What about a case when NSA was wiretapping phone calls of member of German governments, including Angela Merkel [1]? US got away with this without any consequences and Germany said nothing.
Edward Snowden is tweeting about "freeedom of information" from Putin's Russia...
Evo Morales incident is a complete different story.
Snowden was (is?) an american citizen, Assange is not.
Anyway, it is laughable to tjhink that European countries are in the pocket of USA, they are allied, alliance means be on the same side, sometimes even when it is wrong.
It doesn't mean that everything they order, other countries will do.
It seems that the word "rape" is somehow exaggeration.
Per Wikipedia (assuming it is reliable source here, hasn't checked sources it cites)
"On 20 August 2010, two women, a 26-year-old living in Enköping and a 31-year-old living in Stockholm, reported to the Swedish police that Assange had engaged in unprotected sexual activity with them that violated the scope of their consent.
"The next day, the case was transferred to Chefsåklagare (Chief Public Prosecutor) Eva Finné. In answer to questions surrounding the incidents, the following day, Finné declared, >>I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape<<. However, Karin Rosander from the Swedish Prosecution Authority, said Assange remained suspected of molestation. Police gave no further comment at the time, but continued the investigation."
He tried to claim that this wasn't rape in both Sweden and England (the dual criminality element which is required for extradition) and that was rejected by the court.
Sweden has a comparatively broad legal definition of rape.
My memory of accusations are they they sure meet my personal definition of rape. We may only disagree on the terminology; I trust we don't disagree that what is alleged should be a crime.
This was before the alleged victims' lawyer asked the prosecutor to review the decision. Anyway, Assange has been sought in Sweden since 2010 for rape under mitigating circumstances, which carries a maximum sentence of four years and statute of limitations of ten years.
He was accused of having sex with someone who was asleep and therefore couldn't consent (and the lack of protection showed he was explicitly going against what he knew she wanted). This is rape in the UK and Sweden.
The first prosecutor decided to shelve the case. One of the victim's lawyers asked for this decision to be reviewed. A more senior prosecutor resumed the case.
No it's because he's a rape suspect in Sweden - it's not a giant conspiracy or 'a grab', he's just a suspect that ran away from the law.
The USA have already requested his extradition in the UK - to say that "Sweden only sought rape charges because then the USA can extradite him from Sweden" is clearly bogus.
If he actually confronted these charges in Sweden, and found guilty, he may actually be out of prison by now.
And at the centre of all of this, that everyone seems to have forgotten, are these two women that have accused him of rape. It seems really inhumane and unjust to simply shrug these accusations off as political, and not that they might be telling the truth, and he's a criminal in Swedish law
>He would be sent to USA to respond of his alleged crimes in front of a public court of justice.
Haha, no. He'd be sent to a secret FISA Star Chamber. There's no way he'd be tried in public.
And if the Swedish authorities wanted Assange to answer for alleged crimes in Sweden, all they had to do was publicly declare that they wouldn't extradite Assange to the US. That was the sole requirement he had made of the Swedish authorities in exchange for his willingness to return to Sweden. The fact that the Swedish authorities refused even that is deeply suspicious.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review only are empowered to handle foreign intelligence surveillance warrant process.
Criminal charges are handled in US District Courts, and are Constitutionally guaranteed to be public.
>Criminal charges are handled in US District Courts, and are Constitutionally guaranteed to be public.
If you think that the US DOJ hasn't spent a million man-hours to find some way to keep everything as secret as possible, you haven't been paying attention to their actions thus far. They will find some way to kangaroo-court him out of the public eye. They do it with foreign nationals all the time.
> If you think that the US DOJ hasn't spent a million man-hours to find some way to keep everything as secret as possible, you haven't been paying attention to their actions thus far.
I'm pretty sure that they have neither spent that many man-hours nor would get much value from spending anywhere close to that, because the parameters of “as secret as possible” are, while always subject to further litigation around the borders, not so mysterious or difficult to assess that it would take that much work to get a solid idea both where the boundaries were and what the relative risks of various ways of probing the areas where there is remaining uncertainty.
> They will find some way to kangaroo-court him out of the public eye. They do it with foreign nationals all the time.
Not with foreign nationals subjected to formal criminal extradition they don't. Foreign, allegedly unawful, combatants detained by the US military or transferred to their custody by America’s cobelligerents in the context of military conflict, all completely outside of the civilian criminal justice system, sure; foreign parties where the government covertly intervenes with overseas regimes to detain them without involving the US criminal justice system to, that too. But none of those are applicable here.
”And at the centre of all of this, that everyone seems to have forgotten, are these two women that have accused him of rape.”
As far as I know, and at least Assange has claimed this publicly in a video at least once, these two women themselves did not make rape charges against Assange.
The case was picked up by some prosecutor who initiated the charges.
One of the victims' lawyer said a month ago when he left the embassy they still wanted to re-open the case:
"We are going to do everything we possibly can to get the swedish police investigation re-opened so that Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted for rape. No rape victim should have to wait 9 years to see justice be served." https://twitter.com/ElisabethMFritz/status/11162929511251804...
"Pressing charges" may be a thing in US law, but it isn't elsewhere.
In many jurisdictions prosecutors don't need the permission, nor cooperation, of the victims to bring a case to court. This is especially important in crimes of sexual violence because the fear of retribution causes many victims not to report; and because some victims will be being coercively controlled by their partners.
It's not a thing in US law either (at least in the states I'm aware of). "Do you want to press charges" is just a colloquialism that means "do you want the prosecutor to press charges, and will you cooperate as a witness."
In less serious cases the victim's wishes are taken into account. However, the prosecutor is the one who charges the accused, and consent or cooperation from the victim isn't needed. It is hard to convict in cases where an uncooperative victim is the only witness, but it happens in domestic abuse cases all the time.
They did in fact file rape charges, but as is common they didn't do it immediately but after talking about the event with friends.
They have also, wisely avoiding much of the media, enlisted a lawyer to speak on their behalf on the matter, and it was the lawyers filing that led to the investigation being reopened again.
In most legal systems, the initiation of criminal charges is the exclusive domain of public prosecutors, so this seems like one of those statements of Assange’s that is both strictly true (in this case, because it is impossible for it to be any other way) and also deliberately misleading, like the one that his internet was cut by “a state actor”.
If it's such a problem why don't you advocate for getting the laws changed in the US? While his alleged actions are shady, they are not illegal in the US, so anyone who plays the humanity angle without also suggesting changing US law is just using it for political purposes.
Prosecutor works independently. Sweden has civil law system based on classical Roman law and German model. There is no plea bargaining, everyone who is prosecuted must stand trial.
The investigation was just suspended because Assange could not be questioned.
They bring him for questioning to get interview. After that, the prosecutor may choose not to press charges.
The case seems very weak, so the prosecutor may drop the case.
> “His attitude is that he is happy to cooperate with Sweden and that he wants to be interviewed and that he wants to clear his name,” Samuelson told Reuters.
He spent how many years on both UK soil and then the Ecuadorean embassy to fight these Swedish allegations and now he's "happy to cooperate". He's imprisoned himself all these years for nothing.
As I understood it, he fled to the embassy because he was afraid the Swedish allegations would be used as an excuse to extradite him to the US. Now that his UK charges can be used for that, that's no longer an objection.
Ehm, good question; it's been a while since I read about this. I think, but don't pin me down on this, that his being kept in a single country would give the US enough time to draw up a formal extradition request for that specific country, whereas if a country isn't able to hold him, the request might not come in time.
Hopefully somebody else can chime in with a more reliable explanation.
He would never leave willingly if there was an existing extradition request for him. So they waited until he was out, however that came about. he was guaranteed to be arrested on exiting if only for the bail breach. At which point he is in custody and you can serve the extradition request.
Similarly the US will not request extradition for some suspects and wait until they set foot in the US and arrest them then. Saving the need for an extradition battle. If they really want you and you are Russian, they wait until you go on holiday outside russian borders and grab you as you step off the plane.
If he were extradited to Sweden from the UK, under an EAW, to then be further extradited from Sweden to the US, the extradition would need to fulfil the requirements to be extradited from both the UK and Sweden.
Being extradited to Sweden would merely make extradition to the US more complex, not less. He would still be able to challenge the extradition in the (presumably) English courts, but he would further be able to challenge it in the Swedish courts.
I never understood why Assange worried more about being extradited from Sweden than from the UK. However, I think it is a good point that now he’s fighting an extradition request in Britain, he would be happy to instead go to Sweden.
>would be used as an excuse to extradite him to the US
That makes no sense.
Sweeden does not extradite people for political crimes and espionage is considered a political crime in Sweeden. His chance of being extradited to the US for espionage from Sweeden was extremely low from the start ... and going to the UK out of fear of being extradited to the US makes no sense considering UK and US relations.
I think it is more of a question of if he is being honest about the reasons for going to the UK.... "I was avoiding being arrested for rape" doesn't fit his narrative.
Fleeing to the UK seems like a terrible plan if you're looking to evade the Swedish justice system. Assange might not be a genius, but I don't think he'd be that daft.
So he is accused of a crime and he go to the police station and give his statement. He lets the investigator know he is staying in the country for several week, in the case they have any more questions. The case get closed.
Months later he publish the leaks and travel to the UK, and a European arrest warrant is issued. After which there is a report that US diplomats visited the justice department before the case was reopened, but the department head swears that it did not influence the decision.
Just like Sweden has laws against extraditing people for political crimes and espionage, its justice department has laws that forbids it from being influenced by politics. The official statement is that the chain of events is just a coincident and the leaks, US diplomats and everything else did not effect the decision of the prosecutor when they decided to reopen the case and issue the European arrest warrant.
Some other minor details is that not only is the Assange case the most expensive UK police case in UK history, but this European arrest warrant is also a record in Sweden. No other warrant that Sweden has issued has as low maximal punishment. This is official also just a coincident.
I personally are not that surprised that Assange do not believe it to be coincident. I wonder if not most people would become a bit paranoid if they were under similar circumstances, and not accept the claim that it is just a coincident and that the Sweden and UK legal system are just following standard procedure.
Well at this risk of being a mouthpiece for a propaganda machine, the other option is that he took refuge in an embassy for years so that he would appear to be a political martyr as he escaped justice for rape.
Neither the Swedish nor British charges were needed for that purpose, all that was needed was an extradition request from the US.
The other charges are immaterial to extradition to the US except insofar as they might prevent or delay it, though being in jail facing the other charges might make it harder to flee extradition to the US if that request came later.
Fact: "Swedish justice" was more or less like Ecuador exchanging some multi billion IMF funding for giving him up -- the kind of made up stuff you stick to someone you want to shut up.
What I doubt is whether what he flew was "justice" and not the usual staged character assassination attempt, in a country caving in from diplomatic pressure (all too common to lesser states when pressured from superpowers).
A doubt is legit, but everything he's done and said says a different story in my opinion.
