Julian Assange wanted in Sweden for alleged rapes

[barracuda]

All I know is I don't have the same reservations about Cryptome.

Just to clarify, Jeff - are you saying that you do or don't trust Cryptome?

[seemslikeadream]

Wikileaks founder slams sexual abuse charges

[Nordic]

So ... anyone else reminded of Scott Ritter here?

The strangest thing about the Scott Ritter smear was that they nailed him on it ... later. Like way later. They smeared him with it, then sorta dropped it, then it seemingly turns out to have had some merit.

I never did figure out why that played out the way it did.

And I'm not saying that means J.A. is guilty, it's just that this whole smear tactic thing is reminding me of that case.

[seemslikeadream]

Wikileaks rape claim woman 'experienced unwelcome advances'
A woman at the centre of the alleged smear campaign against the founder of the Wikileaks said she had supported a rape claim because she had experienced unwelcome sexual advances from him.

Julian Assange, an Australian who mostly lives in Sweden, was briefly charged with rape and molestation by Swedish prosecutors last week. He has dismissed the charges as a Pentagon inspired smear campaign to create “sex traps” to harm his credibility.
A spokesman for the Swedish prosecutor said the rape charge was dropped by a prosecutor when new information became available. The molestation charge is still under investigation and it was not clear last night if Mr Assange had been in touch with the Swedish authorities.

One of the two women behind the charges yesterday told a Swedish newspaper that the women who alleged rape had been a stranger who had also attended speeches by Mr Assange. The woman had approached her and she had agreed to attend a police interview to lay the charges and make a complaint of her own.
“I believed her information immediately because I had a similar experience myself,” she said. “The other woman wanted to report a rape, I gave my statement as a support statement to her story and to support her.”
But Mr Assange has alleged dirty tricks were involved, pointing out that a tabloid newspaper, Expressen had contacted Maria Haljebo Kjellstrand, the prosecutor who laid the charges, within a few hours.
Mr Assange told another Swedish newspaper that he expected to be embroiled in controversy following his recent involvement in the leak of classified military documents from Afghanistan.
“I don’t know who’s behind this but we have been warned that for example the Pentagon plans to use dirty tricks to spoil things for us,” he said. “I have also been warned about sex traps.”
Mr Assange has been in Sweden which has offered legal safeguards for the site. It revelations angered the Obama administration by publishing thousands of leaked documents about US military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
WikiLeaks is preparing to release of a fresh batch of classified documents from the Afghan war, despite warnings from the Pentagon that they could endanger American soldiers.
The Australian remains under suspicion of a lesser crime of molestation, which would not lead to an arrest warrant. Molestation covers a wide of range of offences under Swedish law, including inappropriate physical contact with another adult, and can result in fines or up to one year in prison.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, a Wikileaks spokesman, said there had been abuse of procedure at the Swedish law office. “To me it seems rather strange that the police and prosecutor have revealed the information to media before they even tried to contact Julian,” he said. “We have received information that a slander campaign against Wikileaks or Julian Assange should be launched this week. We have received the information by trustworthy sources and prominent journalists who know how Pentagon works.”
Eva Finné, Stockholm’s chief prosecutor, said there was no suspicion that Mr Assange had been implicated in a rape. She said: “I do not believe there is any reasons to suspect that he has committed rape.”
Miss Haljebo Kjellstrad was last night facing calls for an investigation into her conduct by the Justice Ombudsman. She defended her actions. “The information I was give was so convincing that I took my decision. I was given an account by the police that I thought was enough to issue an arrest. I do not regret my decision in any way,” she said.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Interesting turn. If Wikileaks is legit and its enemies are really as powerful as we often imagine, then surely they could provide a fake victim willing/made to claim JA did X.

But either they aren't that powerful/something went wrong, or they aren't actually involved in the accusation against JA. Which even if true (despite withdrawal of charge) would not prove that JA much less wikileaks are a poisoned honeypot for whistleblowers.


Two things JA & Wikileaks don't get enough credit for imho is that, so far, they're clean, and they've already got a tremendous number of runs on the board. Against that, theres cliche tennis of 'gee theres a subversive mob having inspiring successes it must be a plot', and 'what bad hair', but nobody can show what Wikileaks or JA have done wrong.

