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Sweden, CIA and Assange
By Rafik Saley, Okoth Osewe, and John Goss
By his own admission, Mr. Sven-Olof Petersson, Sweden’s Ambassador to Australia, has revealed that he was fully aware of the pending CIA rendition flight which took place on 18th December 2001 from Stockholm to Egypt. This flight ended in two Egyptian nationals, Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, being illegally rendered and tortured. His admission comes from a statement to the Swedish Parliament’s Constitutional Committee which confirms his presence at a briefing on 17th December 2001, a briefing at which the rendition process was being finalised. However, the Constitution Committee report shows that he knew about the renditions at the end of November and probably even in mid-November. In fact, it was he who kept the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anna Lindh, updated with progress about deportation arrangements with the CIA in November 2001.[i] At the time Petersson was Sweden’s Director-General for Political Affairs at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.[ii]
