Swedish Authorities Offer To Question Assange In London

An anonymous reader writes: Since 2012, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in London trying to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces a sexual assault investigation. Now, after the case has been stalled for years, Swedish prosecutors are arranging to come to London and question Assange within the embassy. According to his lawyer, Assange welcomes this, but Sweden still needs to be granted permission from both the UK and Ecuador. "Assange's lawyers, who are appealing against his arrest warrant in Sweden's highest court, have complained bitterly about the prosecutor's refusal to travel to London to speak to him – an essential step under Swedish jurisprudence to establish whether Assange can be formally charged. [Lead investigator Marianne] Ny's refusal, they say, has condemned Assange to severe limitations on his freedom that are disproportionate to the accusations against him." Ny has also requested a DNA sample from Assange.

Comments

culture trap

[harvey the nerd]

It's a trap. A legal aussie date may be felonious in Sweden.

Re:culture trap

[Anonymous Coward]

A legal Aussie date is felonious pretty much anywhere else.

Re:culture trap

[Anonymous Coward]

But only in Sweden is regret considered retroactive rape.

No. At most universities in the US, regret can also be considered retroactive rape. See the Emma Sulkowicz case at Columbia University.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/03/columbia-student-i-didn-t-rape-her.html

Re:culture trap

[Rei]

F*ing a sleeping girl is to work around her refusal to consent to one's preferred form of sex - entry #4 on Assange's EAW - is rape in almost every jurisdiction in the first world. And the UK court system has - at multiple levels - upheld that all four entries on the EAW match up to equivalent British charges. And a full court hearing in the Svea Court of Appeals, including testimony from Assange's attorneys, has gone over the evidence and found probable cause on all four counts. Heck, one of Assange's attorneys (Emerson) all but admitted that he did it.

Sweden actually has rather unusually lax penalties in this regard compared to most places. If Assange was convicted of doing that in DC then he'd be facing a 10x longer maximum sentence than in Sweden. In fact, Sweden's rape laws in general are pretty lax. There was a rape case a while back where a teenage girl was gang-raped by a group of three men; however, only the first could be charged because, having been beaten into submission by him, she had stopped resisting by the time that the other two got to her.

Anyway, for the case at hand here, it's amazing that the Slashdot header didn't mention the actual stated reason why the prosecutor is doing this: because the statute of limitations on some of the lesser charges** runs out this year (the statute on the rape charge** doesn't run out until 2020). Thus he has to be indicted**, of which this questioning is a legal requirement (he's only been questioned on some of the charges before he fled***, all other communication has been through Q and A via his attorneys). This will pose some challenges, as in general in Sweden, once indicted**, there's a time limit on when the case must go to trial, but if he still refuses to hand himself over, he could run this out. But the prosecutor's office may be able to extend that, we'll have to see.

** I use here "charged" in the case of "anklagad" and "indict" in the case of "åtala". They don't exactly match up to English words, and a lot of Assange fans like to play this word game where they say he's not been "charged" and use that as an excuse for why he should be able to go free. But in Sweden, the process is that one gets formally anklagad by the processor and a judge issues a warrant (following the same sort of process as a charged person in the US or UK), and then once in custody and sufficient evidence has been gathered for prosecution, they're åtalad, which brings the case to trial. You're anklagad to get you in custody, åtalad to try to convict you.

*** Yes, he did flee. The claim that Assange was "free to go" as promulgated by Björn Hurtig, a former attorney of Assange's. He tried that same line in court and got smacked down by the judge for trying to deceive the court, and then got an official reprimand from the Swedish Bar Association.

Re:culture trap

[pla]

all other communication has been through Q and A via his attorneys

They have offered from the beginning to allow Ny to either question him in London, or to do it via teleconference, both of which Swedish law allows. Even the Swedish press and non-NyD MPs have started ridiculing Ny for her stubborn refusal to do so.


Heck, one of Assange's attorneys (Emerson) all but admitted that he did it.

Why wouldn't they? Anna Ardin never accused him of rape, just wanted to force him to get tested for STDs. She has even tweeted since then that he never raped her. Why would Assange or his lawyers bother denying facts that no one disputes?


before he fled

Slight correction there - After the first prosecutor cleared him, and Ny stalled for weeks, Assange asked permission to go to London, which Ny granted (and then immediately issued an international arrest warrant to generate as much worldwide publicity as possible).