You don't say “Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism” or
“I fell into a hornets’ nest of revolutionary feminism” if there's nothing wrong with you.
If there were doubts at first, now that both USA and Sweden are asking for extradiction, I'm even more convinced that Sweden wanted just to process him for what he allegedly did.
That's not how I remember it at all. Assange left Sweden because the allegations had been dismissed by prosecutors. He didn't run from Swedish justice, quite the opposite, he hung around longer than necessary until he was told there was no further business to be done.
It was only once he was in the UK that Sweden decided, for no obvious reason at all, that the allegations maybe weren't bogus after all.
> In cross-examination the Swedish lawyer confirmed that paragraph 13 of his proof of evidence is wrong... He then confirmed that on 22nd September 2010 at 16.46 he has a message from Ms Ny saying: “Hello – it is possible to have an interview Tuesday”. Next there was a message saying: “Thanks for letting me know. We will pursue Tuesday 28th at 1700”. He then accepted that there must have been a text from him.
"The lawyer gave live evidence covering in some detail the attempts made to secure an interview with his client.
On 15th September Ms Ny told him there were no “force measures” preventing Julian leaving the country, i.e. he
was allowed to leave. ... He phoned his client to say he was free to leave the country to continue his work."
"He conceded that it is possible that Ms Ny told him on the 21st that she wanted to interview his client... Then he was then cross-examined about his attempts to contact his client. To have the full flavour it may be necessary to consider the transcript in full. In summary the lawyer was unable to tell me what attempts he made to contact his client... He said “I don’t think I left a message warning him”"
"In re-examination he confirmed that he did not know Mr Assange was leaving Sweden on 27th September and
first learned he was abroad on 29th."
On 21 August 2010 the case was looked at by a prosecutor.
On 25 August 2010 the case was dismissed, a decision which the lawyer representing the women objected and requested a review.
On 30 August, Assange was questioned by the Stockholm police.
On 1 September, the case was reopened.
On 27 September, Assange left the country. Assange's London lawyer Mark Stephens said that Assange had asked to be interviewed by prosecutors before leaving Sweden but was told he could leave the country without being interviewed. Swedish prosecutors said that on the day Assange left Sweden they had informed Assange's Swedish lawyer Björn Hurtig that an arrest warrant would be issued for Assange. Assange is arrested in his absence.
Can someone explain to me why the general public has ”turned” on Assange in the last few years? Is it because Wikileaks revealed those Hillary Clinton emails? And that’s the ”protagonist” party?
Or is it the rape accusations initiated in Sweden?
Wikileaks changed policy on redacting names. They used to do it, they stopped doing it.
People realised that indiscriminately dumping material without any attempt at removing names was dangerous. Assange has released names of gay people who live in countries where they could be killed for that; he's released names of Jewish people in Bagdhad; he's identified rape victims.
The entire western world is against him, I mean governments with all their power. Aligning with Russia didn't help him, although like Snowden, he had no choice once essentially declaring war to US allies.
Never underestimate what nation states can do. They'll bring down your entire economy unless...or they can pay, bribe or blackmail someone into filing rape charges against you. Or plant a bag of cocaine, and then behave like good citizens by calling the equivalent of 911 on you.
> Can someone explain to me why the general public has ”turned” on Assange in the last few years?
I don't think the public has "turned" on him. (That is, I don't think he's more unpopular now than he was a year ago.) It's more like we forgot about him. That took away the teflon coating that let him escape international arrest warrants in a South American embassy, a privilege most of us wouldn't get.
This story is best explained by reversion to the mean moreso than extraordinary current events.
> just about everyone would interpret that as pre 2016 and post 2016 attitudes and not an arbitrary last year and this year
A poll last month [1] found 73% of Americans have opinions on Wikileaks. The most common response for Julian Assange, on the other hand, was "don't know" (42%, versus 27% responding similarly for Wikileaks).
I'd guess the 38% who find Assange unfavorable is largely unchanged from, say, 2015. I'd also guess his favorability was higher in 2012. (That's what made Correa's political arithmetic around granting Assange asylum stick.)
Under this hypothesis, people didn't start hating Assange more in 2016. His base of supporters simply eroded until most didn't care about him either way. That turned him into a normal person. Normal people don't get to hang out in embassies all day.
Who is the general public? Clearly, him running away from the Swedish police was a bad thing to do. I also don't like him because he supported/supports Trump. However, prosecuting him for his journalistic work is insane!
I don't think he supports Trump, I think he knows how evil the Clintons are.
Here's what I think the Clintons and their "foundation" were up to: Selling out the US in every way possible. The e-mail server was part of a sophisticated information sell operation that included their own plausible deniability, but basically foreign intelligence agencies paid to get access via numerous charities and other clean-looking channels. The primary beneficiaries were the Chinese, who Clintons were already doing business with even when Bill was President.
So we had the Clintons selling out the US at the highest level.
Now, knowing that was the case, do you think what Assange did could be characterized as supporting Trump or just trying to put and end to something so utterly corrupt that it defies comprehension? Seriously, the Clintons are the same as the Rosenbergs who, by the way, were executed for their crimes.
Let’s ignore the facts, or the surmises and ask the following: who do you think he should be popular with? The republicans who think releasing the Manning files means he should be in prison? The Democrats after he did everything he could to sabotage them? The progressives for whom his associations with Putin and Farage are beyond the pale? The tech cognoscenti who were complaining he had ruined WikiLeaks by making it all about him even before the rape allegations came out? Women?
I mean, there are still people who are fans, but it’s no mystery why he’s unpopular with many groupings.
I’ll accept that my terminology may be overly general (and yours overly specific), but the fact remains: after Assange spent an entire election year dropping new damaging material on them, helping a candidate they profoundly oppose win power, how do you expect them to feel?
As I say, I’m not getting into the rights or the wrongs of it, but Assange’s unpopularity is no mystery. Whether or not you think he’s a saint, it’s undeniable he’s annoyed not just a lot of powerful people, but an awful lot of plain people.
Underlying your argument is the unspoken assumption that nobody on the left has any integrity or values the truth at all. But that is not true, and is in fact the great schism on the left right now.
Who says the public has turned? Only the media has turned and they are promoting a particular narrative.
It's funny that so many powerful people are quaking in their boots over this guy. Guilty much? Assange is still alive. That tells me that what he has much be unbelievable political dynamite.
When Assange exposed Bush/right, the journalists and leftists loved him and the right hated him. He won a bunch of journalist/humanitarian prizes. Now that Assange exposed Hillary/left, the journalists and leftists hate him.
24/7 anti-assange propaganda by foxnews, cnn, msnbc, nytimes, wapo, etc and you get the current anti-assange sentiment.
Trump hates him, Hillary hates him, the establishment hates him because he exposed corruption. Corrupt people don't like their corruption exposed. Also, the elites want to start wars in venezuela, syria, etc so punishing assange and setting an example and possibly discrediting/getting rid of wikileaks is in their interest. Wouldn't want truth to get in the way of more wars.
It's because the established media got the message to assassinate his character (and unlike e.g. the 60s with the vibrant counter-culture and anti-establishment stances, today most people just follow what's mainstream).
Oh, there's a counter-culture out there, it's just that none of them are willing to go to bat for Assange.
Assange did this to himself, with posting antisemitic tweets and courting the alt-right. And you have Assange's legal defense campaign posting tweets blaming childfree women for white people in Europe being replaced by brown people, which is both disgustingly misogynist and disgustingly racist.
The counter-culture is highly feminist and anti-racist, and is generally led by women of color, so there goes any sympathy they might have for Assange.
Only speaking for myself, my opinion turned when Wikileaks announced that Assange’s internet access had been cut off by a “state actor,” which turned out to be the Ecuadorians kicking him off their WiFi. That’s when I realized he’s an attention-seeking wanker.
I haven't had much respect for Assange long before the Podesta/Clinton emails.
WikiLeak's big coup was cablegate, the main revelations of which boil down to "diplomats are very frank about people when they're not speaking in public." At the same time, Assange seemed to want it to be compared to the Pentagon Papers leak, which revealed that the US military was covering up the course of the Vietnam War. Instead cablegate was a whole lot of quantity over quality, and don't really merit the comparison.
Since then, WikiLeaks has missed out on the big revelations: Snowden's releases, the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, as well as more regionally important leaks such as Lava Jato. There's no trust among leakers that WikiLeaks is a neutral source for divulging information, and the fact that Assange has seemed to have a specifically anti-US tilt which results in him getting cozy with anti-US anti-press-freedom regimes.
Don't gaslight. Wikileaks' big coup was Collateral Murder, which showed to the entire world how US soldiers enjoy committing war crimes at the behest of senior US military leadership whenever they think they can get away with it.
Forgive me for getting angry at the wilful ignorance of so many useful idiots. I'm just kinda done with being "nice". Over a decade of vetted, verifiable leaks exposing the unbridled evil of the US military-industrial complex, and most Americans are just as lazy and stupid and cowed as ever. Wikileaks releases video of American helicopter pilots laughing while they gun down journalists, and Americans shrug.
So let me get banned for speaking my piece in a disrespectful manner. I welcome it. Frankly, if I could find a "delete my account" button, I'd hit it in a heartbeat. Sheep, the whole goddamn lot of you.
People aren't asked to be "nice" here, but they are asked to be kind: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Being kind, among other things, means resisting the impulse to flame others even if they are ignorant and wrong, and even if they identify with institutions that have done horrible things. I know that's a lot to ask, but that's what we do ask—even if others don't follow the same rule.
For me, it has been necessary to realize that the agitation going on inside me when I lash out at others over such issues is itself a form of violence and war. Not the same in degree, of course; but the same in kind, and that matters more.
Because the CIA is good at their job. He demonstrated himself to be an enemy of the US any exposing US government crimes, and the US didn’t want to bust into an embassy in London to assassinate him, so this is plan B.
They couldn’t make him dead, so they opted to make him irrelevant instead.
> Can someone explain to me why the general public has ”turned” on Assange in the last few years?
The US center to right hated him from the beginning, with leading figures inside and outside of government, aligned with both major parties, calling for his head. There was some sympathy for him (or at least WikiLeaks ostensible mission) on the left.
Being somewhere between a tool and a collaborator in the Russian influence and spinning partisan lies about the source of the information on top of that to conceal that it was a Russian influence op (which itself tends to create the impression that he was more collaborator than tool) soured that, without durably mitigating the hatred the center to right already had for him.
The rape accusations don't help, especially given where what little sympathy he had had was located.
I used to support Wikileaks and Assange. I think the collateral murder video was very important to release. Assange lost my trust when he seemed to go mad with power due to the impact of the Manning leaks, when he get increasingly irresponsible with releasing unredacted stuff, and with the rape case.
Mostly he gives me the impression that he's in it for his personal glory, and he believes himself above accountability. I still support the original goal of Wikileaks, but I hate how they squandered their credibility due to Assange's antics.