The ongoing "is he/isn't he" is reminding me more & more of 'fostering debate' on climate change, creationism, smoking etc, whereby subsidising uncertainty pays off as a distraction and maintains the profitable status quo. Better keep the plebs wondering about hair colour and disinfo than reading the actual army records on how their cousin died defending a drug deal 1000s of kms away.

Yeah.


As far as that tremedous number of runs of the board goes ...

Thats part of the thing with all this "assange is an op" bollocks.

1 He doesn't have to be, the reaction to what they (wikileaks) do can always be controlled in the media, as we have seen with this war diary release, (and with the recent Australian election) no actual analysis of the issues or policies or in this case the documents, just pointless speculation on trivia and a definite spin.

2 In this case why assume it was the pentagon?

Wikileaks have lots of enemies that aren't the US govt too. The vast majority of their leaks have nothing to do with the US govt.


I'm saying all this cos the rape charges have been dropped. I dunno if there are further sexual harassment or assault charges in the wings, maybe there are, and maybe, simply - hes a sleazy prick as well as a "on the level" activist. My first reaction to hearing about the charges was "Bullshit - its a scam to make him (and wikileaks by association) look bad. Usually I assume rape accusations are on the level. But its not surprising to assume a scam given this situation.

[seemslikeadream]

Breaking: Gasbag commenters mull murder, fatwas against leakers
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, August 23, 2010

There’s nothing that gets the American can-do spirit going in the morning than a rightwing scribe urging the U.S military to “have a fire sale” (read: destroy) Wikileaks, while invoking Bruce ‘Die Harder’ Willis and CIA ‘friends’ who openly advocate “getting” (read: bagging) Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

From Jed Babbin at the American Spectator, this morning:

A friend of mine, a more-or-less retired CIA paramilitary operative, sees the solution in characteristically simple terms. “We should go get him,” he said, speaking of Assange.

When my friend says “get him,” he isn’t thinking of lawsuits, but of suppressed pistols, car bombs and such. But as heart-warming as it is to envision Assange surveying his breakfast cereal with a Geiger counter, we shouldn’t deal with him and WikiLeaks that way.

At the risk of abusing the Bard, let’s “Cry havoc, and let slip the geeks of cyberwar.” We need to have a WikiLeaks fire sale.

A “fire sale” (as those who saw Die Hard 4 will remember) is a cyber attack aimed at disabling — even destroying — an adversary’s ability to function. Russia did this to Estonia in 2007 and Israel apparently did this to Syrian radar systems when it attacked the Syrian nuclear site later that year. The elegance of this is that if we can pull off a decisive cyber operation against WikiLeaks, it can and should be done entirely in secret.

And then he ends with:

WikiLeaks should be hit with the cyber equivalent of napalm. Let’s have that fire sale. Burn, baby, burn.

Put aside the pathetic chest-thumping for a second. Babbin fails to explain with any meaningful persuasion why these extrajudicial punishments are in order other than “we have a right to act to protect our secrets. And act we must.” To him, this is tantamount to everything, even the U.S Constitution. He proves this by blustering about the leakers who exposed the government’s illegal spying on Americans under the Bush Administration (he says this, by the way, while the so-called conservative website he is writing for exploits and perverts the images of Ben Franklin and minutemen icons in the ad bars alongside his column):

Over the past decade, America has been unwilling to defend its secrets and punish leakers. Under Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, fear of media reaction prevented the investigation of some of the most damaging leaks in history, ranging from the New York Times‘s publication of the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program to the Washington Post‘s publication of the CIA’s secret prisons for terrorists. The people who leaked those secrets were left unpunished by Gonzales’s Justice Department refusal to subpoena the reporters and force disclosure of their sources.

Note to Babbin: Maybe they were left ‘unpunished’ (though we can hardly call losing one’s career and facing criminal indictment ‘unpunished’) because these “leakers” and journalists were doing their jobs — like serving The People — while the NSA and CIA were crapping all over the Constitution and soiling the reputation and honor of the United States all over the globe for decades to come?)

