Pilger writes: "The persecution of Julian Assange is about to flare again as
it enters a dangerous stage."
Julian Assange. (photo: Getty)
Julian Assange: The Untold Story of an Epic Struggle for Justice
By John Pilger, CounterPunch
01 August 15
The siege of Knightsbridge is both an emblem of gross injustice and a
gruelling farce. For three years, a police cordon around the Ecuadorean
embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of
the state. It has cost £12 million. The quarry is an Australian charged with
no crime, a refugee whose only security is the room given him by a brave
South American country. His crime is to have initiated a wave of
truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.
The persecution of Julian Assange is about to flare again as it enters a
dangerous stage. From August 20, three quarters of the Swedish prosecutors
case against Assange regarding sexual misconduct in 2010 will disappear as
the statute of limitations expires. At the same time Washingtons obsession
with Assange and WikiLeaks has intensified. Indeed, it is vindictive
American power that offers the greatest threat as Chelsea Manning and
those still held in Guantanamo can attest.
The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic
crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands
of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and
international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic
cables. WikiLeaks continues to expose criminal activity by the US, having
just published top secret US intercepts US spies reports detailing
private phone calls of the presidents of France and Germany, and other
senior officials, relating to internal European political and economic
affairs.
None of this is illegal under the US Constiution. As a presidential
candidate in 2008, Barack Obama, a professor of constitutional law, lauded
whistleblowers as part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected
from reprisal. In 2012, the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama
boasted on its website that he had prosecuted more whistleblowers in his
first term than all other US presidents combined. Before Chelsea Manning had
even received a trial, Obama had pronounced the whisletblower guilty. He was
subsequently sentenced to 35 years in prison, having been tortured during
his long pre-trial detention.
Few doubt that should the US get their hands on Assange, a similar fate
awaits him. Threats of the capture and assassination of Assange became the
currency of the political extremes in the US following Vice-President Joe
Bidens preposterous slur that the WikiLeaks founder was a
cyber-terrorist. Those doubting the degree of ruthlessness Assange can
expect should remember the forcing down of the Bolivian presidents plane in
2013 wrongly believed to be carrying Edward Snowden.
According to documents released by Snowden, Assange is on a Manhunt target
list. Washingtons bid to get him, say Australian diplomatic cables, is
unprecedented in scale and nature. In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand
jury has spent five years attempting to contrive a crime for which Assange
can be prosecuted. This is not easy. The First Amendment to the US
Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers.
Faced with this constitutional hurdle, the US Justice Department has
contrived charges of espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage,
conversion (theft of government property), computer fraud and abuse
(computer hacking) and general conspiracy. The Espionage Act has life in
prison and death penalty provisions. .
Assanges ability to defend himself in this Kafkaesque world has been
handicapped by the US declaring his case a state secret. In March, a federal
court in Washington blocked the release of all information about the
national security investigation against WikiLeaks, because it was active
and ongoing and would harm the pending prosecution of Assange. The judge,
Barbara J. Rosthstein, said it was necessary to show appropriate deference
to the executive in matters of national security. Such is the justice of
a kangaroo court.
The supporting act in this grim farce is Sweden, played by the Swedish
prosecutor Marianne Ny. Until recently, Ny refused to comply with a routine
European procedure routine that required her to travel to London to question
Assange and so advance the case. For four and a half years, Ny has never
properly explained why she has refused to come to London, just as the
Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a
guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret
arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010, The
Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward
extradition to the US.
Contrary to its 1960s reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so
close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA renditions including
the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of
two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee
against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the
complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful
civil litigation and in WikiLeaks cables. In the summer of 2010, Assange had
flown to Sweden to talk about WikiLeaks revelations of the war in
Afghanistan in which Sweden had forces under US command.
Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England, wrote Al
Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the
multiple twists and dangers facing Assange, clearly indicate that Sweden
has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters
relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange
were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned
over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.
Why hasnt the Swedish prosecutor resolved the Assange case? Many in the
legal community in Sweden believe her behaviour inexplicable. Once
implacably hostile to Assange, the Swedish press has published headlines
such as: Go to London, for Gods sake.
Why hasnt she? More to the point, why wont she allow the Swedish court
access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone
of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why wont
she hand them over to Assanges Swedish lawyers? She says she is not legally
required to do so until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him.