Because there are already various conspiracies being discussed in this thread, I'd like to invite you to entertain, just momentarily, the possibility that this is simply a functioning system of justice seeking to prosecute what they consider credible evidence of a crime.
I know the tech community likes Assange, or at least liked Wikileaks as it was originally conceived. But here are some thoughts that you could maybe run through a bayesian analysis to consider if there is enough of a probability that his accuser is telling the truth and this case should be adjudicated in a court of law.
- Even people one sympathises with are capable of making mistakes.
- Why would the Obama administration go through the risk and difficulty of organising a breathtaking conspiracy to get at him, yet commute Chelsea Manning's sentence?
- Why would the Trump "I love Wikileaks" administration continue that adventure, instead of exposing it, damaging Obama's reputation, and helping their friend?
- There were enough portraits of Assange, by former colleagues and reputable journalists, that he has some tendencies somewhere between "overstaying his welcome" and "complete egomaniac".
- Sweden is generally considered one of the least corrupt countries in the world. To get from whatever high-ranking politician who would have to sign off on a conspiracy with the US all the way down to some local prosecutors would require an unbroken chain of many people suddenly throwing their principles overboard.
- At the time of the supposed rape incident, the most prominent leak was the "Collateral Murder" video. The war cables and Snowden leaks came later. That video was somewhat embarrassing, but in no way important enough to warrant such adventures in diplomatic subterfuge as alleged.
- All subsequent leaks, i. e. Snowden, Diplomatic Cables, were published in partnership with media organisations such as the New York Times, Guardian, or Spiegel. Why invest so much ressources and potential risk into going after Assange, and not those organisations that were arguably more important going forward? The Times may be immune because they are domestic. But the Spiegel or Guardian could certainly suffer an embarrassing loss of, say, all their subscriber data?
- Assange's credibility isn't actually that important. There is nothing Wikileaks published that I consider fake. The Clinton leak was just... underwhelming? There was nothing even remotely illegal in there, and not even much that made her look bad. The Snowden leaks were important. The earlier, lesser-known stuff from Africa etc. was fantastic. The diplomatic cables were already borderline.
- The accuser was some lefty student of Spanish literature at a minor Swedish university. Assange's event there was publicised a few weeks prior. Does anybody believe the CIA has covered secret agents stationed at Swedish feminist literature departments for eight years, just in case some target comes along that needs her couch to crush on?
- Assange was travelling all over Europe and other parts of the world in those times. Why not just wait until he is in a country with the perfect extradition treaty and have him arrested at the airport?
- Indeed, why the rape allegation? If Sweden would be willing to extradite him, they could just arrest him at the airport and send him to the US. What is gained by an extra round through the Swedish criminal justice system?
- If you're intent to discredit Assange among his fanbase, which is largely young, male, and online: isn't rape actually the worst possible crime to smear him? Just look at the prevalence of "obviously fake"/"not rape" and various other character assassination in any thread on this subject.
- The specifics, i. e. secretly removing the condom, seem to invite all sorts of "that's not rape" opinions, making them a rather bad choice compared to stereotypical violent rape.
> Why would the Obama administration go through the risk and difficulty of organising a breathtaking conspiracy to get at him, yet commute Chelsea Manning's sentence?
Perhaps because the US political / justice / military intelligence system contains more people wielding power than just the president.
"Does anybody believe the CIA has covered secret agents stationed at Swedish feminist literature departments"
Sure, why not? It would be an excellent cover persona for that type of spy. From what little I know about how intelligence agencies operate, it always amazes me who their assets are. Look at who the OSS used as spies in WWII. Find out who her parents are before passing judgement. They don't recruit the obvious James Bond types. Find the family connection.
I can believe the CIA has all sorts of assets in obscure places. Believing the CIA is directing its assets to have sex with a target then wait several days until a chance conversation with somebody else about his alleged sexual indiscretions before making a crime report so tentative the case was only reopened on appeal is a step much further. If the CIA wanted to honeytrap someone, which certainly wasn't the most obvious route to going after Assange, they'd have made the case stick.
Similarly, believing that everybody who has ever interacted with an anti-Castro organization (the only "evidence" presented of CIA involvement) is a CIA asset is a step beyond which I'm willing to go.
The way media has "covered" this, it is not all that surprising to see ignorant comments and cynical speculation. Such deliberate and thorough ignorance as the above is a little more rare.
There are links to primary evidence and unbiased sources throughout. It's absolutely riddled with them, as this thread is with people like you.
So, you're welcome. Except, from your recent comments you seem highly averse to becoming familiar with the facts, even when people have put them right in front of you.
Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of whether someone else posted a bad comment. We've had to warn you several times before. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this, so we don't have to ban you?
The two often coincide. And facts can make an attack crueler. Imagine a middle schooler pointing out facts about another kid's face.
With your comment above, even if I assume you were right on all the facts, it is still a personal attack, insulting the other person's aversions and so on. This is not how thoughtful discussion goes, and we ban people that do this on HN.
We've had to ask you quite a lot about this kind of stuff. I don't want to ban you—I'd rather persuade you that following the site guidelines is in your interest. Why not take them to heart? Doing that makes the site better for everyone, including you—just the same as not littering in a city park or having campfires when a forest is at risk. This being the internet, HN is always at risk, and we all need to care for the commons.
Assange is accused of unlawful coercion and "lesser-degree rape" (mindre grov våldtäkt).
In the first case, the complainant willingly had an intercourse with him. But after sex, she realized that the condom had a hole. She claims that he made it.
In the second case, the complainant also willingly had an intercourse with Assange, they slept naked together. The next day in the morning, he penetrated her without a condom while she was sleeping. (The main problem seems to be the "without a condom" part)
This is obviously serious. He could have transmitted STDs to the complainants. Unprotected sex should be agreed by both.
But, when someone reads "rape" out of context, he could imagine that Assange used a knife or something to force a woman to have sex.
This is what forms the definition of “rape”. People might have a different idea when they hear this word, but this is the correct term from a technical standpoint.
And while it doesn't change the ethical and moral landscape around his alleged actions, people should be aware that what he is accused of is not illegal in the US.
The law in each state of the US is different, but I'm fairly certain in every one sex with someone incapable of consent due to unconsciousness is rape. Rape-by-deception laws are more variable between US states, and the US generally and they are generally new (the last few decades) and still fairly weak, often being driven in each state by desire to address the circumstances of a particular single case where efforts to prosecute rape-by-deception as general lack of consent without a specific law addressing deception failed.
Not sure why the legality in the US is material since the act didn't occur in the US, doesn't involve US persons, and the extradition being conducted isn't from or to the US.
It's material because people are using attacks on his character as a proxy to discredit his work. Most people I encounter have completely dismissed Assange, WikiLeaks, and anything related at this point. It seems the CIA smear campaign has succeeded, even though their first attempts were failures, such as the HBGary/Palantir debacle.
> Having sex with someone who is sleeping is definitely (alleged) rape, unless she agreed to it beforehand or something.
I mean, that's a very grey and complicated area. I had an ex who would do that type of thing, and it was never discussed but was absolutely welcome. I suppose after the first time you could argue some type of implicit consent. Or maybe I'm just a Stockholm Syndrome candidate.
I have no idea the dynamics of the Assange case, but the hyper-contractual notion of consent that has come into popularity in the last few years just seems to ignore the humanity of human relations.
At least in England and Sweden, it is definitely the case that one cannot consent if one is not conscious, and therefore consent has not been given, therefore an offence has been committed. I believe this is true in the US as well.
Consent has to be given prior to each occurrence, and therefore prior consent means nothing about future consent.
See, for example, the High Court judgment (linked elsewhere in this thread) on the EAW served for Assange's extradition to Sweden in 2011, where the High Court concludes that the offence would be rape under English law.
Absolutely! But much like protocols (strict in what you emit, liberal in what you accept), reality is complicated and not conforming to a desired standard.
I'm not sure if that's the correct way to call it, but I've seen (and acted myself) "half-asleep" state many times. Apparently, I was able to answer even moderately complex questions (mostly things like "where are the car keys" or "which food did you give to our cat yesterday") and looked quite awake, yet I have absolutely no recollection of it happening. I also sometimes give answers or say things I wouldn't say normally, ie. two days ago in such a situation I apparently asked my wife why did she wrap herself with tinfoil from head to toe (obviously, this was in my dream, but I said it out loud). We have a good laugh out of this from time to time.
So yeah, I can imagine myself giving a clear "yes" to something in that state despite being consciously unaware of the entire thing. I'm not sure if "approval" like that should count court - I'm just giving you an example of one possible complication for "determining whether someone is conscious", be it before sex or otherwise.
This recent development in English law strikes me as inhuman. It turns the kissing of a sleeping lover into a violent sexual assault. Passion and spontaneity become criminalized.
The observable goal of these policies is maximal license for women's sexuality and maximal suppression of men's sexuality. This isn't a normative statement, it's a descriptive one, so please don't take offense and if my description is incorrect then provide examples of, say, a woman being convicted of rape because she lied about being on birth control.
Please try steel-manning instead of straw-manning. Can you think of a circumstance where a man waking his partner with sex is a consensual activity? Have you observed that in the vast majority of sexual liaisons it’s a man doing the approaching? Do you realize that many women like male sexuality and want to be seduced? Can you see how equating normal romantic actions within a relationship with raping an unconscious drunk is dishonest and oppressive?
I can’t help observe that your implicit assumption that men are sexual predators. The need to speak out against that is the primary reason I’m willing to voice my observations on the subject.
This is over the line and breaks the HN guideline against taking threads further into generic flamewar. Please don't do that. This somewhat-specific flamewar is bad enough as it is.
Also, please stop using HN for ideological battle. We've given you a ton of warnings about that already.
Yeah I know, the same way each time I touch someone in the street, I get arrested for violently assaulting them. I'm really tired of trying not to touch anyone. /s
I know someone that was raped while not being conscious. She didn't want to have sex with that person. While trying to press charge, she found others persons that had similar experience with that guy. The cops told her tough luck, not to stay with people she didn't trust (it was a friend...) and they threaten her of making false accusation (the prosecutor herself seemed surprised of that and the cops angrily answered that she wouldn't be accused of that, luckily). The prosecutor has not enough proof to go further with it... there should have been at least someone else in that room that could testify.
That's the current state of rape accusation. Pretty far from your "kissing of a sleeping lover" being criminalized.
That doesn't really seem to eliminate such grey areas. Exactly how many seconds/minutes/hours are allowed to elapse between the question/answer "May I have sex with you?" ... "Yes", and the act taking place? When does consent expire?
I started to think of sexsomnia when I read that quote, it's when people engage in sex while sleeping, I looked it up on Wikipedia and they list a few cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_sex#Legal_cases
Something like this has happened to me in the past. If I am having sex with my partner and we fall asleep, sometimes I will wake up 1 to 3 hours later and not realize that we fell asleep, and try to resume relations. This is our in the context of a relationship, and in each it’s been understood that this would not disturb my partner. So, it hasn’t been a problem. Now, if I fell asleep alongside someone with whom I was not just having intercourse (or especially never had done so) and did that, I could see how it would be a problem.