But smearing the Constitution seems little bother to Babbin, who sets the Chinese Standard for the Pentagon, advocating a full-throated war cry and a STRATCOM offensive against Wikileaks and any like web operation, saying it is “not impossible,” though he does not say how it can be done. Just details.

The real punch line here is not in Babbin’s supercilious screed, but in the comments, which began posting immediately. Gasbags sitting with their morning joe, contemplating all manner of steroidal reaction. John McClane-meets-Slappy-the-Keystroker, if you will:

From “Jimbo”:

Since many Afghans are now at risk because of Wikileaks, why not have one of the tribal immams in Afghanistan declare a fatwa on Mr. Assange? This will make his life very difficult and would be a fitting punishment for his crime. Any why not place that PFC who turned traitor and gave away these secrets in front of a firing squad? This way, the next traitor may not be so brave.

How about giving every such anonymous commenter the gun with which to fire on said PFC and ask him to pull the trigger him or herself. Bruce would be proud. Better yet, round up the best of them and they can form the Best Hit Squad Ever:

Team America.

[DoYouEverWonder]

When my friend says “get him,” he isn’t thinking of lawsuits, but of suppressed pistols, car bombs and such. But as heart-warming as it is to envision Assange surveying his breakfast cereal with a Geiger counter, we shouldn’t deal with him and WikiLeaks that way.

The Nazis rise again.

[Jeff]

All I know is I don't have the same reservations about Cryptome.

Just to clarify, Jeff - are you saying that you do or don't trust Cryptome?

Sorry for the unintended ambiguity. What I meant was, I have no reason to suspect Cryptome is anything other than what it claims to be.

But there's something in Wikileaks' milk. I just can't say who put it there.

Former Swedish chief prosecutor demands explanation for arrest order

The former Swedish chief prosecutor, Sven-Erik Alhem, demands an explanation from the prosecutors that filed the arrest order for Assange and later withdraw the order. Alhem tells the Swedish newpaper Dagens Nyheter that he finds the actions of the prosecutors bizarre and confusing. Alhem points out several actions to DN that he finds questionable; the arrest order was based on the assumption probable cause, the strongest grade of suspicion of crime that is required for an arrest order, and later this probable cause suspicions is withdrawn without the appearance of any new information in the case. This is very confusing.

An order for an arrest in absentia is not normally made official as this will give the suspect a chance to escape. This was not the case here it was announce to the world and no one could avoid the media storm that followed these news.

In this case when the arrest order was issued for a well known person, extra caution would have been taken by the prosecutor's office to make sure an experienced and well educated spokesperson could have explained to the public and media the reasons for each step in the investigation.

http://www.skandinaviflorida.com/web/si ... EIE-88KHYT

[Twyla LaSarc]

I don't usually discount rape accusations either, but this one has been so well-timed and the bumbling about of the swedish prosecutors (including publicly releasing his name, something I have read that they almost never do due to legal constraints) leads one to believe that this is all for show and smear...

Actually, it's clumsiness puts me more in mind of one of JA's other enemies (which he has lots besides the pentagon)... google 'Miss Bloody Butt' for a sick attempted scientology fair game ploy that ultimately failed. Not saying hubbard's flock did it (although they've been stung by wikileak's lash as well) but it goes to show that certain groups will try just about anything to stifle critics. 'Alleged Rape' is a favorite.

[seemslikeadream]

The Laureate and the Leaker: Swedish Warrant a Salvo in Team Obama's War on Wikileaks
WRITTEN BY CHRIS FLOYD
SATURDAY, 21 AUGUST 2010 21:58
Here it comes: with the bizarre "rape-no rape" charges against Julian Assange, the War Machine's assault against Wikileaks has now begun in earnest.

These days, the powers-that-be don't go straight to the shiv in the back or the poison in the drink or the faked suicide or the tragic car accident on a dark road; no, today we are a bit more circumspect in taking down high-profile irritants of empire. The modern way is to begin the takedown with a smear campaign -- preferably some sort of ""moral turpitude" to sully their public image and discredit their entire cause.