Then, why doesnt she question him? And if she did question him, the
conditions she would demand of him and his lawyers that they could not
challenge her would make injustice a near certainty.
On a point of law, the Swedish Supreme Court has decided Ny can continue to
obstruct on the vital issue of the SMS messages. This will now go to the
European Court of Human Rights. What Ny fears is that the SMS messages will
destroy her case against Assange. One of the messages makes clear that one
of the women did not want any charges brought against Assange, but the
police were keen on getting a hold on him. She was shocked when they
arrested him because she only wanted him to take [an HIV] test. She did
not want to accuse JA of anything and it was the police who made up the
charges. (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been
railroaded by police and others around her.)
Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were
raped and one of them has since tweeted, I have not been raped. That they
were manipulated by police and their wishes ignored is evident whatever
their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they are victims of a saga which
blights the reputation of Sweden itself.
For Assange, his only trial has been trial by media. On August 20, 2010, the
Swedish police opened a rape investigation and immediately and
unlawfully told the Stockholm tabloids that there was a warrant for
Assanges arrest for the rape of two women. This was the news that went
round the world.
In Washington, a smiling US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told reporters
that the arrest sounds like good news to me. Twitter accounts associated
with the Pentagon described Assange as a rapist and a fugitive.
Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, took
over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant,
saying, I dont believe there is any reason to suspect that he has
committed rape. Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation
altogether, saying, There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever. The
file was closed.
Enter Claes Borgstrom, a high profile politician in the Social Democratic
Party then standing as a candidate in Swedens imminent general election.
Within days of the chief prosecutors dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a
lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and
had sought a different prosecutor in the city of Gothenberg. This was
Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well, personally and politically.
On 30 August, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and
answered all the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the
matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case. Borgstrom
was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had
already been dismissed, citing one of the women as saying she had not been
raped. He replied, Ah, but she is not a lawyer. Assanges Australian
barrister, James Catlin, responded, This is a laughing stock
its as if
they make it up as they go along.
On the day Marianne Ny reactivated the case, the head of Swedens military
intelligence service which has the acronym MUST publicly denounced
WikiLeaks in an article entitled WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers.
Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAPO, had been
told by its US counterparts that US-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements
would be cut off if Sweden sheltered him.
For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the new investigation to take
its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq War
Logs, based on WikiLeaks disclosures, which Assange was to oversee. His
lawyer in Stockholm asked Ny if she had any objection to his leaving the
country. She said he was free to leave.
Inexplicably, as soon as he left Sweden at the height of media and public
interest in the WikiLeaks disclosures Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant
and an Interpol red alert normally used for terrorists and dangerous
criminals. Put out in five languages around the world, it ensured a media
frenzy.
Assange attended a police station in London, was arrested and spent ten days
in Wandsworth Prison, in solitary confinement. Released on £340,000 bail, he
was electronically tagged, required to report to police daily and placed
under virtual house arrest while his case began its long journey to the
Supreme Court. He still had not been charged with any offence. His lawyers
repeated his offer to be questioned by Ny in London, pointing out that she
had given him permission to leave Sweden. They suggested a special facility
at Scotland Yard commonly used for that purpose. She refused.
Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote: The
allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of
governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously
revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with
their attendant rape, murder and destruction
The authorities care so little
about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will.
[Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish
authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential
step in their investigation? What are they afraid of?
This question remained unanswered as Ny deployed the European Arrest
Warrant, a draconian and now discredited product of the war on terror
supposedly designed to catch terrorists and organised criminals. The EAW had
abolished the obligation on a petitioning state to provide any evidence of a
crime. More than a thousand EAWs are issued each month; only a few have
anything to do with potential terror charges. Most are issued for trivial
offences, such as overdue bank charges and fines. Many of those extradited
face months in prison without charge. There have been a number of shocking
miscarriages of justice, of which British judges have been highly critical.
The Assange case finally reached the UK Supreme Court in May 2012. In a
judgement that upheld the EAW whose rigid demands had left the courts
almost no room for manoeuvre the judges found that European prosecutors
could issue extradition warrants in the UK without any judicial oversight,
even though Parliament intended otherwise. They made clear that Parliament
had been misled by the Blair government. The court was split, 5-2, and
consequently found against Assange.
However, the Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, made one mistake. He applied the
Vienna Convention on treaty interpretation, allowing for state practice to
override the letter of the law. As Assanges barrister, Dinah Rose QC,
pointed out, this did not apply to the EAW.