Well, figuratively. If respective parties sign a contract - like a marriage contract, but different - it should be good enough for a court. A contract has the power to extend consent into future.
I'm not commenting on the legalities, only the humanities.
One can either build an overly-tight system that can incidentally put innocents in trouble or an overly-loose system that risks criminals getting away. Interesting that the Europeans seem to have gone with the latter.
I'm not talking about Assange, just the notion that "I didn't get a formal Yes equates to Rape" because human relations are more complicated than that.
You're creating talking points that I never did, then fighting them down to make me sound like some kind of rape apologist. Kindly piss off.
Ezra Klein (a journalist for Vox) made this analogy on a podcast:
If I go to visit a very close friend, I might take something of value off their shelf as I'm walking out the door, without asking first. There's not necessarily anything wrong with this.
But, I had better be pretty fucking sure that I know my friend as well as I think I do, because if I misjudged, I'm a thief, and liable to be prosecuted by the full force of a law. Not "kind of" a thief—just a thief.
If I tell you to take a fiver from my wallet and you do it, that's consensual. If you then later take another fiver out of my wallet without my permission, it's not consensual. If I catch you doing it, I might still be okay with it but that doesn't mean it wasn't non-consensual when you did it.
What if, instead of your wallet, it's a box by the door labeled "cab fare" and it's been previously discussed that this box is there for people in the house, me included, to use when catching a cab to the train?
Sure - but in the case of sex, the equivalent is a written agreement to have sex while asleep at at a specified time and place with a specified person.
Your cab fare metaphor is a very misleading illustration of this.
He'd tried to get her to have sex without a condom all night. She continually rejected it. He (allegedly) knew fully that she did not consent to unprotected sex and waited for her to fall asleep to do it.
It is certainly possible, but in this instance there are a couple of issues that reduce that to a pretty weird complaint.
I mean, if two people have sex and then sleep in the same bed overnight, and one of the two attempts to continue having sex in the morning ... if you wanna call that rape, rape might not even be a moral crime. Just a technical one. It is diluting the word to the point where it is meaningless. In this particular case the lack of a condom is the troubling part, but not exactly the end of the world.
The law doesn't force us to be perfect at every moment through our entire lives. It doesn't even require us to be good people. If there was evidence Assange has somehow physically, emotionally, financially, what have you, affected these women then that would be a better fig leaf than what seems to be happening.
My memory of the facts is that the girls involved weren't worried about it until they found out it was potentially a pattern of behavior with Assange and wanted him tested for STDs.
If he wouldn't take an STD test I can see how that would justify fining him, or arresting him and forcing him to take a test or something. It isn't obvious it justifies an extradition and all the theater we've been watching.
>I mean, if two people have sex and then sleep in the same bednight, and one of the two attempts to continue having sex in the morning ... if you wanna call that rape, rape might not even be a moral crime.
Nah , that's rape, one of the parties was unconscious .
Are you talking legally or practically? Because practically being asleep and unconscious [0] are different things. Legally I'm not sure what the common jurisdictions accept.
And, again, that is trivialising rape. Under that sort of definition, there would be a lot of men and women who get raped and literally just wouldn't believe a crime had happened. Might be the legal state of affairs, but it is also clearly stupid.
EDIT I mean, I'd expect to know a bunch of people who are rapists under that sort of standard. I don't know who they'd be, but it wouldn't be an uncommon set of circumstances.
EDIT2 in response to dragonwriter I've added a citation to Wikipedia which does differentiate between normal sleep and unconsciousness (at least as of when I checked :P). Obviously the line is blurry if you want it to be.
And at this point, it must be known if she contracted an STD from him. I'm assuming if she had, there would be additional charges for it. So, we pretty much know he didn't give her one, so it's a little weird to me that this is being discussed as a could have.
It's about consent: if he knowingly endangered someone there should still be consequences even if he got away with it, just as you'd want for, say, someone driving drunk even if they didn't hit someone that time.
Why limit it to penetration? Sexual contact without consent to that specific form of contact immediately preceding the contact. That is the law apparently. But as a poster above said, laws need to bend to humanity, not the other way around. If I ask my wife to ride my morning wood, then charge her with rape when she tries to divorce me for being lazy, we can all agree I think that the law is no serving justice.
Also whatever Assange did or didn't do, the handling of the case seems highly suspicious and Swedish resident have standing to request an investigation.
Wow, that's a pretty good analogy to this case, provided that you'd ask her that the day before and didn't wake up until late into the act (or at all, which I shouldn't be possible without assistance of drugs? but, I've seen some people "sleep like a log" through all kinds of commotion, so maybe it is).
Anyway, if what I read in this thread is all true, that would be a marital rape 100% and she'd get (or she should, according to the law) charged with rape if any of you ever mentioned the situation to the authorities.
Well, we're a bit too old already, but it looks like my wife and I were raping each other fairly regularly some years back. We even had fun doing this, which would possibly make it even more serious crime. This is, honestly, quite scary.
EDIT: What the heck? Have my downvoters never woke up next to their loved person and initiated an act as a "good morning" equivalent? Am I just so perverted that I should stay in the closet, or should I give myself over to the police this instant?
What I'm asking is: would the law actually go after both my wife and me (we weren't even married back then, BTW)? Wouldn't that be too much? Yeah, in the case of a one night stand it's probably the correct thing to do (maybe?), but the parent comment alluded to a long-term relationship, which I happen to enjoy (a lot :P).
Again, I'm no lawyer, I've no idea what the law says in this case, I'm but a hopeless pervert who both fucked and was fucked in a variety of circumstances and ways, including while being stoned, drunk and half-asleep (always with the same person, always safe, sane and consensual... oh wait, it couldn't have been consensual! yet it was. that's what I'm asking!) If I was to be persecuted for these acts, it's actually a serious matter for me - it means I can't write about our experiences on a blog under my name, for example. I can't mention it to people carelessly. I could endanger both myself and my wife. I'd need to hide it, I'd need to be ashamed, I'd need to try forgetting about it as if it was a sort of trauma. We've been through a lot of that already, yet there's still more coming my way? This time from people in blue instead of black uniforms?
If so, then there's something wrong with the law or public morals, or both. I don't live - and don't want to, either - in Saudi Arabia, but in an ostensibly tolerant society which accepts all kinds of fetishes without problems. At least I believe in that, but reading the comments and getting downvoted for expressing my confusion - made me start to doubt it.
If someone consents to have sex only on the condition of protection from disease and pregnancy, and you trick them into sex without a condom that is rape.
There may be differences of degrees to the stereotypical violent behind-the-bushes rape. Those should and would be considered for purposes of sentencing. But it's still rape.
A minor difference: if you want to manage your own risk, you should assume could be lying about taking a birth control pill, whereas you can easily verify someone is wearing a condom.
If I was uncertain whether someone was truly on the birth control pill, I would insist upon condoms if I wanted to fully hedge my risk.
I do see the point you're trying make, but it's a complex issue. I could easily make an argument for the opposite case, that it is rape. But I think being able to verify a condom is being worn makes the situation different enough to treat differently from lying about being on the pill.
I would say it's not rape but it's definitely a con and should be illegal.
The difference between being tricked into impregnating and being tricked into being impregnated is that impregnation only affects the bodily autonomy of the person being impregnated. There are other consequences and many of them are shared by both persons but the bodily autonomy part is present on in one.
Does the law actually say so? To what extent does "rape by lying" exist? I imagine "I'm actually not a doctor" or "let me just remove my makeup" don't count... How about not paying a prostitute after sex (assuming prostitution is legal), does it count as rape (she consented to sex on the condition of paying) or just theft? Are women that say they're on the pill but aren't, or that use the man's sperm to impregnate themselves after sex, rapists (edit: note that child support payments belong to the child, so rape victims still have to pay child support, no matter how unfair that might seem, although the rapist being jailed would still offer at least some satisfaction and dis-incentivize future crimes)?
Assange argued that the accused act would not be illegal under English law; the High Court disagreed (and hence the dual criminality test was fulfilled).
I think it depends what you define as "activity". If activity is sex, then you consent to sex, and you're yourself responsible if your partner is wearing a condom or not. Or activity could be sex with a condom or sex with a partner who's on birth control etc.
> Are women that say they're on the pill but aren't, or that use the man's sperm to impregnate themselves after sex, rapists
This is a very interesting scenario you bring up.
Anna and Bob agree to have sex. Anna would prefer without a condom, Bob insists they must have a condom. Anna sabotages the condom by poking a pin through the package. They have consensual sex with the condom, which unbeknownst to Bob has a hole placed there by Anna. Anna becomes pregnant. Is it an absolute unquestionable legal fact that Anna raped Bob? Should Anna be arrested? If Anna leaves the country, should she be extradited to face justice?
And does this only matter for a particular kind of birth control? Anna tells Bob she is on the pill but she is not. Bob consents only on the condition that Anna is on the pill. They have sex. Is it an absolute unquestionable legal fact that Anna raped Bob? Should Anna be arrested?
What about sex conditions not related to birth control? Bob agrees to sex with Anna only on the condition he be allowed to wear his warm wool socks to bed. During sex, Anna finds the socks to be scratchy and pulls them off. Is it an absolute unquestionable legal fact that Anna raped Bob? Should Anna be arrested?
In Switzerland it definitly would not count as rape by Anna (men cannot be raped here, only sexually abused (same max prison time, but rape carries a mandatory minimum of one year)). But she would be liable for the financial damage caused to Bob (child support, lost income, anything you can think of).
There is a famous case before the highest court, where a doctor, after forgetting to perform a sterilization a patient requested together with the caesarian birth of her second child, was deemed liable for the financial loss incurred by the existance of her third child.
"the few genuine victims of rape" kinda gives away your attitude on the subject. At least you know that this sort of misogyny isn't well received in polite company and decided to create a new account for it.
The second example is definitely the sort of thing that comes to mind when someone says prosecution for “rape” so I’m not sure what you’re getting at. In the US, the second act would be prosecuted as rape, not a lesser charge.
If you think people would misunderstand “rape” in this way, I’d suggest you spend your effort educating people who don’t understand the word, rather than trying to “correct” people using the word to mean what it means.
"(The main problem seems to be the "without a condom" part)"
Uh, what? You then go on:
"This is obviously serious. He could have transmitted STDs to the complainants. Unprotected sex should be agreed by both."
You think the serious part is the lack of protection, rather than that she was asleep? I'd advise you read up some more on what constitutes rape and what constitues consent.
Why isn't it rape/sexual batter for a woman to have sex without bc then? Or at least to have sex without bc if she made the guy think she had it? How did men's reproductive rights get passed over while women's are comprehensive?
