The ‘getting’ of Assange and the smearing of a revolution

[stockholmer]

http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/the-getting-of-assange-and-the-smearing-of-a-revolution


The High Court in London will soon to decide whether Julian Assange is to be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual misconduct. At the appeal hearing in July, Ben Emmerson QC, counsel for the defence, described the whole saga as "crazy". Sweden's chief prosecutor had dismissed the original arrest warrant, saying there was no case for Assange to answer. Both the women involved said they had consented to have sex. On the facts alleged, no crime would have been committed in Britain.

However, it is not the Swedish judicial system that presents a "grave danger" to Assange, say his lawyers, but a legal device known as a Temporary Surrender, under which he can be sent on from Sweden to the United States secretly and quickly. The founder and editor of WikiLeaks, who published the greatest leak of official documents in history, providing a unique insight into rapacious wars and the lies told by governments, is likely to find himself in a hell hole not dissimilar to the "torturous" dungeon that held Private Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower. Manning has not been tried, let alone convicted, yet on 21 April, President Barack Obama declared him guilty with a dismissive "He broke the law".

This Kafka-style justice awaits Assange whether or not Sweden decides to prosecute him. Last December, the Independent disclosed that the US and Sweden had already started talks on Assange's extradition. At the same time, a secret grand jury - a relic of the 18th century long abandoned in this country - has convened just across the river from Washington, in a corner of Virginia that is home to the CIA and most of America's national security establishment. The grand jury is a "fix", a leading legal expert told me: reminiscent of the all-white juries in the South that convicted blacks by rote. A sealed indictment is believed to exist.

snip


Should Assange win his High Court appeal in London, he could face extradition direct to the United States. In the past, US officials have synchronised extradition warrants with the conclusion of a pending case. Like its predatory military, American jurisdiction recognises few boundaries. As the suffering of Bradley Manning demonstrates, together with the recently executed Troy Davis and the forgotten inmates of Guantanamo, much of the US criminal justice system is corrupt if not lawless.

snip

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If Assange is sent here to Sweden, we will demonstrate by the thousands to prevent him from being turned over to the US empiric war machine. There are already pamphlets all over uni campuses about this.

[DirkGently]

1. This is why OWS is leaderless. Anyone can be taken down, accused, arrested, destroyed.

[struggle4progress]

2. Swedish prosecutor's office has always said that if UK sent Assange to Sweden, then

Sweden couldn't extradite him on to a third country without permission from the UK

So despite all the noise, an extradition from UK to Sweden seems to decrease the likelihood that Assange could be extradited to a third country: before the Swedish request, a third country would have had to persuade the UK courts; at present, a third country has to persuade the UK courts but Sweden has a prior claim; and if UK passes him to Sweden, a third country would have had to persuade courts in BOTH Sweden and the UK in order to gain custody

Like such much else involving Assange, there's much smoke blown here but very little light shed

I originally thought the allegations might have some substance and needed to be taken seriously. But, given the strangeness of the circumstances surrounding the allegations, and the fact that the allegations came from devoted Assange supporters who apparently claimed to have voluntary relations with him before trotting out possible unverifiable borderline stories, I've been entertaining an alternative hypothesis:

I wonder if dear Mr Assange became paranoid about the possibility he could be tried for espionage against the US and so cooked up a pretty little gambit with the help of some smart EU lawyers, whereby his Swedish sweeties made enough complaint to open a short inconclusive investigation, Assange leaving Sweden after the investigation was closed, and then making just enough further complaint to get the investigation reopened and an extradition process started. Thus Assange got months of publicity out of claims that the Swedish request was motivated by American intelligence agents, who were allegedly using the Swedish women as its stooges -- puffing up a big conspiracy tale about the Americans planning to take him into custody from Sweden, instead of from the UK

A gigantic problem with the conspiracy tale is that it simply doesn't jive with EU extradition law, as I already noted above: there's just no reason to think it's easier to send Assange to the US indirectly from the UK via Sweden than directly from the UK, and there's good reason to think the indirect route would be substantially harder than the direct route, under EU law. And arguing in favor of the scenario I just outlined is a further fact: Assange obviously enjoys outsmarting people and staying a step ahead of them. The remaining question would be why Assange would be worried about an American prosecution for the Wikileaks release: had he released UK documents, he would (of course) have been prosecutable under UK law, but the American law is rather different, and he's pretty safe from prosecution here -- unless he himself actually engaged in a direct and premeditated operation encouraging someone else to release controlled documents to him. So if my scenario is correct, there may be a more immediate and culpable link between Assange and Manning than we have suspected

This is, however, all speculation. Until I know better, I am obliged simply to take the view that the sexual misconduct allegations from the Swedish women deserve to be taken seriously until the matter is resolved by the Swedish justice system

[stockholmer]

3. Marianne Ny is very problematic as a prosecutor, she has exhibited clear bias in the past

http://www.daddys-sverige.com/3/post/2010/11/gstinlgg-marianne-nys-konstiga-syn-p-rttsskerhet.html

Marianne Ny wrote this in a Court Administration report on the new women's law in 2001 that she helped formulate and testified as an expert:

"Only when the man is detained can the woman find the time for peace and quiet to get some perspective on her life, thus she gets a chance to discover how she really was treated. " "Marianne Ny argues that the prosecution has a good effect to protect the woman, even in cases where the offender is not prosecuted nor convicted."


http://www.domstol.se/Publikationer/Rapporter/Kvinnofridslagen.pdf

http://www.skandinaviflorida.com/web/sif.nsf/d6plinks/JEIE-8CSTKZ


Prejudice is a problem though. Our gender decides how we judge men and women's guilt and criminality. Last Friday, Angela S. Ahola, Doctor of Psychology at Stockholm University presented her dissertation on how women and men are treated by the legal system, how women's and men's stories are evaluated and that even the appearance affects on who is trusted. Ahola's dissertation confirms what we at RO have suspected for a long time - that women are being judged more kindly by the police and prosecutor. Women get a milder punishment for the same crime as men, and female witnesses are considered more reliable than male. We must get rid of these prejudices in order to claim that the Swedish justice guarantee equality before the law.

RO wants to see reviews of the rape cases that are based on facts not claims. The speculations most stop. The more innocent that are being mistreated the less we trust the legal system. We are convinced that there are many out there who have been abused by the legal system.

Rättssäkerhetsorganisationen RO, The Rights Organization

Johann Binninge
Monica Pernroth
Jenny Beltran
Susanne Flyborg

http://www.dagensjuridik.se/2010/05/dags-att-kartlagga-nedlagda-valdtaktsfall

new dissertation from Stockholms Universitet on gender sentencing difference here in Sweden

http://www.su.se/english/about/press/press-releases/defendant-s-gender-affects-length-of-sentence-1.2387

http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?searchId=1&pid=diva2:311692



'Try Me for Rape Too, Marianne Ny!'
by SVT head news anchor Olle Andersson

http://www.newsmill.se/artikel/2011/01/08/jag-b-r-ocks-talas-f-r-v-ldt-kt

english version

http://rixstep.com/2/1/20110109,01.shtml


Is rape rampant in gender-equal Sweden? Re Assange and Wikileaks

http://www.lauraagustin.com/is-rape-rampant-in-gender-equal-sweden

[Kaleko]

4. K & R