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Sweden Defends Wiki Sex Case About-Face
crimeandpunishment writes "Mistake? We didn't make a mistake. That's what Swedish prosecutors said Sunday as they defended their handling of a rape allegation against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The Swedish Prosecution Authority said the prosecutor who issued the arrest warrant Friday did not make a mistake, even though a higher-ranked prosecutor withdrew the warrant the next day. A spokesperson for the Authority said: 'The prosecutor who took over the case yesterday had more information, and that is why she made a different assessment than the on-call prosecutor.' Assange, who was in Sweden seeking legal protection for the site as it prepares to leak more Afghan war documents, told a Swedish tabloid newspaper, 'I don't know who's behind this but we have been warned that for example the Pentagon plans to use dirty tricks to spoil things for us.'" We covered the warrant being issued and withdrawn yesterday.
The statement only says that the bureaucrats did their job according to the protocol. Changing the justice system is not something they can do, you need to buy politicians for that.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
It has to be provable false, which is almost impossible to do with this sort of crime.
The woman who "accused" him of rape did not press charges. Neither did the woman who did not even go so far as to mention rape. Their accusations may have been sufficiently vague to evade prosecution for wrongfully accusing someone of a crime, which is what made many people question the motives of these women even before the warrant was rescinded.
Most big US cities have prosecutors on duty 24 hours a day.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
No, you got it backwards. He was brought in on what was apparently judged to be good grounds, and then the case got dismissed by a higher-ranking/more experienced persecutor. It just happened in a very short span of time - and we don't have the details on what the girls said. From what has been released, it seems they went to the police and asked them "Hey, we did this and this with this guy/he did this and this with us - would this be rape?"
Maybe they just got fazed due to the strangeness of it all, and decided to arrest him just to clear things up?
Emotions! In your brain!
It is not in the Scandinavian justice tradition to name accusers, victims or indeed criminals. Warrants are usually not public unless they have no other means of locating the suspect. Assange has no address.
We don't believe in scapegoating.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Records_Bureau#Enhanced_disclosure Some things are guilty until.... no wait always on your record nothing you can do about it
Aljazeera interview with Assange: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/08/2010822135529927326.html Apparently, he was forewarned by Australian intelligence?
Emotions! In your brain!
He won't be found in a dark alley. He won't be found at all unless they botch something.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Did you just seriously argue that alcohol consumption is punished more harshly than child sexual abuse? ....
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Which is why they should be damn sure of their accusations before they issued the warrant, otherwise they may end up causing irreparable harm to the victim of the false accusation. If there is a process for reviewing a lower-prosecutor's decision to issue a warrant, that process should be completed PRIOR to the issuance of the warrant.
The woman that accused Julian Assange has been identified on flashbackforum as Anna Ardin press secretary for the christians in the socialist party in Sweden. She has previously been an active radical feminist and author of articles on how to use the legal system to get revenge on people. She has also identified The Swedish Pirate party as a "problem we have to deal with" She waited several days to report this until the "on call" prosecutor Maria Häljebo Kjellstrand was on duty.
Additionally the justice system in Sweden is somewhat different. There is two levels of arrest, first can be issued by the on duty public prosecutor without having to argue it before a court or judge. The prosecutor can do this if there is resonable suspicion that the person to be detained has committed a crime for which the punishment can be atleast 1 year imprisonment or if the person to be detained is suspected to have information of great importance for the investigation.
After the person has been detained the prosecutor have to argue before a court for a formal arrest within 3 days or set the person free. After a formal arrest has been made and argued the prosecutor have 14 days to charge the arressted person with a crime, when the 14 days are up the prosecutor either has to set the suspect free or again argue before the court for an extension of the arrest(this is only approved if there is sufficient reason and suspicion against the suspect or if the suspect is considered a flight or suicide risk).
I'm afraid you're the one who are mistaken, and are talking nonsense, at least since I trust the former head prosecutor Sven-Erik Alhem rather than some random slashdotter. According to him, the prosecutors should explain themselves, since it's "[...]unusual and not good that an outstanding arrest warrant is publicized and broadcasted[...]", among other things.
Link in swedish for the original; my apologies for any errors in translation. http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/alhem-forklara-er_5172395.svd
I keep hearing people questioning the credibility of his accusers, the FBI, the CIA, etc and so on. But how does Assuage have any credibility either way? How do we know that everything he posts on Wikileaks is legit and he didn't make the shit up? And contrary to what someone is probably going to mark me with moderation, I'm not trying to be a troll here, I'm totally serious. How do we know this guy isn't fabricating any of this just so he can try to be a fame magnet?
An [opinion] listing some of the possible reasons:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/20/wikileaks/index.html
i.e. there have been some shouting-matches between pentagon and wikileaks recently - and the pentagon is proven to have lied in most cases and wikileaks was proven to be truthful in most (all?) cases. So if it's credibility you're looking for, then wikileaks is more reliable than the US government (FWIW).
But how does Assuage have any credibility either way? How do we know that everything he posts on Wikileaks is legit and he didn't make the shit up?
Do you have any evidence that anything on the site is made up, or are you just concern-trolling conspiracies? I mean really, be serious, wouldn't he have egg on his face by now? I'm sure the Pentagon and Obama administration would have publicized any irregularities, but the only thing they've been able to come up with is a fake rape charge and an unsupported charge of him having "blood on his hands." Guess what? The Pentagon itself said this week that there isn't any evidence that any Afghans named in the War Diaries have been harmed.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Warrants are public
No in Sweden they aren't.
But somehow in this particular case the information found its way to the media and the police felt compelled to immediately confirm it instead of doing what they should have according to Swedish law, refusing to comment on the identity of the person accused.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
I'm going to have to disagree. There are a lot of things that can change sex into rape. Agreeing to consensual sex with a man doesn't mean I'll let him hit me or unexpectedly sodomize me. Maybe some women work that way, but we all don't. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but the idea that you can do anything you want with someone once they've given some consent really needs to be checked.
Posting anonymously for what should be obvious reasons.
The better comparison is Scott Ritter. Weapons inspector, major Bush embarrassment. He was picked up in 2001 for suspicions of arranging a meeting for underage sex with an undercover cop posing as a young girl. He wasn't charged which to me seems kind of odd since there aren't too many good explanations for showing up at a sting like that. Whatever. The documents were sealed and not public record. They were leaked anonymously when he started becoming a pain in the Bushie behind.
Of course, the dumb shit went and got caught again in 2009. Just goes to show that being an expert in a given field does not mean you won't make stupid mistakes in some other area. People do fall for the trick of discrediting the messenger if they don't like the message. Your least favorite person at work tells you there's a mistake in the budget numbers, you may as well see if she's right.
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