"Not an issue" - Unwanted pregnancies adversely affect men for their entire lives. Stds for the most part can be treated. As I said, men don't have reproductive rights. It's because of mentalities like yours.
Not saying it's justified to commit rape but waking up the next morning and having sex again seems relatively routine. If not then I as a man have several women who belong in jail for morning after sex. But I bet you wouldn't see it that way huh?
This is the most "what about men" comment I've read in a while.
Every man should be prepared for every one of their sexual partners to become pregnant, even if BC or condoms or other contraception are involved. It comes with the territory, and you can be sure that women are aware of the risk (since pregnancy is a first-person risk for them).
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar or introduce generic flamewar tangents. The odds that anyone has anything new or interesting to say about this are very low, and the odds of people bashing each other very high. That makes it off topic here.
This is something I truly believe is draconic. Men have virtually zero reproductive rights. If the conversation comes to it, I will bring it up. If you dislike it you are free to choose another platform.
The conversation didn't "come to it", it was pushed. That's what I mean about generic tangents. Somehow we got from the specifics of the Assange case to that's-not-really-rape to "men have no reproductive rights". At each step that's a move into making the topic more grandiose and indignant. Grandiose plus indignant equals flamewar. Flamewars are off topic here. If people keep doing that, we have to ban them, because that's the only way to preserve the site for curiosity, community, and thoughtful discussion—HN's purpose. I don't want to ban you. Therefore, please stop posting like this.
I feel sad, because this is not the right debate to have, and I initiated it.
First, I repeat: What he allegedly did is a serious and horrible crime.
Also, people need to see the elephant in the room. These two victims' case is weaponized by some governments to scare whistle-blowers. Assange directly or indirectly exposed many horrible crimes, including war rapes, group rapes, mass murders.
People need to remember this video of soldiers in Irak shooting at human beings from far away while laughing and listening to rock music, and shooting again at wounded survivors crawling on the floor.
People need also to remember the images of war prisoners tortured, humiliated, forced to be naked and raped with sticks.
But, more importantly, people need to make sure that future whistle-blowers fell safe to expose this kind of hideous crimes.
It has to be said that many other journalists who reported on war crimes (including collaborating with Wikileaks on Manning stories) are entirely safe and well and have not been accused of rape.
We don't really know what threats have been delivered to them, only Assange is high-profile enough for whatever happens to him to send message. For all we know those other journalists received a friendly phone call and capitulated immediately - or more likely, they're simply not as big a target.
I mean, some of the other journalists include Wikileaks members and Assange supporters who've personally assisted Snowden in escaping to Russia. If it's an intimidation strategy, it's clearly not working.
The US hasn't asked for their extradition for conspiracy either, and yet they have for Assange. Unless being accused of raping women in Sweden causes the US to do that, there must also be some other difference between Assange and those other journalists.
I see no indication that this was “weaponized.” Assange was wanted for questioning in Sweden. He was in the UK and would have been arrested and extradited. This is all completely normal. It went off the rails when he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy, which was his own choice.
Supposedly he did this because he was afraid that he’d be hauled off to Guantanamo Bay or whatever, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
At any rate, we should separate these things. The whistleblowing done by Assange and the rape (allegedly) done by Assange are unrelated. Talking about the whistleblowing should not involve minimizing the rape.
He had already been questioned by police in Sweden prior to that. He even stuck around for a month and then asked the Swedish police if he was free to leave, he was told he was.
The prosecutor dropped the charges because the alleged victims were quite obviously lying about having been raped using any conventional definition of the term, there was also no way to resolve any dispute about whether someone was asleep when sex happened, and they would never reach the level of "beyond reasonable doubt" by any jury as a consequence.
The charges were later mysteriously resurrected by a different prosecutor so he could be questioned again. Or maybe it's not such a mystery after all. Either Sweden is doing as the USA asked for some convoluted reasons, or the Swedish justice system is a complete joke when the R word gets involved.
The prosecutor dropped the case because the alleged rape victim didn't want to press charges, because she was overwhelmed in the immediate aftermath. Then she hired a lawyer to advocate for her who got the charges re-opened.
The other woman, who alleged lesser offenses, never dropped charges, though the statute of limitations have since expired on them.
Assange was told early on in the investigation that he was not restricted from traveling, but as the investigation developed further and it became clear they wanted to prosecute him, he went missing.
After multiple failed attempts to schedule another police interview, the prosecutor told his attorney she'd be filing an arrest warrant that day. Five hours later, Assange arrived at the airport and bought the next available ticket to Berlin.
Assange claims that's just a coincidence. That he was avoiding contact with his lawyer because he was afraid of "threatening statements made by politicians in the U.S"
Then you haven't been following this story very closely. A few brief examples: (1) The case was closed before he left Sweden. (2) They could have questioned him remotely, which they often do, but declined to. (3) The women didn't even want to charge him. (4) There is a USA extradition order in place. How can you doubt the USA wants to extradite him? (5) This isn't "rape" by any standard definition.
Quick tip to anyone taking Assange’s side in this: your argument will work a lot better if you leave out all the stuff about whether his alleged crime is really “rape” or is just some lesser crime involving his wiener and another person. It just makes you sound like a redpiller and will turn people against you.
The legal definition of rape in many US states include two drunk people having sex together or two underage kids doing it. But almost nobody considers that rape so the legal definition is irrelevant.
The timing of the Swedish charge is very noteworthy. The charge and extradition request was made shortly after the release of the US diplomatic cables.
The diplomatic cables were released November 28 2010. The international arrest warrant November 18 2010.
Before that other documents had been released, during the course of almost a year. So, the way I see it there is nothing really special about the timeline here. It is interesting that a lot of people seem to think that he should not be held responsible (or at least investigated) for the crimes he might have committed against the women.
Wikileaks is not just Assange. Obviously there far more people were working in background to verify everything they can and make sure their data is legit before they show it to the public. Do you really think there was way for them to keep upcoming release like actually secret from US government?
Sure. They probably had an idea of what was going on. Don't really see why that is important though. What I was replying to stated "The charge and extradition request was made shortly after the release of the US diplomatic cables." which is incorrect. There is not anything suspicious about the timeline as I see it, the arrest warrant was issued after Assange left Sweden during an open investigation, which he was quite aware of. The only thing that would have been strange is if an arrest warrant hadn't been issued.
We're discussing this now, using materials available now, and discussing a historical event that differs by two weeks. It could have been that the time stamp on the warrant was backdated two weeks.
Except that it was widely reported by mainstream media on 18th November, as the culmination of a long, drawn out and widely reported appeal process dating back to earlier in the year. It really is astonishing how creative people can get with the well-established facts in order to make their conspiracy theories have legs...
Ockham's razor says if there's any connection at all between the two dates, it's Assange ordering Wikileaks to release the files as soon as possible after the arrest warrant was issued to get himself more sympathetic news coverage.
April, a famous video was released from inside a chopper that was mistakenly shooting journalists. May, Chelsea Manning was arrested for that. July, 75,000 documents were released about the Afghan war. August, the rape charges are filed. October, 400,000 documents about the Iraq war. November, the cable leak.
So the cable leaks did not come first. However there was lots of other stuff already released that could have motivated the US here.
And it is also quite possible that concern over the cable leaks was the motivation. You see, the US knew about everything that Chelsea Manning had already released, and had reason to believe that Wikileaks had it all and was releasing things in stages for maximum damage. (It turns out that a drip drip of bad news has much greater emotional impact on people than a single torrent.) Therefore they had the motivation to find ways to put pressure on Assange to NOT leak what he had. And what they did, didn't work.
Moving on, please check your assumptions about whether he should be held responsible. It is my belief that he is an example of selective enforcement of laws that should be more broadly enforced. Therefore my belief that he was targeted for other reasons is not in conflict with my belief that he should have been targeted. I just think that it is wrong that it takes a guy embarrassing a major military for the police to take a woman's complaints seriously.
"Moving on, please check your assumptions about whether he should be held responsible. It is my belief that he is an example of selective enforcement of laws that should be more broadly enforced. "
Okay... I live in Sweden and my view is not that he is a victim of selective enforcement. All rape allegations reported to the police are investigated in Sweden as far as I know. Unfortunately it is usually hard to find supporting evidence and it is usually word against word, which often is not enough for conviction. That his case was open for so long, and that the prosecutor found a reason to reopen the case (on request of the victim) does indicate that there might be substantial evidence.
Rape is sex with a person who does not consent. Period. What Assange is accused of is rape. Anyone who thinks otherwise should get a reality check and realize that there is no shade of grey here. Her body, her rules. Have sex without her consent, and that is rape.
Having sex without birth control with someone who didn't consent to that specific activity is legally rape in both the UK and Sweden. This is based on conditional consent, do something outside of the conditions under which consent existed, and you no longer have consent. More and more jurisdictions are recognizing this. Furthermore sex with someone who cannot consent due to being unconscious or sleeping is rape in a broader set of jurisdictions. (I do think that California goes too far by saying that you cannot consent in advance to being woken that way, but that is a different story. In this case there was no indication of consent given in advance for what he is accused of.)
So Assange is not being charged with some minor crime. He is being charged with rape.
Whether the charges would be pursued if he were someone else, well, that gets into selective enforcement. But this is at worst selective enforcement of a very reasonable law.
>Having sex without birth control with someone who didn't consent to that specific activity is legally rape in both the UK and Sweden.
I don't think it is that clear in Sweden at least. Especially not if you just say birth control, i.e. what if I woman says she is on the pill and we have sex and it turns out she lied? I don't think she would get a rape charge.
I think it is also likely that someone in Sweden would get charged with a lesser crime than rape if it turns out they just removed the condom during sex. Having sex with someone that is sleeping and has not consented would be rape though.
EDIT: After having verified some more it he was not accused of rape for the condom thing. The rape charge is having sex with a sleeping person without a condom as it can be reasonably argued that she would not have consented to sex.
I know that the UK court which agreed to extradite him concluded that, under UK law, removing the condom was rape. But I'm not as familiar with the actual Swedish charges.
Are you sure that they extradited him for the removing condom thing? Because that was one of the lesser charges in Sweden but he was also charged with rape due to the sex with the sleeping woman without a condom. I assume he was extradited because of that charge.
I am sure that they concluded that because I read that part of their conclusion at one point.
I don't know what else they may have concluded. But standard legal practice is to come to a conclusion about each charge regardless of what others you decided in case some of your conclusions are overruled on appeal.
For example if you conclude that either the condom or the sleep charge is sufficient, then the extradition can go forward even if the sleep charge got dropped.
I read she never opened a case against him. It was just police officer who did it in her name? I think it's too much misinformation and lies to tell what really happened.
The facts are she went to the police station to report it. Why would she do that if she didn't want the police to do anything?
When the first prosecutor decided not to proceed with the case, her lawyer asked for this decision to be reviewed. Why would her lawyer do this if she didn't want the case resumed?