The Supreme Court only recognised this crucial error when it dealt with
another appeal against the EAW in November 2013. The Assange decision had
been wrong, but it was too late to go back. With extradition imminent, the
Swedish prosecutor told Assanges lawyers that Assange, once in Sweden,
would be immediately placed in one of Swedens infamous remand prisons..
Assanges choice was stark: extradition to a country that had refused to say
whether or not it would send him on to the US, or to seek what seemed his
last opportunity for refuge and safety. Supported by most of Latin America,
the courageous government of Ecuador granted him refugee status on the basis
of documented evidence and legal advice that he faced the prospect of cruel
and unusual punishment in the US; that this threat violated his basic human
rights; and that his own government in Australia had abandoned him and
colluded with Washington. The Labor government of prime minister Julia
Gillard had even threatened to take away his passport.
Gareth Peirce, the renowned human rights lawyer who represents Assange in
London, wrote to the then Australian foreign minister, Kevin Rudd: Given
the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely
false assumptions
it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any
presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but
two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions
in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his
own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in
circumstances that are highly politically charged.
It was not until she contacted the Australian High Commission in London that
Peirce received a response, which answered none of the pressing points she
raised. In a meeting I attended with her, the Australian Consul-General, Ken
Pascoe, made the astonishing claim that he knew only what I read in the
newspapers about the details of the case.
Meanwhile, the prospect of a grotesque miscarriage of justice was drowned in
a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal,
petty, vicious and inhuman attacks were aimed at a man not charged with any
crime yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing
extradition on a charge of murdering his wife. That the US threat to Assange
was a threat to all journalists, to freedom of speech, was lost in the
sordid and the ambitious.
Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or
kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and an assumption that attacking
Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money,
often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive. The editor of the
Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his
newspaper published, one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30
years. It became part of his marketing plan to raise the newspapers cover
price.
With not a penny going to Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led
to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The books authors, Luke Harding and David
Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a damaged personality and
callous. They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in
confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US
embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding,
standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that Scotland Yard
may get the last laugh.
The injustice meted out to Assange is one of the reasons Parliament reformed
the Extradition Act to prevent the misuse of the EAW. The draconian
catch-all used against him could not happen now; charges would have to be
brought and questioning would be insufficient grounds for extradition.
His case has been won lock, stock and barrel, Gareth Peirce told me,
these changes in the law mean that the UK now recognises as correct
everything that was argued in his case. Yet he does not benefit. In other
words, the change in the UK law in 2014 mean that Assange would have won his
case and he would not have been forced to take refuge.
Ecuadors decision to protect Assange in 2012 bloomed into a major
international affair. Even though the granting of asylum is a humanitarian
act, and the power to do so is enjoyed by all states under international
law, both Sweden and the United Kingdom refused to recognize the legitimacy
of Ecuadors decision. Ignoring international law, the Cameron government
refused to grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador. Instead, Ecuadors embassy
was placed under siege and its government abused with a series of
ultimatums. When William Hagues Foreign Office threatened to violate the
Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, warning that it would remove the
diplomatic inviolability of the embassy and send the police in to get
Assange, outrage across the world forced the government to back down. During
one night, police appeared at the windows of the embassy in an obvious
attempt to intimidate Assange and his protectors.
Since then, Julian Assange has been confined to a small room under Ecuadors
protection, without sunlight or space to exercise, surrounded by police
under orders to arrest him on sight. For three years, Ecuador has made clear
to the Swedish prosecutor that Assange is available to be questioned in the
London embassy, and for three years she has remained intransigent. In the
same period Sweden has questioned forty-four people in the UK in connection
with police investigations. Her role, and that of the Swedish state, is
demonstrably political; and for Ny, facing retirement in two years, she must
win.
In despair, Assange has challenged the arrest warrant in the Swedish courts.
His lawyers have cited rulings by the European Court of Human Rights that he
has been under arbitrary, indefinite detention and that he had been a
virtual prisoner for longer than any actual prison sentence he might face.
The Court of Appeal judge agreed with Assanges lawyers: the prosecutor had
indeed breached her duty by keeping the case suspended for years. Another
judge issued a rebuke to the prosecutor. And yet she defied the court.
Last December, Assange took his case to the Swedish Supreme Court, which
ordered Marianne Nys boss the Prosecutor General of Sweden Anders Perklev
to explain. The next day, Ny announced, without explanation, that she had
changed her mind and would now question Assange in London.
