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Julian Assange Faces Rape Investigation In Sweden — Updated
mpawlo was one of many readers who have sent news that a warrant has been issued in Stockholm, Sweden for WikiLeaks founder and spokesman Julian Assange. The investigation apparently involves "one report of rape and one report of harassment." The story was broken by Swedish tabloid Expressen (original in Swedish), and later picked up by more reputable sources like CNN and the BBC, who say the warrant has been confirmed by Swedish authorities. The WikiLeaks Twitter feed has commented three times about the charges so far, first saying they were warned of 'dirty tricks,' then that they hadn't been contacted by Swedish police, and then a statement from Assange saying the charges are without basis.
Update: 08/21 15:58 GMT by S : Multiple sources are now reporting that the warrant for Assange's arrest has been withdrawn. Aftonbladet has coverage in Swedish. Chief prosecutor Eva Finne said, "I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape."
Update: 08/21 15:58 GMT by S : Multiple sources are now reporting that the warrant for Assange's arrest has been withdrawn. Aftonbladet has coverage in Swedish. Chief prosecutor Eva Finne said, "I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape."
Assange is too high profile to kill off. Cue the rape/childporn/furry accusations.
According to the article the two women did not actually accuse him of rape, only that they asked the police for guidance relating to what allegedly happened.
This point is rather interesting, as in e.g. Norway (which has very similar legal system) you can and often will get a year or more prison sentence if you knowingly falsely accuse someone of rape.
- These characters were randomly selected.
The fact that the us is playing dirty is like saying hitler was a bad man. First get him into custody then expect to hear that his trial isscheduled in the year 2150 in Syria. Bush said nevermind Osama, the pentagon admitted there were no weapons in iraq. Sleep well America, you will wake up in what's already becoming a military dictatorship. The sad part is it does nothing to arrest Julian since he doesn't know his sources and he couldn't stop wikileaks even if he wanted. The only wistleblower to expose the UBS scam is the only person doing time because the UBS CEO is playing golf with Barrack Osama. Good night America and good riddance. Anyone who wants to emigrate from that country north of a big oil leak is welcome in my home.
Bah, as a swede this hurts, but essentially our government is a US lapdog. Witness the fiasco with the pirate bay for a glaring example, where the prosecution initially refused to press any charges because they felt there was no real case. Then suddenly a few months later they got the people behind it sentenced to pay record damages (1.35 M USD) AND jail time corresponding to a major case of assault and battery in a kangaroo court with the chairman being a member of several pro-copyright lobby organisations, and acquaintance of several of the legal counsels on the plaintiffs side.
I don't know about Denmark these days, but something is definitely rotten in the state of Sweden these days, and I think it was a major mistake of Mr Assange to decide to have anything to do with us.
All they need to do now is Photoshop him having sex with one of the prawn and it will be the largest international manhunt in the world.
Say the US secret services wanted to get the WikiLeaks founder locked. Why not do something much simpler like planting child pornography on one of his computers?
These rape and harassment charges are trickier to fabricate. Remember, this is not the 19th century, there is plenty of forensic muscle in existence that can prove or disprove rape. And in the northern countries, criminal prosecutors are rather level-headed, and if no crime was committed, it will be known. And if crime was committed, it will be known, too.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
It doesn't take a paranoid to see the US government (or another government) having an agent find a way to get alone with Assange for a half an hour and then accusing him of rape. Hell, just get an agent to sleep with him (he is a male, it isn't hard) and have her give it a little extra twist and now you have physical evidence of a rape. What is generally physical evidence of rape is just a vagina that has seen been used a little too hard. It is pretty trivial to fake. Rough sex will do it (easy to do if the plant is the aggressor), but you don't even need the person you intend to frame. Just grab a nearby vegetable and give yourself a few rough ins and outs when you are not in the mood and that will pretty much do it.
Framing Assange is pretty trivial.
1) Molest yourself with a dildo when you are not in the mood.
2) Seduce Assange to score yourself some physical evidence
3) Complain to the authorities
4) ???
5) Profit
We are never going to know the truth unless someone has a high quality video of the alleged rape, or the accuser is proven to have ties to an intelligence agency. There will be good reason to suspect that it is a frame (easy to do), yet no proof to the contrary.
My advice to anyone who is fucking around with the US government... tape yourself 24/7 and never for any reason turn it off. If they want to make it look like you committed a crime, it is trivial.
Crime needs three things: motive, means, opportunity.
Motive, no big deal, being a heterosexual male is enough.
Means, easy, every man comes equipped with that.
Opportunity, that's the big problem.
I have lived in Sweden and cannot say I had any difficulty in picking willing girls in bars there, and I'm not even famous like Assange.
A man with his record of fighting government corruption would have an idol status in Sweden, he would have to hire security guards to keep the girls away.
If there's one case where the accused should be presumed innocent, this is it.
