 2010. The last interview occurred that day which was with Assange, and there he was told of the charges against him which was when he then told his side of the story. All this could be read in the news papers a few days later thanks to the leaked investigation documents.
• jamespo 11y ago
  Wonderful how Assange wants everything done on his terms, if I was accused of a serious crime I'd want to be questioned from somewhere they couldn't extract me from too.
  • Dylan16807 11y ago
    You act like that's an unreasonable demand. Questioning is not arrest, and does not need the ability to arrest.
  • woah 11y ago
    Sweden has questioned many people in London. For some reason, they wanted to make a special exception for Assange. Why?
  • vinceguidry 11y ago
    It's Ecuador demanding the terms, not Assange. What makes this whole process so strange is the fact that there's multiple countries involved. Each country has it's own idea of human rights, it's own conception of judicial process. Judicial process in one country can easily resemble a human rights violation in another. It's one of the reasons political asylum exists. Ecuador granted Assange asylum because they recognize the possibility of Assange being extradited to a country where he's never resided for a political crime and possibly tortured for is a grave rights violation. Ecuador is now responsible for ensuring that those rights aren't violated. They're the one's laying out the conditions, not Assange. It would make Ecuador look bad if they allowed Sweden to take charge of him, and then he ended up being extradited to the US by an organ that doesn't recognize his asylum status in another country. Everybody involved is just trying to do their jobs, it just takes a long time to work everything out because the legal systems involved were never intended to work like this. If it were just one system, it could work as designed.
    • rmc 11y ago
      > It's Ecuador demanding the terms, not Assange. I'd be shocked if Assange didn't agree to them.
  • 11y ago
• Bohahahaha 11y ago
  Assange was now 5yrs 'imprisoned', how much would he have gotten in Sweden on the charges? (if proven guilty)
  • onezeno 11y ago
    The bigger issue is would he have been extradited to the US to face draconian charges for whistleblowing.
  • kiiski 11y ago
    I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know much about Swedish law, but based on Finnish law (which tends to be very similar to Swedish), the maximum combined sentence for all the charges would have been 7 years in prison. The combined sentence is capped to the maximum for the most severe charge plus 3 years (when the most severe max is at least 4 years). In this case the most severe one is "lesser degree rape", for which the max is 4 years (that is still open). Based on what I've read about the case, I would have been very surprised if the actual sentence was anywhere near the maximum. Probably more like a year for the rape and another for the other three charges, if they even hold up in court.
    • rmc 11y ago
      There's another sentence. For life, Julian Assange could be talked about as "a convicted rapist".
  • knodi123 11y ago
    That's never what he was concerned about. What he was concerned about was Sweden convicting him, and then once they have him, extraditing to the US to be thrown in a deep dark hole for the rest of his life for espionage.
  • jbssm 11y ago
    Assange was not particularly afraid of the outcome of the rape allegations. He was afraid of Sweden extraditing him to the USA.
• Bohahahaha 11y ago
  Love this in the Guardian article: "Sweden’s justice ministry said it welcomed Ecuador’s acceptance of its offer of negotiations, but the Guardian understands the ministry rejected a proposal by Quito to meet this week because officials were on holiday" http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/11/julian-assange-case-progress-sweden-ecuador-negotiations-wikileaks http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/11/julian-assange-...
• Bohahahaha 11y ago
  "The Republic of Ecuador already made the sovereign decision to grant the journalist Julian Assange asylum on 16 August 2012. At no point has the Republic of Ecuador asked the Kingdom of Sweden to grant Mr. Assange asylum." http://reinounido.embajada.gob.ec/statement-by-the-embassy-of-ecuador-to-the-united-kingdom-on-the-assange-matter/ http://reinounido.embajada.gob.ec/statement-by-the-embassy-o...
• discardorama 11y ago
  The aim was to put a damper on is activities, and for the most part, it's been achieved. The Ecuadorian embassy is practically a jail for him.
  • jacobr 11y ago
    The "aim", by who?
• cinquemb 11y ago
  Are the Met Police still spending ~$16k per day on him? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/londons-police-is-spending-11-per-minute-to-stake-out-julian-assange/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/londons-police-is...