And so on late Friday we had the announcement that Swedish authorities had issued an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on charges of rape and molestation. This was followed a few hours later -- after Wikileaks mounted a ferocious defense against the charges, and promised to carry on with its work regardless -- by a sudden decision to withdraw the warrant, with officials now saying the rape charge was unfounded -- although they said nothing about the lesser charge of molestation, leaving that vague but turpitudishly resonant charge hanging in the air for the moment.

This rigmarole is about as blatant a smear as can be imagined, coming as it does just after the Obama Administration has been caught out in an outright lie about Wikileaks attempts to redact its next release of classified war documents to ensure that no Afghans named in the papers will be put at risk. Not only has the Peace Laureate's minions been lying about Wikileaks' earnest efforts in the regard, but this deceit has been actively abetted by the New York Times, whose own reporter passed along Wikileaks' offer to the Pentagon -- then publicly dismissed the claim that Wikileaks had made the good-faith offer. (Glenn Greenwald has the story on this egregious -- if depressingly standard -- malefaction by the imperial servitors in the media.)

Wikileaks made the offer to ward off the criticism it received after the last release; i.e., that it had "blood on its hands" because Afghan insurgents would strike at any Afghans named in the documents as cooperating with the occupation forces. This "blood libel" was trumpeted all over the media by Obama officials -- while their own hands were absolutely pouring with the blood of innocent Afghans murdered at their command. The fact is, of course, that not a single case of such retribution has been reported; and the charge itself is based on the ludicrous assumption that the Taliban does not already know who is cooperating with the occupation forces. (In any case, many if not most Afghans cooperating with Americans do it quite openly, as part of the Afghan government, for example, or in liaising with military commanders in their region, or working for the occupation's vast base-building projects, distribution networks and reconstruction programs, etc.)

But this initial blood libel -- belched forth by such longtime butchers as Obama's favorite Bush Family factotum, Bob Gates -- did not really take hold. The revelations continued to pour forth from the 92,000 documents unveiled by Wikileaks last month -- such as this remarkable story by Pratap Chatterjee at TomDispatch, detailing the operations of the American death squad, Task Force 373, whose existence was revealed in the Wikileaks trove. These professional assassins are a key element of the Peace Laureate's strategy in Afghanistan -- and an example of a large-scale trend in the War Machine's ever-evolving "philosophy" of Terror War.

Indeed, many of the proponents of Obama's "surge" in assassination liken it -- favorably! -- to the murderous Phoenix Program in Vietnam directed by the CIA, which killed at least 20,000 people, by the Agency's own admission. (Other, more independent examinations put the the true death count of those slaughtered in these non-combat, "extrajudicial killings" at in the range of 40,000 to 70,000. For more on the Phoenix Program, and on Obama's grand "continuity" with imperial atrocities past, see here.) As Chatterjee notes:


President Obama has, by all accounts, expanded military intelligence gathering and “capture/kill” programs globally in tandem with an escalation of drone-strike operations by the CIA.

There are quite a few outspoken supporters of the “capture/kill” doctrine. Columbia University Professor Austin Long is one academic who has jumped on the F3EA bandwagon. Noting its similarity to the Phoenix assassination program, responsible for tens of thousands of deaths during the U.S. war in Vietnam (which he defends), he has called for a shrinking of the U.S. military “footprint” in Afghanistan to 13,000 Special Forces troops who would focus exclusively on counter-terrorism, particularly assassination operations. “Phoenix suggests that intelligence coordination and the integration of intelligence with an action arm can have a powerful effect on even extremely large and capable armed groups,” he and his co-author William Rosenau wrote in a July 2009 Rand Institute monograph entitled” “The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency.”

Others are even more aggressively inclined. Lieutenant George Crawford, who retired from the position of “lead strategist” for the Special Forces Command to go work for Archimedes Global, Inc., a Washington consulting firm, has suggested that F3EA be replaced by one term: “Manhunting.” In a monograph published by the Joint Special Operations University in September 2009, “Manhunting: Counter-Network Organization for Irregular Warfare,” Crawford spells out “how to best address the responsibility to develop manhunting as a capability for American national security.”