The claim that Assange was "free to go" as promulgated by BjÃrn Hurtig, a former attorney of Assange's.

The chief magistrate of Assange's extradition hearing (who originally voted to extradite) has publicly stated that he incorrectly applied a law that effectively tied his hands into approving the extradition, and would have voted against it otherwise. Unfortunately for Assange, that really doesn't matter, because the UK has chosen to interpret him seeking asylum as breach of bail - Though in some sort of alice-in-wonderland loop of logic, amusingly enough, that doesn't count as a criminal offense in the UK, it just allows forfeiture of the bail itself and taking the accused into custody pending trial. Except, he doesn't face trial because Sweden hasn't actually charged him because (as you point out) they can't charge him without interviewing him, which Ny has refused to do until now.

If he didn't legitimately fear the

Re:culture trap

[Rei]

By "the history", you mean "the one case a decade and a half ago where Egypt lied to Sweden and told them that two people were convicted terrorists and promised to treat them well, getting them deported on the flight that Egypt arranged with the CIA", a case that caused such an uproar that the two were given residence, large financial compensation packages, and EU extradition law in general was changed so that countries had to have a history of upholding their promises for extradition to be allowed to proceed? The case that led to such an anti-rendition backlash in Sweden that in in 2006 Sweden had their special forces disguise themselves as airport workers to board a CIA jet and stop the extradition program from going through their territory, causing a major diplomatic incident with the US? A case that was exposed by.. wait for it.... Wikileaks!

While no country is perfect, Sweden has the #1 ranking in the world for the rights of the accused by the peer-reviewed World Justice Project. They have the world's best protections for whistleblowers - it's not even legal to investigate who leaked information in most cases, let alone prosecute. Assange thought so much of Sweden that he was moving there and setting up a new Wikileaks base of operations there - that's why he was in Sweden. He repeatedly called Sweden his shield, he thought so much of them. Right up until he was accused of rape, when suddenly Sweden magically transformed into an evil US lackey. Funny how that works.

Wait, are they asking for my permission?

[Ecuador]

Hmm, nice of them to ask. Guess it is the Excellent Karma?
Anyway, sure, go ahead, you have my permission.

Re:Swedish Charges/British Charges

[Xest]

Yeah I'm interested to see how that plays out. If Sweden drops it's extradition request, there's every possibility that the British courts may deem that that adds weight to his argument that there was no case to answer, that it was political, and that he shouldn't have had to be on bail in the first place making his fleeing of that effectively irrelevant.

But then if there is a political dimension, it may be that they'll be happy to get him on whatever they can, and they do indeed punish him for skipping bail.

It'd be interesting to see how that plays out, but it really depends what happens after the questioning that is finally going ahead.

It's interesting that Ny cites the impending statute of limitations date as the reason for the change of heart. There have been two other key events in the last 6 months that I suspect were more relevant:

1) Assange's petition to the Swedish courts to have the case dropped failed, but in the ruling the Swedish judiciary was clear that it could not understand why Ny hadn't just questioned him over here, that it was incredibly odd that she hadn't and that she must do this ASAP.

2) There has been growing political pressure to stop guarding the embassy. When £10million has been spent on guarding the embassy whilst police forces have been cut MPs have faced increasing pressure from the public and even policing unions to stop wasting time on it. Recent cuts have meant that some crimes such as car crime have become defacto decriminalised because the police no longer have the resources to pursue them. In that context it's rather galling for the police and public alike to hear we're spending millions just to have officers stood around doing nothing.

So I imagine the weight of these two events have been the key reasons for this shift rather than expiry of statute of limitations for the most minor allegations. If Ny defied the Swedish courts a further appeal to have the case dropped would likely succeed due to Ny refusing to do her job and actually pursue a prosecution. Similarly, the Ecuadorian embassy might stop being watched and Assange could flee anyway.

She's really been left little choice. At least the case is finally moving, and Ny has been forced to do her job properly rather than simply persisting with long discredited excuses not to do it (the most amusing of which is that the Swedish justice system doesn't allow overseas questioning - what a laughing stock the folks that persisted in pushing that myth have now become).