In his submission to the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor General made some
important concessions: he argued that the coercion of Assange had been
intrusive and that that the period in the embassy has been a great
strain on him. He even conceded that if the matter had ever come to
prosecution, trial, conviction and serving a sentence in Sweden, Julian
Assange would have left Sweden long ago.
In a split decision, one Supreme Court judge argued that the arrest warrant
should have been revoked. The majority of the judges ruled that, since the
prosecutor had now said she would go to London, Assanges arguments had
become moot. But the Court ruled that it would have found against the
prosecutor if she had not suddenly changed her mind. Justice by caprice.
Writing in the Swedish press, a former Swedish prosecutor, Rolf Hillegren,
accused Ny of losing all impartiality. He described her personal investment
in the case asabnormal and demanded that she be replaced.
Having said she would go to London in June, Ny did not go, but sent a
deputy, knowing that the questioning would not be legal under these
circumstances, especially as Sweden had not bothered to get Ecuadors
approval for the meeting. At the same time, her office tipped off the
Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen, which sent its London correspondent to
wait outside Ecuadors embassy for news. The news was that Ny was
cancelling the appointment and blaming Ecuador for the confusion and by
implication an unco-operative Assange when the opposite was true.
As the statute of limitations date approaches August 20 another chapter
in this hideous story will doubtless unfold, with Marianne Ny pulling yet
another rabbit out of her hat and the commissars and prosecutors in
Washington the beneficiaries. Perhaps none of this is surprising. In 2008,
a war on WikiLeaks and on Julian Assange was foretold in a secret Pentagon
document prepared by the Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch. It
described a detailed plan to destroy the feeling of trust which is
WikiLeaks centre of gravity. This would be achieved with threats of
exposure [and] criminal prosecution. Silencing and criminalising such a
rare source of truth-telling was the aim, smear the method. While this
scandal continues the very notion of justice is diminished, along with the
reputation of Sweden, and the shadow of Americas menace touches us all.
Listen to Eric Draitsers interview with John Pilger on Episode 12 of the
CounterPunch Radio podcast.
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Julian Assange. (photo: Getty)
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-epic-struggle-for-justice/http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/31/julian-ass
ange-the-untold-story-of-an-epic-struggle-for-justice/
Julian Assange: The Untold Story of an Epic Struggle for Justice
By John Pilger, CounterPunch
01 August 15
he siege of Knightsbridge is both an emblem of gross injustice and a
gruelling farce. For three years, a police cordon around the Ecuadorean
embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of
the state. It has cost £12 million. The quarry is an Australian charged with
no crime, a refugee whose only security is the room given him by a brave
South American country. His crime is to have initiated a wave of
truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.
The persecution of Julian Assange is about to flare again as it enters a
dangerous stage. From August 20, three quarters of the Swedish prosecutors
case against Assange regarding sexual misconduct in 2010 will disappear as
the statute of limitations expires. At the same time Washingtons obsession
with Assange and WikiLeaks has intensified. Indeed, it is vindictive
American power that offers the greatest threat as Chelsea Manning and
those still held in Guantanamo can attest.
The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic
crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands
of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and
international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic
cables. WikiLeaks continues to expose criminal activity by the US, having
just published top secret US intercepts US spies reports detailing
private phone calls of the presidents of France and Germany, and other
senior officials, relating to internal European political and economic
affairs.
None of this is illegal under the US Constiution. As a presidential
candidate in 2008, Barack Obama, a professor of constitutional law, lauded
whistleblowers as part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected
from reprisal. In 2012, the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama
boasted on its website that he had prosecuted more whistleblowers in his
first term than all other US presidents combined. Before Chelsea Manning had
even received a trial, Obama had pronounced the whisletblower guilty. He was
subsequently sentenced to 35 years in prison, having been tortured during
his long pre-trial detention.
Few doubt that should the US get their hands on Assange, a similar fate
awaits him. Threats of the capture and assassination of Assange became the
currency of the political extremes in the US following Vice-President Joe
Bidens preposterous slur that the WikiLeaks founder was a
cyber-terrorist. Those doubting the degree of ruthlessness Assange can
expect should remember the forcing down of the Bolivian presidents plane in
2013 wrongly believed to be carrying Edward Snowden.
