Noted Swedish Journalist, Assange Critic Exposed As Police Agent

A prize-winning Swedish journalist noted for his left-wing, pro-NATO and anti-Wikileaks commentary was revealed this month to have been a paid agent of Säpo, his nation’s security service.

Martin Fredriksson, shown in a file photo and a winner of a major investigative reporting prize in 2014 for his work exposing right-wing groups opposed to NATO, has been secretly paid for years by Säpo, the Swedish Security Service, according to news reports based on his own admissions.

In deep intrigue that resembles a spy novel, Fredriksson’s story undermines conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic that journalists work independently from power centers, including government agencies.

The matter is especially timely because of Sweden’s ongoing persecution of Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange (shown at right in a file photo).  Authorities have targeted Assange for what appears to be a trumped up sex scandal probe that has extended for nearly six years, apparently in reprisal for massive and ongoing disclosures by Wikileaks of Western governments’ darkest secrets.

More generally, United States and NATO pressures upon European leaders are tainting the latter’s carefully nurtured images of independence.

Sweden, which has long boasted of an official position of neutrality in world affairs and close adherence to humanitarian and democratic principles under a rule of law, has already hurt its image by the Assange case. The fallout includes a ruling last month by a United Nations panel that Assange’s political asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London since June 2012 to avoid extradition amounts to “arbitrary detention” under international law. 

The Indicter, a start-up global human rights commentary site, underscored in column last week the sinister implications of the revelations, especially the seemingly odd mixture of Fredriksson’s advocacy against Assange and in favor of NATO. It revealed, for example, that Fredriksson used his clout to lobby for Amnesty International opposition to Assange.

The editor, Dr. Marcello Ferrada de Noli, a longtime Swedish medical school professor and human rights advocate shown at left, drew on disclosures March 1 about Fredriksson in SVD (Svenska Dagbladet, or Swedish Daily), to illustrate de Noli’s broader theme that Swedish officials and thought leaders defer far more to the United States and authoritarian policies than commonly understood in liberal democracies, including Sweden.

Sweden’s highly irregular investigation of Assange illustrates this thesis.

Ecuador granted Assange political asylum in its London embassy three and half years ago to protect him from a relentless effort by Swedish authorities to extradite him for questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations arising from two affairs he undertook from invitations by women attending his featured speech at an August 2010 conference in Sweden.

Assange submitted to questioning about the claims from the two women, who had separately invited him to stay with them. Authorities have never charged him with a crime but they have mounted an extraordinary campaign to extradite him for further questioning after he left Sweden.

Assange has denied any criminal activity and argued unsuccessfully in British courts that the investigation was a ruse to extradite him to Sweden so it could then ship him to the United States to face still-secret charges arising from Wikileaks disclosures embarrassing officials in the United States, Britain, Sweden and elsewhere in Western governments and private power centers.