In Sweden you can get an rape investigation on you for nothing. Its an well known fact and well used tactic in divorce cases, where the wifes charges the husband of rape, and thus the wife get soil custofy of the child
I love how, on zero information, the decision is made: it must be dirty tricks. You know, sometimes people who do interesting or important work are guilty of crimes. Remember Hans Reiser? How about waiting for, you know, facts, before deciding. It's possible that it's all a setup. It's possible that with him being in the news, a couple of women that he's harassed have decided to come forward. How about keeping an open mind?
Oh, yeah, sorry, I forgot, this is Slashdot... carry on.
Yeah, that's why almost all of the raped women always see their attacker prosecuted, found guilty and imprisoned, NOT!
Methinks you watch too many episodes of CSI. Real life is rather more complicated and mundane.
This affair stinks, probably it's a set-up to get him arrested and then shipped to USA.
The problem is that, regardless of whether or not he's innocent, there are powerful people who would like to have Assange out of the way. So while it's perfectly true that he may be guilty as charged, it's not a straightforward situation. Since there's reason to believe to that a government plot is, at the very least, possible then calling for due process of law is problematic- it's even easier to dispose of someone by burying them in judicial bureaucracy than it is to do a full frame-up. Mind you, I'm not saying, "Run Julian, run!"... I think it's a horrible, messy situation and I honestly have no idea what the best way for anyone to deal with it is.
If they put the same effort into doing something about Osama bin Laden as they're putting into doing something about Julian Assange, I suspect bin Laden would be either in Gitmo or 6 feet under by now.
Oh please. Bin Laden is near-paranoid in the measures he takes to hide himself. He's willing to undergo great hardship and deprive himself of even the most basic luxuries to continue his war against the West. He's been meticulous about hiding, going so far is living in caves at times. Assange is an attention whore. It's not like it's hard for anyone to find him. Saying that Assange's arrest proves that we're not looking hard enough for Bin Laden is downright foolish.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You should be aware that the two women knew each other, and went to the police together. They claim that they were molested by Assange independently in two different cities, with a few days between, without one of them thinking to warn the other.
I'll also remember the last time when the US parked a giant battle ship off my country to help a coup d'etat. Go fucking away and die, suckers. The world pays the bill - in lives - for the heavy lifting you believe it's onto your shoulders.
Well, I certainly expected it. Disappointing for its lack of subtlety, though. I would have went with something less obvious.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Most service members and even some on record commanders would rather be doing much more beneficial and humanitarian services, or even focusing on combating recent piracy, and not continued fighting of unwinnable ground wars whose objective is a constant mystery to the deployed troops. I think the U.S. is just a scapegoat for the rest of the world most of the time, but I can't deny that its government (not military) is irredeemable and basically hopeless at this point.
The media and us spies can't control what we decide to believe or say and write. Faces hidden behind their desks, they only control whatever truths or lies newspapers print, not the rest of us. I smell a rat and call it BS. The original story is from a tabloid, who have no reputation or scruples. Easily corrupted. The other papers just repeat the tabloid, risking none of their reputation.
Don't forget that the first one to report this news was Expressen, the only competitor to Aftonbladet, the "newspaper" Assange was supposed to write for. Coincidence? You tell me.
Actually, it's the plot from the first few episodes of "Blake's 7", in which an anti-government agitator is set up to be tried as a child molester and put away for life.
The razor cuts the other way just as simply too... sometimes people with too much power, fame or ego think the rules of society no longer apply to them and they can get away with anything they want. Pick your favorite politician embroiled in a scandal - Charlie Rangel (who was the head of the committee that writes the tax laws) not paying his taxes, Ted Stevens getting work done on his home by lobbyists and not reporting it, Rod Blagojevic trying to sell Obama's former Senate seat, Mark Foley targetting Congressional pages, etc.
Assange doesn't seem like the type to be humble about the way he's gone after the US military... all of his tv appearances would say otherwise. Perhaps the power that comes with knocking down such a powerful institution and the fame he's generated with it have gone to his head. In fact, we already know that he thinks the rules don't apply to him - while he demands the transparency of other organizations, he does his best to disclose as little as possible about his own.
Stop Koolaid Politics
And I should add: Or maybe Occam's Razor is just what the CIA wants us to think...
Nice one -- it seems the Swedish government does works weekends.
In "other" countries this would have been allowed to balloon out of control over the weekend making it big news world wide.
But this became a non-story within hours.
this thing came up right 2-3 days after assange finally found legal solace in swedish law, by posing as a writer for a swedish publication, totally removing all the possibilities of legal means to get to him.
and suddenly, rape charges come up.
if there is ANYone who can still think that such big coincidences can happen, i have only one word to call them :
morons.
the powers behind these kind of shit, apparently have grown a lot lax and reckless lately. in 1960s, they would at least give some time before coming up with their game so that public wouldnt be able to see the correlation in between the two events. but apparently, they dont need to. for there are people who still can be as stupid as not to be able to see the linkage.
Read radical news here
How about this?