"In the case of most crimes, the prosecutor has what is known as an absolute duty to prosecute.
This means that the prosecutor is obliged to initiate a prosecution if he or she considers there to be sufficient evidence to prove that a crime has been committed and that a certain person has committed it.
This in turn means that not even the victim of the offence can decide what is to happen in connection with the investigations. In other words, there is nothing on the lines of “withdrawing the charges”. The prosecutor must make sure that the crime is investigated, irrespective of the feelings or wishes of those involved.
The reason for this is that society has an interest in ensuring that the perpetrators of the crime are also tried for it. Exceptions are made for certain offences where it may be felt that the interests of the general public in instigating legal proceedings are not strong enough. Examples of such offences are defamation, breach of domiciliary peace and crimes of unlawful appropriation, or stealing, within the family (i.e. theft etc.)."
If you seriously believe that, than you are either very naive or lying to yourself. It is obvious that influential people who feel threatened by Wikileaks fabricated the whole incident.
How else could it be? Think seriously about it. If you manage to convince yourself that there is a real chance of rape happened, then tell me how you did it. Maybe you can convince me too.
So, your assumptions are “obvious” and someone else assumptions are just a result of them not thinking seriously? Maybe it is you who should re-think their position?
I don't think it's anyone else's responsibility to convince you of anything. If you want to take part in this conversation, how about you explain the reasons for your position instead?
Most likely he’ll give an interview after which the prosecutor will decide to press no charges. It’s a rather weak case that is also quite old at this point.
After that I’d try to disappear in Sweden if I were Assange.
Yeah because the second Assange had set foot outside the embassy, the UK cops would have arrested him. Even in a car / "diplomatic bag" the UK cops would have the right to search it for Assange, because, well, a smuggled body isn't exactly "articles intended for official use" (per Art. 27 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations).
Maybe US thought there was nothing to trade and that dealing with Assange in person would convince russians that he's not so valuable, even as an asset
> The packages constituting the diplomatic bag must bear visible external marks of their character and may contain only diplomatic documents or articles intended for official use.
But also part of Article 27
> The diplomatic bag shall not be opened or detained.
So you are stuck in a Catch 22. You suspect the bag doesn’t contain official documents or articles but without searching it you can not be sure.
How it’s usually handled is diplomatically. It’s reported to the higher ups, who will search the bag themselves but they can always refuse.
There are cases where a host country has opened diplomatic bags but they usually come with diplomatic protests.
There has been attempts to make Assange a diplomat of a country or two in an attempt to allow home to leave the embassy and leave the UK but the host country has to accept the status of a diplomat (usually done before they enter the country) and the UK government refused to recognise Assange's status still leaving him stuck.
The idea that WL is responsible for Clinton's loss - rather than her being a terrible candidate - is laughable. To credit Assange with Trump's election is a complete joke - not least because the same people attacking him for releasing Clinton / Podesta / DNC emails have spent the past several years utterly failing to take stock of the reasons they lost.
I say all this as a non-US observer. The US' media and political figures are completely unfit for purpose.
Meanwhile, there has been a simultaneous attack on outlets that might actually spit the truth out there: the recent "changes to Facebook's algorithm" resulting in outlets like MPN, Democracy Now, and Wikileaks go from regular 20k shares to the 7-900 range practically overnight is suspicious in the extreme.
The election outcome is obviously much more multifactor than that, but that doesn't change the fact that Assange was coordinating with Gucifer 2.0 against Clinton. Wikileaks wasn't neutral in that election.
This is just a spurious argument - and setting aside the Guccifer 2.0 sub-plot to the whole scam - Wikileaks has absolutely no requirement to be neutral. Their job is to publish things powerful people don't want published. That's it. Why should WL be on your side? Why shouldn't WL release info damaging to Clinton? It's hardly Assange's fault the US keeps committing war crimes and engaging in blatant corruption, is it?
You're confusing correlation with causation. It doesn't matter who or what stood to gain from Clinton's emails being published; unless you can demonstrate an illegal conspiracy (which you can't), there's nothing to say. WL did their job, nothing more.
This is just to save face and make it look like the whole thing wasn't driven by US pressure from the outset. There's no chance he will end up standing trial in Sweden, unlikely they could even bring such a flimsy case to court, and unlikely that the UK would prioritize Sweden's request over the US. I doubt they'll even get round to making a formal extradition request. This is an empty gesture.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? This document evaluates whether the extradition request is legitimate: do the allegations amount to crimes, are they faithful characterisations of the accusations, does the request come from the proper authority, was the correct procedure followed, etc. It does not evaluate the strength of the case or any of the supporting evidence. Eg.:
Nor do the inconsistencies in her account and text messages relied upon by Mr Assange assist. In one sent by her she described herself as "half asleep" and she accepted in a further interview that she was not fast asleep. These are matters of evidence which would be highly relevant at trial. But it is not for this court to asses whether the allegations may fail.
So, after all this, the case could still fall apart under the slightest scrutiny and be abandoned by the prosecution or dismissed by the judge.
> There's no chance he will end up standing trial in Sweden, unlikely they could even bring such a flimsy case to court, and unlikely that the UK would prioritize Sweden's request over the US
Could you link me to the sources you’re using that have you believing this so adamantly?
I'm not sure why the charges keep being reported as "rape", when there's no suggestion he did any such thing. The charges relate to a Swedish law about not using a condom. The woman alleges that Assange removed the condom at some point during sex, without her consent to do so, and that she noticed afterwards.
Is it wrong? Yes, of course it is. Is it "rape"? No, but the media has repeated it often enough that now the general public think Assange is a rapist.
> On 17 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [SW] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep. was in a helpless state.
This was ruled by the [High Court] to be rape under [English] law.
> This was ruled by the highest court to be rape under UK law.
Technically untrue. That ruling is from the High Court of Justice, making a judgment under English law (they made no declaration as to its criminality under Scots or Irish law, nor are they competent to do so).
The later Supreme Court appeal didn't consider the question of dual criminality at all (it almost solely rested on the "judicial authority" of the issuer of the EAW).
That's strange... I really don't recall this claim from when this was discussed on HN years some ago. It's right there in the arrest warrant though, so I guess I'm mistaken, and apologise.
Because the alleged victim isn't claiming rape. The state's position here is essentially that women don't have enough agency to know when they've been raped so they need to be "helped" to take the correct position. Bravo!
I'm just curious how such cases are proven in a court of law. The consent in such intimate situations is generally verbal;so if party A claims there was consent but the other party says there was no consent, I think that's a dead end for the prosecutors
That statement just excuses any authority to do what they want. A despotic dictatorship would be absolutely fine for people to repeat 'accepting the consequences of your actions' so that if anything horrible happens to someone it is not okay to criticise the authority on what they did because they are not 'accepting the consequences of their actions'. This simply excuses anyone in power doing anything to any dissenter.
If you commit crimes like Assange, claim you did so in the public interest, and then hide from the consequences, you are merely a criminal. If you commit crimes like Martin Luther King Jr, claim you did so in the public interest, and then sit in jail and let the public see your suffering in the face of injustice, you are a civili dissident. Assange is a whiny criminal, not a hero.
No that was entirely by the book. The case could not be investigated without access to assange so it was closed. And with access to Assange it could be reopened. And (somewhat surprising perhaps) it was.
One thing I'm wondering, before he fled to the Embassy, he was out on bail, for which supporters of his put up their property for. Given that he skipped bail they would have forfeited that property, now that he's arrested again do they get it back?
In a word, no. He broke his bail agreement and was a fugitive for years.
The supporters who put money and assets forward where doing it to show their faith that Assange was not a flight risk. This has been proven to be false.
Also (correct me if I am wrong), there is no legal trace that the bail money was not from Assange own funds.
In other words, if he did surrender according to terms, the money would have gone back to Assange who would have returned it to the donors himself.
I am not sure the donors have any legal way to get the money back now. Unless there were agreements Assange signed, all that money was basically gifts.
It is a criminal offence under s9 of the Bail Act 1976 to agree to indemnify a bail surety. If Assange's guarantors had entered into an agreement with Assange, that agreement would have been illegal under English criminal law, and thus an unenforceable contract.
A condition of bail is to surrender himself as requested within a certain timeframe. The surety put forward is a guarantee of that condition; the fact that he was later arrested has no bearing on the fact that that condition was broken.
That was my positive optimistic reading: "You (Brits) can't extradite him to the US, he has to go to a Swedish prison under EU law [0] (for a month or so)"
Even lifetime in a Swedish prison would be preferable to solitary confinement torture.
[0] ... Which makes the Brexit soap opera a bit more interesting.
Come on people. We don't have a lot of information to judge on. But if we are having a debate about the meaning of rape, then we are all side stepping the incredible high chance this is politically motivated nonsense.
Nobody had ever been extradited for this sort of thing. Sweden is special in that it enabled it based on a testimony, even after the testimony has been revoked and without the victims pressing charges or even agreeing with the interpretation of the police.
This is not an example of the legal system taking too much liberty of the notion of rape. This is much more likely an example of state level conspiracy.
Men are not under threat, sharing potentially incriminating information about the USA just means that nobody is playing by any rules.
Don't embarrass yourself or others to have this debate about rape. As an academic exercise, sure go ahead, but this case does not prove that rape laws in Sweden are used unfairly. It just proves Sweden, like most smaller Western nation's have little choice but do what the big man in Washington whispers in their ears.
This also does not prove Assange is guilt free. But at least if we want to maintain any illusion that we live in a free world: he is a deserved a court case about the actual actions that are fuelling this hunt.
So please just don't use the word rape and Assange in the same sentence. It's a disservice to actual victims, whistle blowers and our cultural identity as such.
> maintain any illusion that we live in a free world
That would require the crimes betrayed through the leaked information to have consequences. There also needs to be more control exercised on people responsible, that this cannot happen again. Otherwise, you could skip this trial as well.
Yes and no. The Extradition Act explicitly prevents extradition of individuals who might face the death penalty. The ECHR _also_ protects people facing the death penalty.
That hardly applies in this case. The much more relevant restriction is that the Bush-era US-UK extradition treaty doesn't allow for extradition for "political crimes", usually interpreted as espionage, treason, etc. This is in turn why he's being charged instead with conspiracy to hack a computer, which is likely not a political crime as the term of art is used in extradition cases.
What makes you think no one has been extradited for this sort of thing?
According to the EU there were over 16000 warrants issued in 2015 (the latest number I could find)[0].
And way back in 2009 we were worrying about how easy arrest warrants could be attained and that Poland might be getting extradition happy - going after chicken thieves.[1]
Assange is certainly deserving of his day in court - he's the one who did everything in his power to avoid it!
16000 warrants for people having sex with their sleeping sex partner without a condom?
Did those 16000 also enjoy 16 million pounds of police surveillance and an international man hunt?
This is great news. If we continue to invest so much effort in solving the slightest hint of sexual inappropriateness we'll completely eliminate sexual crimes. Perhaps even sex itself.
