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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 We covered the warrant being issued and withdrawn yesterday.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.
I'm not sure I'd want to stake my future on a country where justice is so swift they have to maintain 24 hour prosecutorial coverage...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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
Very similar to this http://www.stopthechamber.com/ where the amount of money in rewards which lead to the arrest and conviction of Julian Assange will reach into the millions, or tens of millions, and once that happens it's only a matter of time before somebody accuses him of something. Or maybe they don't have to accuse him of anything, there are enough laws and enough ways to entrap people that anybody can be taken out if enough informants agree to take them out.
Confidential informants working in teams can entrap or find evidence on anybody. If the money is big enough and the government agrees to look the other way on the quality of the information, they could get him for some esoteric unknown law that he probably doesnt even know hes breaking and never heard of. And once hes arrested it's all over.
Misjudgment on how the case would be handled? Expecting a stronger knee-jerk reaction?
Emotions! In your brain!
At the end of the day, I'm driving home and hear on the radio that Assange is no longer a suspect and that the case has been dropped. I find this even more incredible than the initial news. To be exhonerated in less than 24 hours is incredibly dramatic. I couldn't believe what I was hearing once again.
There's pretty much only one way to read into these events. There must have been a conspiracy to destroy Wikileaks through the character assassination of Assange. There can be only one suspect for who was behind it: the U.S. government.
If there were anyone left in the world who could reasonably doubt that the U.S. government wasn't corrupt, didn't play dirty, didn't abuse its power, didn't lie as it suited them, and wasn't what Orwell warned us about in 1984 and Animal Farm, if they were within the reach of the mainstream media yesterday, that should have been their wake-up call.
Amazingly, they fucked up so badly that they couldn't get things to stick for even a day. How did that happen?
The US government need not even be behind it. They just have to offer the rewards to the vigilante squads around the world. All the informants in the world could be rewarded for information which leads to the arrest and conviction of Julian Assange. On top of that you have all the mafias, gangs, drug kingpins of the world who would want the reward.
http://www.stopthechamber.com/ --- if these people can organize something like this, the government could probably do much much better considering they'd have millions of dollars to offer to anybody who stops Julian Assange from releasing the classified documents. In fact if we were to have a Slashdot survey on this site and the question was "would you turn in Julian Assange for $5 million dollars in cash" I'd bet that 25% of Slashdot would be willing.
It has to be provable false, which is almost impossible to do with this sort of crime.
It doesn't apply to Obama. The leader is ultimately responsible for the work done in their name. If Obama gave the CIA carte blanche to take care of the situation, then he is the one ultimately responsible.
Note: I voted for Obama, and I think he gets blamed for a lot of things that are outside of his, or anyones for that matter, control. If this is a CIA operation he IS responsible.
It's the CIA's mission to stop individuals like Julian Assange. The CIA is supposed to be focused on foreign nationals and foreign spies. Julian Assanges organization "Wikileaks" has committed the initial crime which triggered the CIA/NSA/FBI response. It's a bit late now to blame Obama as if Obama could have stopped whatever the response is. If it's true that Assange's documents influence or reveal CIA sources this would equate to Assange attacking the CIA itself because if the sources get killed it hurts the mission and the effort.
This is not good for Julian Assange. What do you expect Obama to do? Tell the CIA to leave Julian Assange alone? On what basis? Julian Assange isn't an American citizen.
He was not exhonerated, the prosecutor deemed the ititial warrant baseless, and revoked it. It says nothing about Assange guilt or not, but about the base as to prosecute him.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
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.
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.
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]!
They don't need to arrest him to bring him down, or anything so dramatic, all they have to do is destroy his credibility. That's why they used rape charges, nothing solid, very hard to prove by either side. There are also other crimes that have the same aspect, a lot of public damage, but without real consequence. The US government already has a strategy in place just for this kind of thing, they simply divert the viewers attention to something else, look at slashdot now, everyone talks about the guy and rape charges, not the secret documents, the next step will take this further, until only a minority will remember how everything started, after that, they'll drop it all.
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.
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!
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/
All it's going to take is a "raid" on his home where they find child pornography on one of his computers. He will go to jail for the rest of his life and, from that point forward, everything that comes from wikileaks will be something that came from "that organization that distributes kiddie porn".
On the other hand, if you were going to distribute CP in a big way, what better cover for all that infrastructure than a white-knight expose-the-evil site? They come after you for the CP, and conspiracy theorists the world over kick up a stink about cover-ups. Who's to say this "Insurance" file isn't actually a huge stack of CP that's being decrypted by paedophiles the world over as we speak?
Personally, I think that's all a bit tinfoil-hat, but it's always possible.
Essentially it is a protectorate. We don't use that term because it is derogatory, but it is the situation.
Europe can get the US out of their lands if they have the will to do so. And honestly, it's good that it's a little uncomfortable for Europe so they don't get too used to it. The sooner they kick the US out and start taking care of their own defense, the better. Maybe next time genocide happens in their own backyard (Kosovo) they can take care of the problem themselves.
Qxe4
In other news, Julian Assange gets parking ticket, blames vast Pentagon conspiracy to sully his name!
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."
It's now absolutely clear that no rape occurred here, but imagine a real rape case. If two women credibly claim to have been raped in the span of last week by the same named person, then most definitely the suspect must be apprehended immediately in the event that those two rapes really did occur, that the suspect is the guilty party, and that he is going to do it again. That cannot be postponed pending further investigation since there is clearly a risk that another rape is imminent. If then a few hours later it turns out for some reason that clearly the suspect could not have been doing what the women claim, then the arrest order can be canceled. None of this is then a mistake by the police or the prosecutor.
Of course with just an accusation to go on, the name of the suspect should not be circulating in the press with an accusation of rape, at the very most it should be known that the police want to talk to him immediately for some unspecified-but-serious reason. In this case the police claim that the press found out about the arrest order on their own somehow, but that the police confirmed the information when asked. It was a mistake to confirm the information, and if the press somehow found out about it from the police, that was a mistake as well. Both are serious mistakes.
We do not have the information to know whether or not the arrest order was a mistake. We do have the information to say that the Swedish state fucked up royally by confirming the arrest order to the press. It is unknown to me if the fuck-up is due to people in the police not knowing how to say "no comment", or if it is due to Swedish laws. Lots of countries' laws do not protect the identity of people who have done nothing but been accused.
This could easily go the other way. What if the accuser was a plant for Wikileaks. Everyone sympathizes with Assuage, conspiracy theories run a muck and suddenly leaking classified material is heralded by more of the mainstream. You know, as opposed to the usual crowd.
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?
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
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 -
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.
...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
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.
Your knowledge is FALSE. CIA is the exact mirror organisation of KGB's foreign intelligence arm (First Chief Directorate of KGB). It's NOT a law enforcement agency, it's an INTELLIGENCE agency that operates ABOVE the law by intent.
In this case, we see it work exactly as intended - protecting interests of US military on foreign soil, through any means necessary, legal or illegal, ethical or unethical. It's not pretty, you may agree or disagree with both reasons for the actions as well as actions themselves, but they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.
Switch out Julian Assange with Saddam Hussein, and Obama with Bush, then read your paragraph again.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll