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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 We covered the warrant being issued and withdrawn yesterday.
They will get him. Eventually. I hope not, but I believe they will. Through defamation, assassination (character or otherwise), I just want to forecast now, that as a pessimist / realists / tinfoil hat wearer, they will get him.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I wish I had his skill and his balls. He, at least, is going some way to watching the watchers.
And if there are any times that attention whoring is absolutely warranted, it is now.
I just hope he's not David Kelly'd.
Before I go, let me just accuse every /. commenter below me in this article of rape. I hope you judge Assange for the accusations against him as you'd hope people treat mine against you.
If a man can be publicly accused of rape, a warrant issued for his arrest, and his name splashed all over the international media PRIOR to you being 100% sure you want to bring him in on those charges, then I would say something is seriously wrong with your system of justice.
Indeed. I assume that false accusations are illegal under Swedish law. Why aren't we seeing the names of the people that actually committed the crime here.
... interfering with EU affairs, as if the EU was a protectorate of the US.
If this is a black op Obama probably doesn't even know. It's not like they'd tell Obama because Obama wouldn't need to know. It's likely that Obama just signs his name giving them permission to "stop Julian Assange" and then they figure out how to do it and begin the campaign.
>>>Obama just signs his name giving them permission
Interesting argument for why Obama is innocent. Does the same reasoning apply to Bush to forgive his actions from 2002 through 2009? I suspect not..... then neither does it apply to Obama.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There can be only one suspect for who was behind it: the U.S. government.
Why do you say that? Assange has pissed off a lot of world governments, and it does not take CIA level resources to have someone file a false report. The fact that the charges were withdrawn on the same day they were filed suggests that the CIA may not be involved after all -- they would do a better job than that.
Palm trees and 8
Right. You would prefer that a public accusation on a Friday would circulate in the press until late Monday morning before being reviewed?
I think the round-the-clock system they have, which allowed them to cut the drama short by having judges working on Saturday, sounds like a good idea.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Misjudgment on how the case would be handled? Expecting a stronger knee-jerk reaction?
Emotions! In your brain!
I'd prefer that over a public accusation on Friday circulating in the press until late Monday and additionally getting arrested Friday evening and spending the weekend in jail, yes.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Or... Maybe he did it himself? Now he's more bulletproof. The first charge was baseless; any additional "character assassination" charges will be met with tin-foil skepticism.
Can you think of a better way to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen?
Do you think CIA has magic powers? It consists of people and it is a government bureaucracy, it is mostly shuffling papers around, it's glamorous as in movies. And yes, the same problems that are found in most government organizations and large corporations are present there - various power struggles, inefficiencies, idiots, everything.
I wouldn't put it past CIA to make any sort of mistake at all, actually it's a surprise when they do anything right.
You can't handle the truth.
It is doing an awfully bad job of it. In the US you can turn on the radio and hear people calling the president a muslim, a fascist or homosexual.
You can turn on the tv and watch people almost completely fabricate new charges against obama or his underlings. Castro has been in power for 50 years, North
Korea has been in power for 60 years. The US does a better job when it doesn't try to silence enemies.
Your right...
Julian Assange isn't an American citizen.
So exactly what American law did he break, and why should he be tried for an American crime if he didn't break the law here in the US?
Perhaps if the government did one of two things...
A) Hid their secrets better
B) Didn't do something that needed to be kept secret.
We wouldn't be in this situation.
The US trying to hold him accountable for breaking our laws, when he didnt commit the crimes here, or break into any computers here is akin to a Muslim country holding your mother responsible for not wearing a burqa.
If we take outside of the realm of laws into state secrets and back room international politics, Mr. Assange did ask for trouble by toying with our intelligence agencies and military. If we were to give him that trouble, it would make us look even worse in the eyes of the world.
The cat is out of the bag, we should open discussions with Wikileaks to see if they will allow us to redact names from the documents they havn't released. Its either that or have the documents in their entirety released. Framing people for crimes they havnt committed is wrong.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Oh, and they are not "criminals" [the accusers] never claimed rape, they actually asked police for clarification if the alleged "actions" were criminal!
Under Swedish law false accusations of rape would most likely have lead to one year in prison, these accusations were less clear and the prosecutor would be looking for more information from Assange.
You see that's the beauty of the charges, they're not likely to lead to punishment for the accusers, the only damage would be to Assange's good name and standing. He could try for damages, but what would that help his name? It's perfect [for the people looking to smear him]!
I know that nonsense supports some peoples' world views, but that doesn't make it accurate.
Ignoring the possibility that it could reasonably be any number of other people and even a handful of other governments, maybe I'm naive, but I don't see why the US government would play games if they really cared that much. A terrible rape allegation that doesn't even stick for a day? Please. With billions of dollars of resources they could manufacture a significantly better, more serious charge with evidence that was hard to refute.