This then is where we are. We have the President of the United States -- who has already openly proclaimed his "right" to assassinate anyone on earth, including American citizens, without the slightest due process of law, simply at his arbitrary command -- now feverishly expanding the use of death squads, whose stealthy night raids on sleeping villages have already killed a vast number of innocent civilians in Afghanistan (as the Wikileaks documents show). This same administration is now running "black ops," secret armies, proxy wars and other covert activities in more than 75 countries around the world. That is to say, the Obama Administration is now murdering people in their beds, fomenting bloody ethnic conflict, supporting and/or carrying out acts of terrorism, spreading corruption, assisting dictators, arming warlords, spreading hate and suffering all over the world -- and doing it knowingly, proudly. ("Evil in broad daylight" indeed, as Arthur Silber details here.)

And these are the moral paragons who have now turned their machinery of lies and smears against Wikileaks. For make no mistake; although the rape charges were manufactured in Sweden -- which, incidentally, is where some of Wikileaks' servers are located -- they emanate from the proud deathlords in Washington. Indeed, didn't we hear just a few weeks ago that the Peace Laureate's people had launched a campaign of pressuring foreign governments to put fetters on Assange and his organization? Now Sweden's center-right government -- no, Rush, Sweden is no longer the super-socialist fairyland of your nightmares -- has obviously hearkened to the master's voice.

But although this first foray has been rebuffed, it is certain that what we are seeing is the beginning of a concerted effort to destroy Assange as a public figure and thereby discredit the work of Wikileaks -- and by extension, the truth of its revelations.

And smearing, of course, is just the first step. If that doesn't work ... well, the avowed and openly proclaimed proponents of assassination certainly have other, more "prejudicial" methods at their disposal, nicht war?

II.
John Pilger, writing before this latest assault, speaks strongly about the need to defend and support Wikileaks' mission. Of course, no one has spoken more eloquently, insightfully and to the point on this issue than Arthur Silber, whose multi-part series on the manifold implications of Wikileaks' efforts is absolutely essential reading. (See also here and here.)

I'd like to take this chance to say that I now believe that my initial response to Wikileaks' Afghan Papers release (see here) was almost entirely wrong. I fell into the all-too-common trap of discussing the issue in the terms that power itself had set: i.e, how the revelations could be spun by the War Machine for its advantage, instead of standing back and seeing the larger picture of just what such an act of defiance -- unstoppable due to its invisible dissemination via the internet -- really meant. Yet Silber wisely pointed out a salient fact of our time: that our warlords will use anything and everything -- and nothing at all -- to advance their agenda. The substance of any given story doesn't matter to them: they will spin it into a reason to continue the Terror War and the agenda of domination. But this basic truth somehow escaped me.

I seized upon the very first stories in the mainstream press about the leaks, noting -- with righteous fury -- that they told us nothing we had not already heard before. I was writing literally within a couple of hours of the first look at a gargantuan storehouse of 92,000 documents -- yet I was certain that I knew just what the trove contained, and what it meant. I downplayed their significance, tossing off the "savvy" observation that these were "no Pentagon Papers." But scant hours after this confident proclamation, there was the man behind the Pentagon Papers himself, Daniel Ellsberg, making precisely that comparison.

With a hasty, thoughtless rush to judgment -- and with a focus far too fixed on the "media narrative," and on the need to get my uniformed opinion out there -- I did what I now feel was a great disservice to an event that was in fact a significant blow against the empire; a significance confirmed by the empire's panicked reaction to it.

It is easy to sit on the sidelines and pontificate. Over the years, I've spoken out as forthrightly as I know how, but I'm no activist, I haven't risked much; all it has cost me is a few journalism gigs. But the people at Wikileaks are putting their liberties -- and their lives -- on the line, to take practical action to try to bring some of the horrors of the Terror War to an end. It's not a question of romanticizing any one organization, or any one man, seeing them as paragons whose every action or statement is sacrosanct; nobody needs that, and it never accomplishes anything. It just gets in the way of the task at hand.

But when people are putting everything on the line to stand up against the ravages of power -- against war, against aggression, against assassination and atrocity -- then I want to stand with those people, and stand by those people. As the old gospel song says, "I want to be there in that number."

[compared2what?]

All I know is I don't have the same reservations about Cryptome.

