Assange Rape Defense Underscores Shameful Swedish, U.S. Tactics

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange last week refuted the dubious rape prosecution Sweden began against him in August 2010.

Assange’s written response on Dec. 7, with his first detailed defense, underscores the disgraceful procedures used by Sweden, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

With the zeal and arrogance of a police state, Sweden has repeatedly violated due process under a veneer of legal and human rights rhetoric.

Sweden’s use of sexual misconduct claims to capture Assange stems from coordinated reprisal by the three nations for his WikiLeaks publication in 2010 that included some 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables and “The Afghan Diaries,” a trove of 80,000 documents.

These materials exposed diplomatic hypocrisy (including regarding Sweden’s ostensible “neutrality“) suspected war crimes, and cover-up by Sweden and NATO members.

Our defense here of Assange centers on all-important procedural fairness issues, not necessarily his personal behavior while he was in bed with the complainants. Nor is our defense an endorsement of WikiLeaks and the anti-secrecy platform’s wholesale release of sensitive documents, including those designed to hurt Hillary Clinton and Democrats in the recent U.S. elections.

Those are more complicated issues than the procedures Sweden used for fact-finding on the rape investigation, as we told RT America host Ed Schultz during a cable TV interview on Dec. 7.

I was invited to provide perspective on Assange’s first detailed, public response in legal proceedings to the rape allegation. The New York Times reported the basics earlier that day in WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Denies Rape in Detailed Account of Encounter.

Our focus on due process includes the right to confront witnesses before an impartial tribunal in a public proceeding. That is a bedrock of truth-finding, freedom, law-and-order, and many other core human rights values ingrained for centuries in American and English law.

The end does not justify the means, in other words. If Sweden and allied nations want to capture and prosecute Assange for WikiLeaks they should comply with relevant law, and not engage in the legal charade that’s occurred for more than six years at vast expense, including to the reputations of the perpetrating nations.

Yet the discussion below — summarizing major developments since we first helped break stories in 2010 showing secret political and intelligence ties behind this witchhunt — contains plenty of material for those who enjoy spy thriller material drawn from real life, and not merely legal abstractions like “due process.”

It’s not coincidental that The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo hit novel and film series was set in Sweden’s hacking community, or that “James Bond” novel writer Ian Fleming in real life had been a top British intelligence official and later European news editor for the North American Newspaper Alliance, a British intelligence front that pretended to operate as a legitimate news organization 

Earlier this year, as example from the Assange case, a prominent left-wing Swedish journalist who had been attacking Assange, Martin Fredriksson, was exposed as a secret asset of Säpo, Sweden’s CIA-affiliated intelligence service, as we reported here.

In 2010, we helped break on the Huffington Post the story headlined Rove Suspected In Swedish-U.S. Political Prosecution of WikiLeaks. It revealed that former Bush White House advisor Karl Rove served in 2010 as a key advisor to Sweden’s conservative governing party at a time when Rove was advocating on Fox News that authorities execute Assange even before any government had filed any formal charges against him.

As of today, Assange still has not been publicly charged with any crime anywhere in the world, although reports have surfaced that American prosecutors obtained a still-sealed indictment against him on espionage charges related to WikiLeaks.

As for disclosure to the public, Sweden merely says it wants Assange’s presence for further questioning about alleged sexual misconduct.

Assange has refused to travel to Sweden for further questions (beyond those he answered in 2010) because he fears Sweden would end the sex case charade son after his arrival and then extradite him to the United States, where he might be imprisoned for life or even executed. Swedish authorities have pooh-poohed that threat but that country’s track record in such cases, including this, provides no assurance.

The Beginning: A Speaking Trip To Stockholm and Two Young Beauties

In 2010, the Australian-born Assange was visiting Sweden on a trip featuring a talk in Stockholm. He held celebrity status because WikiLeaks disclosures that year of hacked and leaked documents challenged not just war-makers, their financiers, and diplomats but a larger power structure of media, parliaments, courts and other watchdog institutions that were failing to expose government secrets and hold wrongdoers accountable.

PayPal blocked WikiLeaks accounts, making Assange’s travel difficult. That rendered Assange vulnerable and more dependent than normal on the kindness of strangers during his trip to Sweden to try to set up servers that might be safe from NATO pressures. Sweden has maintained an official stance of neutrality during much of the Cold War but also has deep connections between its leading institutions and those of other Western nations.

On the trip, a politically active conference manager, “AA,” and then a fan, “SW,” separately invited Assange to sleep in their beds on different nights of his stay.

“AA,” reputedly once employed at the Swedish embassy in Washington, DC, said at first that Assange could use her bed while she was away, but then returned home unexpectedly, and had sexual relations with him. That was according to accounts from authorities leaked to the public in 2010 and this week’s Assange description, which was reported by the New York Times on Dec. 7 in WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Denies Rape in Detailed Account of Encounter. By Assange’s account, she boasted afterward on social media to friends of their relationship.

Assange identifies the two women by their initials “AA” and “SW.” This usage to protect privacy is similar to that used by nearly all mainstream publications, which decline to publish the names of accusers in sex-related allegations without their permission.

But we identify them here, using the same logic as best-selling feminist author Naomi Wolf, a longtime volunteer in support of rape victims. Six years ago, Wolf wrote commentaries that included her Julian Assange’s sex-crime accusers deserve to be named and J’Accuse. An additional complicating factor in this case is the potential roles of intelligence operatives that clouds the accusations and process in important ways described below.