According to documents released by Snowden, Assange is on a Manhunt target
list. Washingtons bid to get him, say Australian diplomatic cables, is
unprecedented in scale and nature. In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand
jury has spent five years attempting to contrive a crime for which Assange
can be prosecuted. This is not easy. The First Amendment to the US
Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers.
Faced with this constitutional hurdle, the US Justice Department has
contrived charges of espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage,
conversion (theft of government property), computer fraud and abuse
(computer hacking) and general conspiracy. The Espionage Act has life in
prison and death penalty provisions. .
Assanges ability to defend himself in this Kafkaesque world has been
handicapped by the US declaring his case a state secret. In March, a federal
court in Washington blocked the release of all information about the
national security investigation against WikiLeaks, because it was active
and ongoing and would harm the pending prosecution of Assange. The judge,
Barbara J. Rosthstein, said it was necessary to show appropriate deference
to the executive in matters of national security. Such is the justice of
a kangaroo court.
The supporting act in this grim farce is Sweden, played by the Swedish
prosecutor Marianne Ny. Until recently, Ny refused to comply with a routine
European procedure routine that required her to travel to London to question
Assange and so advance the case. For four and a half years, Ny has never
properly explained why she has refused to come to London, just as the
Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a
guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret
arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010, The
Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward
extradition to the US.
Contrary to its 1960s reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so
close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA renditions including
the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of
two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee
against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the
complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful
civil litigation and in WikiLeaks cables. In the summer of 2010, Assange had
flown to Sweden to talk about WikiLeaks revelations of the war in
Afghanistan in which Sweden had forces under US command.
Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England, wrote Al
Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the
multiple twists and dangers facing Assange, clearly indicate that Sweden
has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters
relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange
were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned
over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.
Why hasnt the Swedish prosecutor resolved the Assange case? Many in the
legal community in Sweden believe her behaviour inexplicable. Once
implacably hostile to Assange, the Swedish press has published headlines
such as: Go to London, for Gods sake.
Why hasnt she? More to the point, why wont she allow the Swedish court
access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone
of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why wont
she hand them over to Assanges Swedish lawyers? She says she is not legally
required to do so until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him.
Then, why doesnt she question him? And if she did question him, the
conditions she would demand of him and his lawyers that they could not
challenge her would make injustice a near certainty.
On a point of law, the Swedish Supreme Court has decided Ny can continue to
obstruct on the vital issue of the SMS messages. This will now go to the
European Court of Human Rights. What Ny fears is that the SMS messages will
destroy her case against Assange. One of the messages makes clear that one
of the women did not want any charges brought against Assange, but the
police were keen on getting a hold on him. She was shocked when they
arrested him because she only wanted him to take [an HIV] test. She did
not want to accuse JA of anything and it was the police who made up the
charges. (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been
railroaded by police and others around her.)
Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were
raped and one of them has since tweeted, I have not been raped. That they
were manipulated by police and their wishes ignored is evident whatever
their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they are victims of a saga which
blights the reputation of Sweden itself.
For Assange, his only trial has been trial by media. On August 20, 2010, the
Swedish police opened a rape investigation and immediately and
unlawfully told the Stockholm tabloids that there was a warrant for
Assanges arrest for the rape of two women. This was the news that went
round the world.
In Washington, a smiling US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told reporters
that the arrest sounds like good news to me. Twitter accounts associated
with the Pentagon described Assange as a rapist and a fugitive.
Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, took
over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant,
saying, I dont believe there is any reason to suspect that he has
committed rape. Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation
altogether, saying, There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever. The
file was closed.
Enter Claes Borgstrom, a high profile politician in the Social Democratic
Party then standing as a candidate in Swedens imminent general election.
Within days of the chief prosecutors dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a
lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and
had sought a different prosecutor in the city of Gothenberg. This was
Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well, personally and politically.
On 30 August, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and
answered all the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the
matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case. Borgstrom
was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had
already been dismissed, citing one of the women as saying she had not been
raped. He replied, Ah, but she is not a lawyer. Assanges Australian
barrister, James Catlin, responded, This is a laughing stock
its as if
they make it up as they go along.
On the day Marianne Ny reactivated the case, the head of Swedens military
intelligence service which has the acronym MUST publicly denounced
WikiLeaks in an article entitled WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers.
Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAPO, had been
told by its US counterparts that US-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements
would be cut off if Sweden sheltered him.
