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WikiLeaks Calls For Assange To Step Down

Posted by Soulskill on from the clean-out-your-desk dept.

Stoobalou writes "A member of Iceland's parliament and prominent organizer for whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has turned on the site's spokesman, Julian Assange, urging him to step down over rape allegations made against him in Sweden. Birgitta Jonsdottir told news site The Daily Beast that she did not believe Assange's repeated assertion that the allegations of rape and molestation made against him were part of a US-backed smear campaign to distract attention from documents posted on the site laying bare US involvement in the war in Afghanistan and further promised revelations."

3 of 565 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Price by nacturation · · Score: 5, Interesting

    By those standards, all anti-US terrorists in US history are automatically innocent.

    You mean until proven guilty? Or do you think anyone the US labels as an enemy should be considered automatically guilty and get locked away indefinitely with no habeas corpus rights?

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  2. *Everybody* is guilty of something ... by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A member of Iceland's parliament and prominent organiser for whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has turned on the site's founder, Julian Assange, demanding that he step down over rape allegations made against him in Sweden.

    Jonsdottir, who speaks Swedish, said that she had reviewed Swedish police records and disputed Assange's claim that the allegations were politically motivated, suggesting instead that they may be the result of cultural misunderstanding.

    How is it that a politician is reviewing the evidence in an ongoing police case and furthermore, commenting on it in public? In most civilized countries that would be cause for an investigation into the police, and the firing of the prosecutor for not running a tight ship with a clear separation between the judiciary and the executive brances.

    This doesn't pass the "smell test." Not one bit.

    Did Assange do anything wrong? I don't know - but this sort of tampering by politicians makes it sure seem like someone, somewhere, *is* out to get him.

  3. Re:Price by Znork · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From what's leaked it sounds like it's basically a case of someone sleeping with more than one woman, being sloppy with protection, women getting pissed off and anxious about STD's and involving the Swedish judiciary which gets the brilliant (and internally divisive) idea to use it as a pilot case on whether consent can be considered having not been given, if it was predicated upon the use of effective protection. Which is why you get one attorney saying 'rape!', the next one saying 'idiot, it's barely even minor assault in the worst case, if even intentional', and the third going 'hmmm... interesting theory, lets victimize someone (and maybe save the first attorney) to test it'.

    Ah, well, if consent can be predicated upon such issues I suspect we'll get a whole load of 'rape' charges against women who said they were on the pill...