Icelandic MP Claims US Vendetta Against WikiLeaks

Stirling Newberry writes "Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir details more of the evidence for what she calls a 'judicial vendetta' against WikiLeaks and its volunteers, including attempts to gain access to her Twitter account. Her efforts to block the National Defense Authorization Act were discussed here previously. The story was taken up last year by Glenn Greenwald and Wired. As a result, the International Parliamentarian Union adopted a resolution on her case. What's new? She asserts that there is a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and related organizations, and is calling on Sweden to provide assurances that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange not be re-extradited to the U.S. She says, 'There is no doubt that the U.S. wants to get even with WikiLeaks.'"

Comments

Re:seriously, the USA is just making a martyr

[clarkkent09]

And what exactly has he revealed? Only 6% of the leaked documents were classified as secret and usually for good reasons. Meanwhile Manning will be in jail probably for the rest of his life, and Assange will be made an example of sooner or later. Martyr?! That's a joke.

Re:Rome

[clarkkent09]

That's an interesting alternative history of the fall of the Roman Empire. What science fiction book is it from?

Re:Rome

[gman003]

Weird, I didn't know "the rest of the world will get tired of being bullied [...] and stand up" was synonymous with "fragment under it's own mass and economically stagnate when a system hinged on continual expansion and conquest is halted, eventually being broken by displaced tribes to the north who were themselves being pushed out by a stronger expansionistic empire, although one major fragment survived for hundreds more years before finally being conquered by yet another expansionistic empire".

Re:seriously, the USA is just making a martyr

[InspectorGadget1964]

A video that shows how crew of an US helicopter assassinated people is far from "mundane"

Bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Libya was a CIA-led coup. Case closed.
Egypt, the jury is still out on that.
Syria? You bet your ass we've been arming the rebels, just like in Libya.
Iran, Panama, Guatemala, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. We have a long history of doing this and many times are successful.

And guess what, now we've taken the Iranian MFK off the terrorist watch list, because they want our support to take out the new Iranian government (which the MFK did with a great amount of lobbying and pressure of US lawmakers).

It's far easier to secretly arm an opposing faction and let a country's citizens kill each other than bring in our own troops. We simply don't give a shit, and anything that the side we oppose does, we make sure to get those atrocities televised ASAP.

Re:seriously, the USA is just making a martyr

[Rei]

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The UK lower court found, and the high court upheld, that all four counts would be illegal even under *British* law. And the accusations aren't at all like you present them.

The allegations centre on a 10-day period after Assange flew into Stockholm on Wednesday 11 August. One of the women, named in court as Miss A, told police that she had arranged Assange's trip to Sweden, and let him stay in her flat because she was due to be away. She returned early, on Friday 13 August, after which the pair went for a meal and then returned to her flat.

Her account to police, which Assange disputes, stated that he began stroking her leg as they drank tea, before he pulled off her clothes and snapped a necklace that she was wearing. According to her statement she "tried to put on some articles of clothing as it was going too quickly and uncomfortably but Assange ripped them off again". Miss A told police that she didn't want to go any further "but that it was too late to stop Assange as she had gone along with it so far", and so she allowed him to undress her.

According to the statement, Miss A then realised he was trying to have unprotected sex with her. She told police that she had tried a number of times to reach for a condom but Assange had stopped her by holding her arms and pinning her legs. The statement records Miss A describing how Assange then released her arms and agreed to use a condom, but she told the police that at some stage Assange had "done something" with the condom that resulted in it becoming ripped, and ejaculated without withdrawing.

When he was later interviewed by police in Stockholm, Assange agreed that he had had sex with Miss A but said he did not tear the condom, and that he was not aware that it had been torn. He told police that he had continued to sleep in Miss A's bed for the following week and she had never mentioned a torn condom.

On the following morning, Saturday 14 August, Assange spoke at a seminar organised by Miss A. A second woman, Miss W, had contacted Miss A to ask if she could attend. Both women joined Assange, the co-ordinator of the Swedish WikiLeaks group, whom we will call "Harold", and a few others for lunch.

Assange left the lunch with Miss W. She told the police she and Assange had visited the place where she worked and had then gone to a cinema where they had moved to the back row. He had kissed her and put his hands inside her clothing, she said.

That evening, Miss A held a party at her flat. One of her friends, "Monica", later told police that during the party Miss A had told her about the ripped condom and unprotected sex. Another friend told police that during the evening Miss A told her she had had "the worst sex ever" with Assange: "Not only had it been the world's worst screw, it had also been violent."

Assange's supporters point out that, despite her complaints against him, Miss A held a party for him on that evening and continued to allow him to stay in her flat.

On Sunday 15 August, Monica told police, Miss A told her that she thought Assange had torn the condom on purpose. According to Monica, Miss A said Assange was still staying in her flat but they were not having sex because he had "exceeded the limits of what she felt she could accept" and she did not feel safe.

The following day, Miss W phoned Assange and arranged to meet him late in the evening, according to her statement. The pair went back to her flat in Enkoping, near Stockholm. Miss W told police that though they started to have sex, Assange had not wanted to wear a condom, and she had moved away because she had not wanted unprotected sex. Assange had then lost interest, she said, and fallen asleep. However, during the night, they had both woken up and had sex at least once when "he agreed unwillingly to use a condom".

Early the next morning, Miss W told police, she had gone to buy breakfast before getting back into bed and

Re:seriously, the USA is just making a martyr

[Rei]

Horribly misleading graph. It makes it look like the US is super-popular when in fact the US simply has a higher positive/negative response rate than other countries. The net positives for each country are actually:

Germany: 23% with 62% responding
US: 22% with 79% responding
Japan: 18% with 62% responding
France: 17% with 61% responding
UK: 12% with 64% responding
China: 4% with 77% responding
Russia: -4% with 77% responding

If we scale that up to a standard 100% baseline we get, in order:

Germany: 37%
Japan: 29%
France: 28%
US: 28%
UK: 19%
China: 5%
Russia: -5%

Of "western nations", the US has gone up from "awful" to "below the middle of the pack". Of course people clearly prefer the US to Russia and China, which nobody should find as a shock.