For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the new investigation to take
its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq War
Logs, based on WikiLeaks disclosures, which Assange was to oversee. His
lawyer in Stockholm asked Ny if she had any objection to his leaving the
country. She said he was free to leave.
Inexplicably, as soon as he left Sweden at the height of media and public
interest in the WikiLeaks disclosures Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant
and an Interpol red alert normally used for terrorists and dangerous
criminals. Put out in five languages around the world, it ensured a media
frenzy.
Assange attended a police station in London, was arrested and spent ten days
in Wandsworth Prison, in solitary confinement. Released on £340,000 bail, he
was electronically tagged, required to report to police daily and placed
under virtual house arrest while his case began its long journey to the
Supreme Court. He still had not been charged with any offence. His lawyers
repeated his offer to be questioned by Ny in London, pointing out that she
had given him permission to leave Sweden. They suggested a special facility
at Scotland Yard commonly used for that purpose. She refused.
Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote: The
allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of
governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously
revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with
their attendant rape, murder and destruction
The authorities care so little
about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will.
[Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish
authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential
step in their investigation? What are they afraid of?
This question remained unanswered as Ny deployed the European Arrest
Warrant, a draconian and now discredited product of the war on terror
supposedly designed to catch terrorists and organised criminals. The EAW had
abolished the obligation on a petitioning state to provide any evidence of a
crime. More than a thousand EAWs are issued each month; only a few have
anything to do with potential terror charges. Most are issued for trivial
offences, such as overdue bank charges and fines. Many of those extradited
face months in prison without charge. There have been a number of shocking
miscarriages of justice, of which British judges have been highly critical.
The Assange case finally reached the UK Supreme Court in May 2012. In a
judgement that upheld the EAW whose rigid demands had left the courts
almost no room for manoeuvre the judges found that European prosecutors
could issue extradition warrants in the UK without any judicial oversight,
even though Parliament intended otherwise. They made clear that Parliament
had been misled by the Blair government. The court was split, 5-2, and
consequently found against Assange.
However, the Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, made one mistake. He applied the
Vienna Convention on treaty interpretation, allowing for state practice to
override the letter of the law. As Assanges barrister, Dinah Rose QC,
pointed out, this did not apply to the EAW.
The Supreme Court only recognised this crucial error when it dealt with
another appeal against the EAW in November 2013. The Assange decision had
been wrong, but it was too late to go back. With extradition imminent, the
Swedish prosecutor told Assanges lawyers that Assange, once in Sweden,
would be immediately placed in one of Swedens infamous remand prisons..
Assanges choice was stark: extradition to a country that had refused to say
whether or not it would send him on to the US, or to seek what seemed his
last opportunity for refuge and safety. Supported by most of Latin America,
the courageous government of Ecuador granted him refugee status on the basis
of documented evidence and legal advice that he faced the prospect of cruel
and unusual punishment in the US; that this threat violated his basic human
rights; and that his own government in Australia had abandoned him and
colluded with Washington. The Labor government of prime minister Julia
Gillard had even threatened to take away his passport.
Gareth Peirce, the renowned human rights lawyer who represents Assange in
London, wrote to the then Australian foreign minister, Kevin Rudd: Given
the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely
false assumptions
it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any
presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but
two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions
in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his
own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in
circumstances that are highly politically charged.
It was not until she contacted the Australian High Commission in London that
Peirce received a response, which answered none of the pressing points she
raised. In a meeting I attended with her, the Australian Consul-General, Ken
Pascoe, made the astonishing claim that he knew only what I read in the
newspapers about the details of the case.
Meanwhile, the prospect of a grotesque miscarriage of justice was drowned in
a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal,
petty, vicious and inhuman attacks were aimed at a man not charged with any
crime yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing
extradition on a charge of murdering his wife. That the US threat to Assange
was a threat to all journalists, to freedom of speech, was lost in the
sordid and the ambitious.
Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or
kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and an assumption that attacking
Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money,
often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive. The editor of the
Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his
newspaper published, one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30
years. It became part of his marketing plan to raise the newspapers cover
price.
With not a penny going to Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led
to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The books authors, Luke Harding and David
Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a damaged personality and
callous. They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in
confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US
embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding,
standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that Scotland Yard
may get the last laugh.