Personally, if I were in the government and wanted to put a stop to Wikileaks I wouldn't bother with that though. You'd simply find Assange in an ally with a bullet in the back of his head. Oh, there would be an uproar for a few days, maybe a few weeks, and lots of conspiracy theories (that for a change would actually be true!) but not only would it pretty much immediately slam the breaks on Wikileaks, it would be a chilling example to anybody who might consider stepping in behind him.
The "problem" with Wikileaks is that it doesn't need credibility, making some attempt to character-assassinate Assange on the worthless side. I don't like Assange, I'm not a huge fan of Wikileaks, and while I supported what they did with the original attack video I have no support whatsoever to give to leaking the Afghanistan documents or the manner in which it was done. Even with all that said I can't find them to lack credibility. They're releasing actual government documents, actual government video. I can have a problem with what they did, I can have a problem with how they did it, I can have a problem with some of the editorializing they do, but I can't claim it's somehow not credible. Other people are roughly the same; they think Wikileaks is scum or providing a public service.
So why waste the time and effort in some really bad plot? Live with it or end it. Don't play games.
Well, then, it's time to start donating lots of money to wikileaks. Fight money with money. There is a lot of big talk talk about ideals here so it's time to back that up with action.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Helped organise the Bay of Pigs and tried several times to assassinate Castro?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
This happens, see the Duke Lacrosse case. People make up allegations. It is worse against people who are well known, the face it MORE often. So it very well could be something that isn't a conspiracy on his part, the government part or anyone. Just someone making shit up.
Who knows what really happened and frankly, who care? This shouldn't be an issue except for the fact that media, especially places like Slashdot (I didn't see this on CNN or Yahoo or the like) started screaming about it. We don't know what actually happened, and probably never will since there's a real lack of any evidence. That however won't stop conspiracy nuts for taking this as absolute proof that the US government is behind it since the standards for absolute proof in conspiracy land are pretty low.
Blaming the President for every little thing that happens is being unreasonably optimistic about their ability to be aware of the government's actions. I mean, think for a minute about how many things your boss is clueless about (but is responsible for), then scale that to a million employees. Even if this originated in the US government, it's unlikely Obama will ever know or be able to influence it.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
...Justice is slow but until you are formally sentenced in court you are in the eyes of the justice system and the government assumed to be innocent, that the media completely blows things out of proportions and goes wherever the profit is ...
Yes, like justice is a front page banner headline accusing you of rape, and a back page 12 point retraction when the case is dropped or you are found innocent.
Real justice should prevent any mention in the press until one is declared guilty in the court.
The arrest warrant also mentioned a molestation charge, but molestation -- which is not limited to child victims in Sweden -- is not a crime punishable by jail time. Rosander told TV4 Assange is still under investigation for molestation.
Remember Hans Reiser? As I recall, many here initially said there was no way he did it. But he did. The Wikileaks dude is ***STILL*** under investigation for "molestation", they just don't need to pick him up for it yet. Just because he has POLITICS that you agree with does not mean he isn't a sex creep.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
You can't actually commit a crime, as defined by the US laws if you're not an american citizen and you never set foot in the US or directly accessed resources over there in a criminal way. As far as I know, the CIA isn't supposed to be the KGB, since in a democracy something that embarrasses the government is not in itself a reason for intelligence agencies to be involved.
Let's assume however as a thought experiment that the person operating wikileaks would have been a member of the US military. Even in that case, the technical violation of the letter of some laws and regulations should be overridden by the right of the citizenry to know relevant information about the war the US military is conducting, the details it seeked to hide from the public and the war crimes it covered up. Indeed, as stated by one of the Supreme Court justices ruling in the Pentagon Papers case:
As for your argument that:
My hope is that the existence and discovery of streamlined whistleblowing (which is what Wikileaks really is) will make it impossible to wage a war without public disclosure of information about it. The information that wikileaks published (as a secondary source) should have been public and released gradually by the US military in the first place, to document and keep the war transparent and thus legal.
Obama should have absolutely stopped any operations against Wikileaks and instead focused on the revelations contained in the released documents.
I think it is important to discuss the possible casualties of the war logs release. As far as I know there were no fatalities associated with it yet, however it remains a possibility that such a fatality or fatalities will occur. Without attributing blame as to who would be responsible for such deaths, whether it's wikileaks by placing the public need to know above some lives or the US military for failing to disclose enough information about the war or failing to redact sensitive bits when offered the chance, I'd like to state that if Iraq is any good as a baseline where about a million people died as a direct consequence of the war (not necessarily killed directly by US forces though), then hundreds of thousands of afghani are dead because of this war. Any deaths from the release of the documents would be entirely lost as statistical noise in the changes the US military and political leadership are being forced to make due to the public getting a clearer picture of what's going on in Afghanistan. The release of the war logs potentially saved a lot of lives and at least gave the public information it lacked.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Interesting. So the police "leaked" sensitive details improperly to the press, which then improperly published/distributed the information before the full story was ready for publication?
There's a lesson in irony to be learned there.
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Toro