What makes you think that has anything to do with the "rape prosecution"? The U.S. is not hiding the fact that they're seeking Assange's extradition on conspiracy charges. Don't see what this has to do with the allegations from Sweden.
16000 people going through these fairly mundane bit of EU legal procedures. Some of them will have done worse things, but many of them will have done much less worse things (like the aforementioned chicken theft.
What international manhunt? Man runs into embassy escaping bail - police wait outside. What other outcome could there have been?
So the actual number of extradition requests for alleged sleep-sex-offenders could actually be 0, you didn't even check in detail? This is quite anti-climatic.
Alternative outcome: the brits spare 16m £, which they can then invest in fighting real crime.
They arrest the alleged offender when flying or at any routine control, since he's not a danger to anyone. Anyone except those unmasked by the leaks.
I'm not sure why you're trying to hand-wave this away by using language like "alleged sleep-sex-offenders" and "having sex with their sleeping sex partner without a condom". If this falls under the definition of rape in Sweden then the extradition request is for just that - a charge of rape. This is a very serious crime. Whether you agree with their definition or not doesn't really affect the legality or validity of the request.
If you think these charges are bogus because of some grander conspiracy against a personal hero of yours just say, there are plenty of others in this thread who'll gladly back you up.
It definitely paints a picture of him being a dirtbag but I don't know if this would even be illegal in the U.S. or what people would conventionally describe as rape.
If only there were some system of international law by which a country could decide if they found the other country's laws to be compatible with their own, both in the definition of crimes and their punishments, and could then decide whether they wanted to comply with an individual extradition request on a case by case basis.
It's such a shame that any country in the world can issue an extradition request to any other country in the world for any reason, and that other country has no choice but to immediately comply with it.
He should definitely be extradited, but they described it as sex with a sleeping person not non-consensual condom removal. Both are awful and he should face penalties for his actions but the victims claimed he committed one form of sexual assault and not the other.
Also I don't think non-consensual condom removal is illegal in the U.S. though it definitely should be.
One act, regardless of how heroic it might be, doesn't mean that the person should be free from consequences for the rest of their lives.
The US extraditing him for conspiracy charges would be really tragic. Sweden wanting to hold him accountable for his behavior afterwards is completely fine.
Why is everyone focusing so much on a person that's had their minutes of fame instead of the crimes they exposed?
This whole thread is full of people debating the definition of rape. Is everyone working for the Swedish prosecution or how is this in any way relevant to anything...
The only description I found was during several acts of consensual intercourse she fell half asleep and she thinks that he might have ejaculated without a condom. I don't think she's was saying the sex was non-consensual just that he if he did ejaculate inside of her that was without her consent. If this is incorrect I'd like to know because in my mind I'd labeled him as "dirtbag but not rapist". But happy to label him a rapist if he is one.
> So please just don't use the word rape and Assange in the same sentence. It's a disservice to actual victims, whistle blowers and our cultural identity as such.
What would you call having sex without a condom with a sleeping person, whom you barely know, when they have not consented to it?
Sorta-rape? Kinda-rape? Minor hooliganism? Did we all forget what the point of consent is, or something?
Or are we using the medieval definition, where it is a one-time-good-for-life sort of thing?
I think the issue had more to do with not using a condom (with the explicit non-consent of the two women) than with the sex (for which he mostly had consent)
In the case of Miss A, he had reluctant consent. In the case of Miss W, he had consent for sex, but not explicit consent to initiate sex while sleeping.
The thing that both of these women reportedly felt violated by was his disregard for their explicit request to use a condom.
> It just proves Sweden, like most smaller Western nation's have little choice but do what the big man in Washington whispers in their ears.
Does it, though? I got the opposite impression: that Sweden is potentially willing to go against US interests and compete for Assange's extradition. It's possible their plan is to convict Assange and then extradite him to the US, but who knows?
Assange himself and the rape charges have been politicized to such an extent that I find it essentially meaningless to pontificate about what may or may not have happened in Sweden. His character has been debated endlessly, but when one thinks of what WikiLeaks has actually revealed, I find it totally likely that a systematic effort was made to curtail him:
https://twitter.com/SomersetBean/status/1116916146458877952/...
Exactly. There is almost certainly an organized government sponsored campaign to discredit him in every way possible. That means the things we read in the media about him need to be considered very critically.
Who's politicized the rape charges other than Assange himself continuously calling them a government conspiracy against him?
The Swedish government doesn't discuss them (which is what's allowed Assange's version of events to get so popular). The US hasn't mentioned it. The UK gave him a fair trial based on them.
The UK trial was not on the rape charges (there was no permitted discussion of the evidence or total lack of it). The ruling was over whether the UK was bound to extradite given the Swedish government's refusal to interview Assange in England or indict him in Sweden. The tortured legal conclusion was basically that the UK couldn't definitively conclude the Swedes were acting in bad faith, and they couldn't be entirely sure that Assange was only being extradited for questioning (technically illegal).
As far as the Swedes go, the Swedish government discussed the case when it closed it for the first time. If the government hasn't been public about the case since it was re-opened by a political appointee, perhaps it is because there is zero evidence against Assange. We know this because the pretext for re-opening the case was the "discovery" of new physical evidence (a broken condom) that lacked any of Assange's DNA. This is all public knowledge, btw. Funny how it isn't discussed much in the press.
Thanks for the downvote whoever it was. History is not going to be kind to those unaware of basic facts however, in this case the fact that the Assange case was re-opened in 2010 on the basis of fabricated evidence:
Assume that people can get their hands on the UK high court ruling. It takes only a bit of reading to confirm the complete accuracy of the statements above.
> Who's politicized the rape charges other than Assange
Swedish LE when they refused to hear the case with Assange in the embassy. Whether he's guilty or innocent, I can't take it as anything other than "we don't care about the case or the victims, we just wanted the extradition".
The Swedish courts disagree. They said that the prosecutor must use all available methods to progress the case, and if the objective is to interview a person of interest who is yet to be official charged then that is what the law say they should do. The law do not give an exception that it may give a precedent that people suspected of a crime may seek political asylum in a embassy and that the interview is then located there.
But let say this did create a precedent that you can dictate where the interview is located by seeking political asylum. Is that bad? In the US you can escape the reach of justice by just being pardoned by the president. Apple to apple comparison, the situation with political asylum seem like a better precedent.
I'm not sure what the issue is. If you are already hiding in a place unreachable by the Swedish LE, you don't have to take part in anything. If you agree to take part in the investigation over internet anyway, that's still better for the victims. (verdict, potential damages from any sources the LE can take over, public acknowledgement of guilt, etc.)
For the same reason you don't usually negotiate with terrorists? Or any other behaviour you don't condone, right or wrong the guy made a mockery of Swedish LE if nothing else he should be charged with obstruction for going AWOL after agreeing to come for an interview and then skipped the country a day before.
I don't see how this is similar to negotiating with terrorists. He holds no power in this case while physically unreachable by Sweden. If found guilty, he gets more problems. If found innocent, he's stuck with all the original problems.
Charging him for running away also seems irrelevant to the original question - was this case more than a political play.
So in your opinion it's ok for someone who committed a crime to run away and hide and then have the DA go and question to them knowing regardless of the outcome they can't touch them and even compelling them to answer questions would be impossible unlike in court?
Ofc not, they should be marked as fugitives and held in contempt until they can brought in.
This wasn't a political case this was an asshole trying to escape justice, he knew he wouldn't be extradited to the US from Sweden he just hoped to play that while he plays the UK authorities while he spins this as political prosecution to his fans and the media to gather public support.
You're bringing up the actual act of running away. I'm saying once someone already ran away and you know you can't touch them, it's more beneficial to everyone to allow them to testify remotely than delay/close the case, potentially forever.
They're striking graphics but that is an Assange advocacy account. A bunch of these things weren't 'revealed' by Wikileaks, the most famous one being the incident at the heart of their 'Collateral Murder' video.
Would the people who argue that the described situation was not rape please remember that it actually is under swedish law and the situation in your own jurisdiction is irrelevant here?
The legal definition of rape is one that is restricted by the law, but the moral definition is not. If I say a biscuit is a cake and legally it is made so, does that mean it is actually a cake?
I'm sure North Korea or China say some people are criminals and must be executed. As an outsider should we just agree because 'the situation in your own jurisdiction is irrelevant here'? I think not, morality and truth should not be restricted to the definition of the law where it presides. It's possible what Assange allegedly did was in fact rape, but illegal or not shouldn't be the defining factor when assessing the truth of that claim.
If Swedish law used the word arson to describe the situation, would you accept that term and call Assange an arsonist?
As a commentator, I am not beholden to novel terminology used elsewhere, let alone in a country that doesn’t even use English as their primary national language.
The UK Supreme Court ruled that the accusations would be classified as rape under English law too. That was ones of the ground that he used to challenge the original warrant.
I don’t care what the UK says any more than I do Sweden. I don’t live in either country. I will use terms that I consider more descriptive than rape.
What’s wrong with sexual misconduct, for example? I realise it doesn’t have the emotional charge of “rape”, but isn’t that a good thing? We shouldn’t choose words based on our opinions.
I think the case is too exposed to just shrug and say “well we could reopen it now, but nah we’re not going to bother”. After 9 of 10 years during some of which the defendant has already been de-facto under house arrest, it doesn’t seem likely that prosecutors would have reopened a case that wasn’t as visible as this one.
I don’t believe for a second that this is related to US pressure in any way, I believe the prosecutors simply want to show that they do things by the book and want to show that they are capable of prosecuting “international” cases like this one. Assange isn’t going to be in any deep legal trouble over this. It’s a formality I’d say. That doesn’t make it pointless though. Formality is important.
Maybe he did it maybe he didn't. I'm leaning towards he did it. But it's worth keeping in mind that his punishment would have been less severe than the time he has spent in that embassy.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 233 ms ] threadSweden has been in the US' pockets for a long time, just like the other main European countries such as the UK and Germany.
Source, please.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/10...
They paid, in money, but they paid.
Hell, they even filmed an entire season of Homeland in Berlin soon after...
Or how about the Evo Morales grounding incident? [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
Evo Morales incident is a complete different story.
Snowden was (is?) an american citizen, Assange is not.
Anyway, it is laughable to tjhink that European countries are in the pocket of USA, they are allied, alliance means be on the same side, sometimes even when it is wrong.
It doesn't mean that everything they order, other countries will do.
It's laughable to think that.
Per Wikipedia (assuming it is reliable source here, hasn't checked sources it cites)
"On 20 August 2010, two women, a 26-year-old living in Enköping and a 31-year-old living in Stockholm, reported to the Swedish police that Assange had engaged in unprotected sexual activity with them that violated the scope of their consent.