The injustice meted out to Assange is one of the reasons Parliament reformed
the Extradition Act to prevent the misuse of the EAW. The draconian
catch-all used against him could not happen now; charges would have to be
brought and questioning would be insufficient grounds for extradition.
His case has been won lock, stock and barrel, Gareth Peirce told me,
these changes in the law mean that the UK now recognises as correct
everything that was argued in his case. Yet he does not benefit. In other
words, the change in the UK law in 2014 mean that Assange would have won his
case and he would not have been forced to take refuge.
Ecuadors decision to protect Assange in 2012 bloomed into a major
international affair. Even though the granting of asylum is a humanitarian
act, and the power to do so is enjoyed by all states under international
law, both Sweden and the United Kingdom refused to recognize the legitimacy
of Ecuadors decision. Ignoring international law, the Cameron government
refused to grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador. Instead, Ecuadors embassy
was placed under siege and its government abused with a series of
ultimatums. When William Hagues Foreign Office threatened to violate the
Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, warning that it would remove the
diplomatic inviolability of the embassy and send the police in to get
Assange, outrage across the world forced the government to back down. During
one night, police appeared at the windows of the embassy in an obvious
attempt to intimidate Assange and his protectors.
Since then, Julian Assange has been confined to a small room under Ecuadors
protection, without sunlight or space to exercise, surrounded by police
under orders to arrest him on sight. For three years, Ecuador has made clear
to the Swedish prosecutor that Assange is available to be questioned in the
London embassy, and for three years she has remained intransigent. In the
same period Sweden has questioned forty-four people in the UK in connection
with police investigations. Her role, and that of the Swedish state, is
demonstrably political; and for Ny, facing retirement in two years, she must
win.
In despair, Assange has challenged the arrest warrant in the Swedish courts.
His lawyers have cited rulings by the European Court of Human Rights that he
has been under arbitrary, indefinite detention and that he had been a
virtual prisoner for longer than any actual prison sentence he might face.
The Court of Appeal judge agreed with Assanges lawyers: the prosecutor had
indeed breached her duty by keeping the case suspended for years. Another
judge issued a rebuke to the prosecutor. And yet she defied the court.
Last December, Assange took his case to the Swedish Supreme Court, which
ordered Marianne Nys boss the Prosecutor General of Sweden Anders Perklev
to explain. The next day, Ny announced, without explanation, that she had
changed her mind and would now question Assange in London.
In his submission to the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor General made some
important concessions: he argued that the coercion of Assange had been
intrusive and that that the period in the embassy has been a great
strain on him. He even conceded that if the matter had ever come to
prosecution, trial, conviction and serving a sentence in Sweden, Julian
Assange would have left Sweden long ago.
In a split decision, one Supreme Court judge argued that the arrest warrant
should have been revoked. The majority of the judges ruled that, since the
prosecutor had now said she would go to London, Assanges arguments had
become moot. But the Court ruled that it would have found against the
prosecutor if she had not suddenly changed her mind. Justice by caprice.
Writing in the Swedish press, a former Swedish prosecutor, Rolf Hillegren,
accused Ny of losing all impartiality. He described her personal investment
in the case asabnormal and demanded that she be replaced.
Having said she would go to London in June, Ny did not go, but sent a
deputy, knowing that the questioning would not be legal under these
circumstances, especially as Sweden had not bothered to get Ecuadors
approval for the meeting. At the same time, her office tipped off the
Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen, which sent its London correspondent to
wait outside Ecuadors embassy for news. The news was that Ny was
cancelling the appointment and blaming Ecuador for the confusion and by
implication an unco-operative Assange when the opposite was true.
As the statute of limitations date approaches August 20 another chapter
in this hideous story will doubtless unfold, with Marianne Ny pulling yet
another rabbit out of her hat and the commissars and prosecutors in
Washington the beneficiaries. Perhaps none of this is surprising. In 2008, a
war on WikiLeaks and on Julian Assange was foretold in a secret Pentagon
document prepared by the Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch. It
described a detailed plan to destroy the feeling of trust which is
WikiLeaks centre of gravity. This would be achieved with threats of
exposure [and] criminal prosecution. Silencing and criminalising such a
rare source of truth-telling was the aim, smear the method. While this
scandal continues the very notion of justice is diminished, along with the
reputation of Sweden, and the shadow of Americas menace touches us all.
Listen to Eric Draitsers interview with John Pilger on Episode 12 of the
CounterPunch Radio podcast.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