Assange himself masterminded these girls reporting the rapes. It doesn't seem like that bad of an idea if you can later have the girls recant their story, and then claim they were coerced by CIA agents or something... how do you expect the US to prove that the girls weren't coerced by CIA agents?
In this version of the story, Assange comes out way ahead and the US government not so much. Just keep an open mind...
This is ridiculous. Even the weirdest occurrences are usually explained by the most simple answer. Conspiracy theorists can usually tell you exactly whats going on behind the scenes with great detail and even postulate on outcomes from the original action. This tends to take credibility away from the conspiracy theorist in that most people find the situation 'unbelievable' or lacking enough evidence to convince them unequivocally. In this case I would think a simple explanation may suffice. Obviously the U.S. government wants this guy out of the picture as he has given away, and pledged to keep giving away, U.S. government secrets. How easy would it have been for some device of the U.S. state department to have paid or catered to each of these women a considerable amount of money or favors in exchange for their cooperation in the operation? Not very hard in my opinion, and furthermore this type of scenario seems more and more relevant given that the charges were dropped so quickly. This was a PR stunt to start amassing bad press for Assange so if they ever do nail him on anything directly this will ring in the back of peoples minds reminding them that this is a bad guy. Looks, talks, walks, and smells like a disinformation operation, probably is a disinformation operation.
That is why there was another crime called "sexual harassment".
An extreme example would be assault and murder. What if the Swedish parliament would change the law so that if you beat the crap out of someone, you would be convicted of murder.
This is essentially what the parliament did with the rape-definition. If you force petting on someone, you should definitely get sentenced for it, but that sentence should be for "sexual harassment", not rape.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Maybe it's time to release the password to his insurance?
You're not going to be able to catch the CIA on this. Part of the deal when they pay you is that if you get caught, they will deny knowing you. As everyone discovered with the Valerie Plame case, being a government asset doesn't mean they give a shit about you. You exist, in reputation or in biological function, as long as you are useful to the State. I honestly have no idea why anyone would sign up given the history of The Agency.
The CIA is unconstitutional. It operates under a secret budget and outside the rule of Law. It has led to nothing but abuse, misery, and hasn't done anything but provide people from around the world with a good reason to hate the United States.
Intelligence services don't mean you train commandos to rape and torture and kill portions of the civilian populace in order to enforce your political will on a sovereign country. It doesn't mean you buy politicians off and then give them a bunch of weapons and training to do your dirty work for you in exchange for resource access. It means you have feelers around the world so you are always in the loop, so if some dictator does go batshit insane, then you prepare a response and let him know that you've got about ten million tons of reasonably accurate weaponry that you're going to drop if and only if he does carry out an attack.
Yes, it leaves you open to the possibility of terrorism committed by a few sociopaths, but that's the price you pay to live in a free and open society. The alternatives are far worse.
To the conspiracy theorists this sounds exactly like a warning shot. "Keep it up and we'll actually bring charges and make them stick."
Of course, that's the nice thing about conspiracy theories. They are devilishly difficult to disprove, and quite easy to propagate with confirmation bias.
Actually, in your example, I think the Taliban would be the guilty party?
As for your Sun Tzu quote, it's always wise to read a book all the way through :):"A government should not mobilize an army out of anger, military leaders should not provoke war out of wrath. Act when it is beneficial, desist if it is not. Anger can revert to joy, wrath can revert to delight, but a nation destroyed cannot be restored to existence, and the dead cannot be restored to life. Therefore an enlightened government is careful about this, a good military leadership is alert to this. This is the way to secure a nation and keep the armed forces whole".
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Here in Norway there was even a "reckless rape" charge for a while. It was for the times she said yes, but he ought to have understood that she really meant no. Fortunately, even the feminists agreed that this was demeaning to women (not being deemed capable of saying yes and no is pretty demeaning).
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Err, no...
Someone just leaked the entire plot on Wikileaks.
You joke, but if this were true, it would be poetic justice. If the (likely bogus) rape allegations were posted, this would just be what Assange does to others. Why are most Slashdotters so outraged by the rape allegations, but not outraged by what Wikileaks posts that can literally destroy lives?
Except the charges have already been withdrawn. My (completely made up) guess, is that the girls were seen having "relations" during US surveillance, who then turned around and offered them money or something similar to throw some charges at him. As soon as the charges were filed, the US had already leaked the rumors of the charges to major newspapers (one must look at the timing of all this). It seems either Assange or some other entity either forced the police to do some very fast and good work and drop the case, or the police threatened the girls with the Swedish 1 year in jail for false accusation of rape, who then withdrew their charges. Just my two cents though =).
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
The US politicians will soon learn that such people as Julian Assange are part of eternal human struggle for more liberal and fair sosciety.
Julian Assange is part of human history already, the same as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or Andrey Sakharov, or Mahatma Gandhi.
He is a giant and they are dwarfs (in comparison with him), they just did not get it yet.