Just to clarify, Jeff - are you saying that you do or don't trust Cryptome?

Sorry for the unintended ambiguity. What I meant was, I have no reason to suspect Cryptome is anything other than what it claims to be.

I don't either. But that doesn't make John Young any more inerrant than anyone else on earth.

And in this case, given that he says himself here, right up-top that his (apparently) still unswerving conviction regarding the fraudulence of Wikileaks was initially based entirely, solely and exclusively on the posted material -- a little less than a month's worth of casual mailing-list chatter in early 2007, (nothing more substantial than which has since come his way) -- I'd say that it's really pretty difficult to see how he's got much (if any) reason for his confidence. Apart from a temperamental predisposition to it.

Which is totally not meant as an attack on -- or even a criticism of -- either John Young or Cryptome, btw. I'm genuinely sure that most of the time, that's a tendency that serves both him and the site well. In this instance, though (at least as I read it) he basically leaps to an unjustified conclusion without ever appearing to grasp that:

(a) He's just on the advisory board, not fully in the loop or at the real center of the action or even formally (ie -- legally, at least for tax purposes) an officer, key man or representative of the organization, and that he therefore probably hasn't been read into the project at a detailed or confidential level; or

(b) You can't really infer anything from the fact that a bunch of hardcore cyberkiddies communicating with one another online don't sound all that serious or focused other than that they're a bunch of hardcore cyberkiddies communicating with one another online.

So he gets frustrated and breaks up with them over stuff that sounds to me like it was probably in their business plan from day one, long, long before they even approached him -- ie, the $5 million fundraising goal,1; the 1.1 million documents waiting to be leaked2; and their press-release-language emphasis on "ethical" leaking, combined with prominent iron-clad guarantees that whistle-blower anonymity both could and would be protected.3

Anyway. I think he made an error in judgment. Which is unfortunate, but happens to everybody occasionally. Including people who (like John Young) have every reason to be confident in the soundness of their judgments. And also that he's not the type to leave people whom he perceives as suspicious unexposed as long as he still has the energy to pursue them. Which is net not-unfortunate-at-all. In fact, it's admirable. Basically, there's not really a bad guy in the picture, as far as I can see.

I just wouldn't hang my hat on John Young's opinion on this one, personally. I mean, he's probably right to be suspicious of people who want to change the world, at least in some at-the-end-of-the-day sense. Only fun until someone gets hurt and so forth. But unless there's much more to the story than he's revealing, I think he's probably wrong to suspect what he suspects.

My opinion only, btw. So I carry no brief against those who read it differently than I do. And here's the link again, in case anyone wants to do so. Plus a much more recent John Young interview, with still yet more linkage.

And...my proverbial 2 cents have now been spent.

But there's something in Wikileaks' milk. I just can't say who put it there.

There's such a wide field of candidates, it really could be almost anyone. I kind of doubt that Bank Julius Baer and their various former associates have all forgiven and forgotten, for example. They (or any number of others) may just have been waiting for the moment to be ripe. I mean, he's definitely got plenty of enemies, no matter what his provenance is or isn't.
_________________

1 Which is totally in line with what a start-up that was going to do what they subsequently went on to do realistically would need to make it to the three-or-so-year mark at which that kind of venture either is or isn't in a position to raise its own revenues from the general public plus, optimally, a few private individual big donors.

2 Which I don't doubt they had in numbers that could be counted in some way that really did come to 1.1 million, although it wouldn't necessarily be in any way that someone who wasn't writing a business prospectus would ever choose to count them.

3 Up to which they've diligently done their best to live in practice, and for the most part succeeded.

[82_28]

Ya sure. No "plotting" at all, whether it be by the Pentagon, the women, Assange etc. . . Team America/NYT to the rescue!

Plotting Doubted in WikiLeaks Case

STOCKHOLM — Although Swedish prosecutors have yet to complete their review of sexual abuse accusations that two Stockholm women made last week against Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks Web site, those who say they have detailed knowledge of the case discount conspiracy theories linking it to efforts to discredit WikiLeaks.