  • bruceb 11y ago
    I am sure 16k a day is a BS number anyway.
• Bohahahaha 11y ago
  "A Freedom of Information request by the Hazel Press news organisation revealed that Sweden has been granted 44 requests to interview a witness or suspect in the UK since 2010." https://uk.news.yahoo.com/swedish-prosecutors-slammed-victimising-julian-assange-wikileaks-100414957.html https://uk.news.yahoo.com/swedish-prosecutors-slammed-victim...
• Bohahahaha 11y ago
  "Those doubting the degree of ruthlessness Assange can expect should remember the forcing down of the Bolivian president's plane in 2013 - wrongly believed to be carrying Edward Snowden." If you think of Sweden as ABBA, think again: "In December 2010, The Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US." "The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation" http://johnpilger.com/articles/assange-the-untold-story-of-an-epic-struggle-for-justice http://johnpilger.com/articles/assange-the-untold-story-of-a...
  • happyscrappy 11y ago
    There is a reason Snowden didn't dump all the data he had into a public file like some meglomaniacle clown.
    • cinquemb 11y ago
      All this does is just keep information from the general public, and enable the present asymmetry we see at play between the State (might as well throw in corporate contractors and NGO's) and the public. The "Chinese" certainly don't have too hard of time getting good info (OPM hack, etc), at least going by the way you hear the cries of fire in the crowded theatre of what passes for journalism and news.
  • rmc 11y ago
    Because the UK has a fine human rights record (look at Northern Ireland) and always stands up the the USA (look at Iraq)
    • Tloewald 11y ago
      He's not relying on the UK, but on Ecuador (which doesn't have such a great track record either). Then again, Snowden is relying on Russia. Enemy of my enemy, and all that.
  • 11y ago
• Bohahahaha 11y ago
  "On the day Marianne Ny reactivated the case, the head of Sweden's military intelligence service - which has the acronym MUST -- publicly denounced WikiLeaks in an article entitled "WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers." Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAPO, had been told by its US counterparts that US-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements would be "cut off" if Sweden sheltered him." http://johnpilger.com/articles/assange-the-untold-story-of-an-epic-struggle-for-justice http://johnpilger.com/articles/assange-the-untold-story-of-a...
• 1337biz 11y ago
  Anyone having some ideas how how one can support Ecuador for their willingness to stand up for Assange? I wonder how much pressure they have experienced from the US and EU over granting him asylum.
• Tloewald 11y ago
  There's a concrete dispute mentioned in the article. Assange says the Swedes can interview him any time in the embassy, the Swedes say they've asked, and been waiting months, for permission. The article blithely quotes these conflicting statements and makes no attempt to find out who is telling the truth or what the details are.
  • philh 11y ago
    I don't think those are quite conflicting. It sounds like Assange says he's happy for the Swedes to do it, but the Swedes are saying they can't get permission from Ecuador. OTOH we have Assange saying "this Swedish official refused both", which could be conflicting, but it's pretty vague.
    • Tloewald 11y ago
      Assange is claiming they can talk to him any time and the Swedes are saying they've tried and can't. That's a pretty direct conflict. Either one or the other is being disingenuous at best and outright lying at worst.
      • philh 11y ago
        > Assange is claiming they can talk to him any time The closest I can see to this is: > From the beginning I offered simple solutions. Come to the embassy to take my statement or promise not to send me to the United States. which doesn't contradict the Swedes saying they've tried and failed. I guess you can argue that it's disingenuous.
        • Tloewald 11y ago
          If the Swedes have tried and haven't been allowed in then it's disingenuous on Assange's part. If the Swedes haven't really tried, then they're outright lying. Someone is lying, and it would be worth knowing who. Maybe some Swedish comedian (or Sacha Baron Cohen in a blonde wig with a fake Swedish accent) will rock up to the Ecuadorian embassy, claim to be a Swedish prosecutor and ask to be let in and we'll finally learn the truth.
• Qantourisc 11y ago
  Anyone considered having an appeal-able trial without his statement ? As I understand the victims claim to be no victims of a crime. But that's probably not allowed in the legal framework.