Mr. Assange had suggested over the weekend that the tortured sequence of events at the Stockholm prosecutor’s office had been prompted by the Pentagon as part of what he called a program of “dirty tricks to ruin us.” The prosecutors had issued a warrant for Mr. Assange’s arrest on suspicion of rape on Friday night, which was followed within 24 hours by the cancellation of the warrant and a formal retraction of the implication that a rape had occurred.

But the conspiratorial view has found no backing from the prosecutor’s office, where the senior prosecutor in charge of the case, Eva Finne, said Monday that nothing she knew of the case suggested that there had been any outside involvement in the events that led the two women to make their accusations against Mr. Assange.

“I have no indication at all in that direction,” Ms. Finne said in a telephone interview in which she confirmed that a lesser charge mentioned in the original prosecutor’s statement — molestation of the two women — remained under investigation.

She said she hoped to decide by the end of the week whether to proceed with a molestation charge against Mr. Assange, which carries a maximum penalty under Swedish law of a year in prison.

The developments over the weekend set off a new flurry of the interest that has focused on WikiLeaks and its founder after the organization posted 77,000 secret Pentagon documents on the Afghan war on the Internet in late July.

The Defense Department’s general counsel, Jeh Charles Johnson, said last week that WikiLeaks had acted illegally in obtaining the secret documents and thousands of others that it has not yet posted on the Web, and Justice Department lawyers have been exploring the possibility of criminal charges against WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange.

Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, left Britain for Sweden this month as the long-distance confrontation with United States authorities intensified, saying he intended to establish a more secure base for himself and WikiLeaks under the wide protections afforded to whistle-blowers by Swedish law. The organization already had a strong base of support here, and it uses Sweden as a base for some of the multiple Web servers it uses to store and disseminate its caches of secret documents.

Mr. Assange and one of the two women, an activist in her early30s who is associated with a group that works with WikiLeaks in Sweden, did not respond to requests for interviews on Sunday and Monday. Efforts to contact the second woman, an artist who is in her mid-20s, were also unsuccessful.

Around the time the rape accusation was made, Mr. Assange traveled to northern Sweden, where he remains, according to an account he gave on Sunday to the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet. The newspaper announced recently that it planned to establish a formal relationship with Mr. Assange as a contributing columnist, an arrangement that friends said would enable him to acquire a work permit to stay in Sweden.

In the interview, he declined to answer questions about his relationships with the two women.

“I don’t want to drag anybody’s private life into the dirt without first understanding the whole situation clearly,” he said. “Why are they going to the police? What’s behind it? What I can say is that I have never, in Sweden or any other country, had sex with someone in a way that did not build on total consent from both sides.”

He contended in the interview, as he has in Twitter feeds and e-mails, that the accusations of sexual impropriety involved “dirty tricks.”

“I don’t know what’s behind this,” he said. “But we have been warned that the Pentagon, for example, is thinking of deploying dirty tricks to ruin us. And I have also been warned about sex traps.”

He added that he thought WikiLeaks had suffered “major damage” from the allegations. “There have been headlines all across the world that I am suspected of rape,” he said. “They do not disappear. And I know from experience that WikiLeaks’ enemies continue to trumpet things even after they have been retracted.”

But one of Mr. Assange’s close friends in Sweden, who said he had discussed the case in detail with Mr. Assange and one of the women, said he was “absolutely sure” that what was involved were personal animosities and grievances that flowed out of brief relationships Mr. Assange had with the women.

The man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issues, said that the volatile mix that led to the two women’s seeking criminal charges against Mr. Assange involved his celebrity in Sweden and the ill feelings that erupted when the two women discovered they had been competing for his attentions.

“This wasn’t anything to do with the Pentagon,” he said. “It was just a personal matter between three people that got out of hand.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/world ... .html?_r=2

You see, just a personal matter. Three months ago, the rape allegations would have never made the international news. Something stinks and it ain't my socks (which actually do right now).

[Simulist]

Plotting is always impossible. First of all, why would the rich and powerful ever take the time to plan anything? And if they plan anything, they certainly aren't going to plan it together! — that would be just too conspiratorial-ish—y.

And of course we all know that conspiracies just don't happen, ever — unless Bill O'Liely from FOX News or that chirpy little twit from MSNBC says they can. Or did.

[Peachtree Pam]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abr ... y_id=70624


Julian Assange rape charges dropped, Wikileaks founder cleared

In what has to have been a nightmare experience for him, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been cleared of charges of rape and molestation in Sweden, false charges issued by two women, one in her 20s and the other in her 30s. As reported at Zennie62.com, the charges looked like the anatomy of a smear campaign.

According to Aljazeera, Eva Finne, Sweden's chief prosecutor, Julian Assange was "no longer wanted."

On Friday, it was reported that the two women, who knew each other, came forward to Swedish Police. But the problem was they did not want to file an official report because of their so-called fears of his power.

What's fishy about that story is if the women actually knew who Julian was, thus "fearing his power," which is a joke of a claim, and knew what his controversial Wikileaks issue was about, why would they seek to file a false report of rape, especially since he up against the U.S Government?

If they were supporters of his cause, they would not have done that. Period.

Under the circumstances, because they're not named and did not file an official report, its fair to ask if the women were connected to the CIA?

Many news organizations will go back to the story that Wikileaks has over 70,000 documents on its website that are classified and concern the War in Afghanistan. But the dropping of charges does not begin to explain exactly and in detail why they were issued. And who were the two women who brought the story forward?

Charging someone with rape is a serious issue. What's more troubling is that it was done at a time when Wikileaks and Julian Assange are the focus of the U.S Governments anger. Anyone who abuses the legal process to make a false claim should be punished.

Stay tuned for more on this fish story.

[Peachtree Pam]

More on this strange episode:


http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadi ... -vuCKLiacA


WikiLeaks founder cleared of sex allegations in Sweden, could still face lesser charge

By Malin Rising (CP) – 40 minutes ago

STOCKHOLM — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange no longer faces sex abuse charges in Sweden after a prosecutor decided Wednesday to investigate only one of two complaints against him, and not as a sexual offence.

Assange — who has denied both accusations — is still suspected of molesting a woman on Aug. 13, but molestation is not a sex crime under Swedish law, said Karin Rosander, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Prosecution Authority.

It covers a wide range of offences, including reckless conduct or inappropriate physical contact with another adult, and can result in fines or up to one year in prison.

Chief Prosecutor Eva Finne formally closed another case involving a woman who claimed Assange had raped her. Finne had dismissed the rape charge over the weekend and recalled a short-lived arrest warrant. She decided Wednesday that the case couldn't be prosecuted as any other type of sex crime either.

"The investigation is therefore closed in regard to this complaint since there is no suspicion of a crime," Finne said in a statement.

Assange was in Sweden partly to seek legal protection for WikiLeaks, an online whistle-blower that has angered the Obama administration by publishing thousands of leaked documents about U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The group says it has computer servers in Sweden and other countries.

Assange and his group suggested that the accusations, coming as WikiLeaks prepares to release a new batch of classified documents, were part of a smear campaign. In an interview with a Swedish newspaper, Assange even pointed a finger at the Pentagon, which has warned WikiLeaks that the leaked documents could endanger U.S. soldiers and their Afghan helpers.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell on Sunday called Assange's charges "absurd."

The lawyer representing both women, Claes Borgstrom, also dismissed any foreign involvement in their complaints.

"There is not an ounce of truth in all this about Pentagon, or the CIA, or smear campaigns, nothing like it," Borgstrom told Swedish news agency TT.

Borgstrom criticized the prosecutor's decision, saying both complaints should be investigated as sex crimes.

Investigators have not released details about either case, though a police report obtained by The Associated Press shows both women had befriended Assange in connection with a seminar he gave in Stockholm on Aug. 14.

The report shows they filed their complaints together six days later.

An on-call prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Assange on suspicion of rape later that day, but Finne revoked it within 24 hours saying it wasn't a rape case.

Assange's lawyer Leif Silbersky lashed out at prosecutors for the way they handled the case, especially that they identified his client by name to the media.

"He has been cast as a rapist, labeled as a rapist and the international press have described him as a suspected rapist and now he has ended up in a situation where they have dispelled the sexual parts and what remains is molestation," Silbersky said.