"The next day, the case was transferred to Chefsåklagare (Chief Public Prosecutor) Eva Finné. In answer to questions surrounding the incidents, the following day, Finné declared, >>I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape<<. However, Karin Rosander from the Swedish Prosecution Authority, said Assange remained suspected of molestation. Police gave no further comment at the time, but continued the investigation."
He tried to claim that this wasn't rape in both Sweden and England (the dual criminality element which is required for extradition) and that was rejected by the court.
My memory of accusations are they they sure meet my personal definition of rape. We may only disagree on the terminology; I trust we don't disagree that what is alleged should be a crime.
The first prosecutor decided to shelve the case. One of the victim's lawyers asked for this decision to be reviewed. A more senior prosecutor resumed the case.
Alas, from the moment he entered the embassy, he has been a dead agent. What is of most import, is how this will affect the whistleblowers.
(Whistleblowers, we know you're out there. Got more fake news?)
The USA have already requested his extradition in the UK - to say that "Sweden only sought rape charges because then the USA can extradite him from Sweden" is clearly bogus.
If he actually confronted these charges in Sweden, and found guilty, he may actually be out of prison by now.
And at the centre of all of this, that everyone seems to have forgotten, are these two women that have accused him of rape. It seems really inhumane and unjust to simply shrug these accusations off as political, and not that they might be telling the truth, and he's a criminal in Swedish law
It is not clearly bogus. It was a concern. The concern might be wrong, as they often are. That doesn't make it somehow not legitimate.
He would be sent to USA to respond of his alleged crimes in front of a public court of justice.
Haha, no. He'd be sent to a secret FISA Star Chamber. There's no way he'd be tried in public.
And if the Swedish authorities wanted Assange to answer for alleged crimes in Sweden, all they had to do was publicly declare that they wouldn't extradite Assange to the US. That was the sole requirement he had made of the Swedish authorities in exchange for his willingness to return to Sweden. The fact that the Swedish authorities refused even that is deeply suspicious.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review only are empowered to handle foreign intelligence surveillance warrant process.
Criminal charges are handled in US District Courts, and are Constitutionally guaranteed to be public.
If you think that the US DOJ hasn't spent a million man-hours to find some way to keep everything as secret as possible, you haven't been paying attention to their actions thus far. They will find some way to kangaroo-court him out of the public eye. They do it with foreign nationals all the time.
I'm pretty sure that they have neither spent that many man-hours nor would get much value from spending anywhere close to that, because the parameters of “as secret as possible” are, while always subject to further litigation around the borders, not so mysterious or difficult to assess that it would take that much work to get a solid idea both where the boundaries were and what the relative risks of various ways of probing the areas where there is remaining uncertainty.
> They will find some way to kangaroo-court him out of the public eye. They do it with foreign nationals all the time.
Not with foreign nationals subjected to formal criminal extradition they don't. Foreign, allegedly unawful, combatants detained by the US military or transferred to their custody by America’s cobelligerents in the context of military conflict, all completely outside of the civilian criminal justice system, sure; foreign parties where the government covertly intervenes with overseas regimes to detain them without involving the US criminal justice system to, that too. But none of those are applicable here.
It's not a trade, he allegedly raped a girl, that's his problem.
If I was Assange I would want my name clear on rape allegations, I wuoldn't run away from it.
As far as I know, and at least Assange has claimed this publicly in a video at least once, these two women themselves did not make rape charges against Assange.
The case was picked up by some prosecutor who initiated the charges.
"We are going to do everything we possibly can to get the swedish police investigation re-opened so that Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted for rape. No rape victim should have to wait 9 years to see justice be served." https://twitter.com/ElisabethMFritz/status/11162929511251804...
In many jurisdictions prosecutors don't need the permission, nor cooperation, of the victims to bring a case to court. This is especially important in crimes of sexual violence because the fear of retribution causes many victims not to report; and because some victims will be being coercively controlled by their partners.
In less serious cases the victim's wishes are taken into account. However, the prosecutor is the one who charges the accused, and consent or cooperation from the victim isn't needed. It is hard to convict in cases where an uncooperative victim is the only witness, but it happens in domestic abuse cases all the time.
They have also, wisely avoiding much of the media, enlisted a lawyer to speak on their behalf on the matter, and it was the lawyers filing that led to the investigation being reopened again.
For a pretty complete chronology, see this page on the Swedish prosecution authority: https://www.aklagare.se/en/news-and-press/media/the-assange-...
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/aklagaren-vill-hava-haktn...
Prosecutor works independently. Sweden has civil law system based on classical Roman law and German model. There is no plea bargaining, everyone who is prosecuted must stand trial.
The investigation was just suspended because Assange could not be questioned. They bring him for questioning to get interview. After that, the prosecutor may choose not to press charges.
The case seems very weak, so the prosecutor may drop the case.
He spent how many years on both UK soil and then the Ecuadorean embassy to fight these Swedish allegations and now he's "happy to cooperate". He's imprisoned himself all these years for nothing.
Hopefully somebody else can chime in with a more reliable explanation.
Similarly the US will not request extradition for some suspects and wait until they set foot in the US and arrest them then. Saving the need for an extradition battle. If they really want you and you are Russian, they wait until you go on holiday outside russian borders and grab you as you step off the plane.
Being extradited to Sweden would merely make extradition to the US more complex, not less. He would still be able to challenge the extradition in the (presumably) English courts, but he would further be able to challenge it in the Swedish courts.
That makes no sense.
Sweeden does not extradite people for political crimes and espionage is considered a political crime in Sweeden. His chance of being extradited to the US for espionage from Sweeden was extremely low from the start ... and going to the UK out of fear of being extradited to the US makes no sense considering UK and US relations.
Months later he publish the leaks and travel to the UK, and a European arrest warrant is issued. After which there is a report that US diplomats visited the justice department before the case was reopened, but the department head swears that it did not influence the decision.
Just like Sweden has laws against extraditing people for political crimes and espionage, its justice department has laws that forbids it from being influenced by politics. The official statement is that the chain of events is just a coincident and the leaks, US diplomats and everything else did not effect the decision of the prosecutor when they decided to reopen the case and issue the European arrest warrant.
Some other minor details is that not only is the Assange case the most expensive UK police case in UK history, but this European arrest warrant is also a record in Sweden. No other warrant that Sweden has issued has as low maximal punishment. This is official also just a coincident.
I personally are not that surprised that Assange do not believe it to be coincident. I wonder if not most people would become a bit paranoid if they were under similar circumstances, and not accept the claim that it is just a coincident and that the Sweden and UK legal system are just following standard procedure.
The other charges are immaterial to extradition to the US except insofar as they might prevent or delay it, though being in jail facing the other charges might make it harder to flee extradition to the US if that request came later.
And that's for sure.
Assange ran and fought Swedish justice, there's proof of it, he did it, he said he did it.
What I doubt is whether what he flew was "justice" and not the usual staged character assassination attempt, in a country caving in from diplomatic pressure (all too common to lesser states when pressured from superpowers).
You don't say “Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism” or “I fell into a hornets’ nest of revolutionary feminism” if there's nothing wrong with you.
If there were doubts at first, now that both USA and Sweden are asking for extradiction, I'm even more convinced that Sweden wanted just to process him for what he allegedly did.
It should also be noted that Assange was finally interviewed in 2016 by Ingrid Isgren.
It was only once he was in the UK that Sweden decided, for no obvious reason at all, that the allegations maybe weren't bogus after all.
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/Misc/2011/5.html
> In cross-examination the Swedish lawyer confirmed that paragraph 13 of his proof of evidence is wrong... He then confirmed that on 22nd September 2010 at 16.46 he has a message from Ms Ny saying: “Hello – it is possible to have an interview Tuesday”. Next there was a message saying: “Thanks for letting me know. We will pursue Tuesday 28th at 1700”. He then accepted that there must have been a text from him.
Assange left the country on the 27th.
"The lawyer gave live evidence covering in some detail the attempts made to secure an interview with his client. On 15th September Ms Ny told him there were no “force measures” preventing Julian leaving the country, i.e. he was allowed to leave. ... He phoned his client to say he was free to leave the country to continue his work."
"He conceded that it is possible that Ms Ny told him on the 21st that she wanted to interview his client... Then he was then cross-examined about his attempts to contact his client. To have the full flavour it may be necessary to consider the transcript in full. In summary the lawyer was unable to tell me what attempts he made to contact his client... He said “I don’t think I left a message warning him”"
"In re-examination he confirmed that he did not know Mr Assange was leaving Sweden on 27th September and first learned he was abroad on 29th."
EDIT: I found this timeline from the Swedish Prosecution Authority which seems to agree with that: https://www.aklagare.se/en/news-and-press/media/the-assange-...
On 21 August 2010 the case was looked at by a prosecutor.
On 25 August 2010 the case was dismissed, a decision which the lawyer representing the women objected and requested a review.
On 30 August, Assange was questioned by the Stockholm police.
On 1 September, the case was reopened.
On 27 September, Assange left the country. Assange's London lawyer Mark Stephens said that Assange had asked to be interviewed by prosecutors before leaving Sweden but was told he could leave the country without being interviewed. Swedish prosecutors said that on the day Assange left Sweden they had informed Assange's Swedish lawyer Björn Hurtig that an arrest warrant would be issued for Assange. Assange is arrested in his absence.
He could probably have been leading a quiet life in Sweden by now, having served his sentence in a nice Swedish prison.
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...
Or is it the rape accusations initiated in Sweden?
People realised that indiscriminately dumping material without any attempt at removing names was dangerous. Assange has released names of gay people who live in countries where they could be killed for that; he's released names of Jewish people in Bagdhad; he's identified rape victims.
Never underestimate what nation states can do. They'll bring down your entire economy unless...or they can pay, bribe or blackmail someone into filing rape charges against you. Or plant a bag of cocaine, and then behave like good citizens by calling the equivalent of 911 on you.
Sure Russia, China etc. medle in elections including the US one but Trump was elected by the American public and no one else.
I don't think the public has "turned" on him. (That is, I don't think he's more unpopular now than he was a year ago.) It's more like we forgot about him. That took away the teflon coating that let him escape international arrest warrants in a South American embassy, a privilege most of us wouldn't get.
This story is best explained by reversion to the mean moreso than extraordinary current events.
A poll last month [1] found 73% of Americans have opinions on Wikileaks. The most common response for Julian Assange, on the other hand, was "don't know" (42%, versus 27% responding similarly for Wikileaks).
I'd guess the 38% who find Assange unfavorable is largely unchanged from, say, 2015. I'd also guess his favorability was higher in 2012. (That's what made Correa's political arithmetic around granting Assange asylum stick.)
Under this hypothesis, people didn't start hating Assange more in 2016. His base of supporters simply eroded until most didn't care about him either way. That turned him into a normal person. Normal people don't get to hang out in embassies all day.
[1] https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
Here's what I think the Clintons and their "foundation" were up to: Selling out the US in every way possible. The e-mail server was part of a sophisticated information sell operation that included their own plausible deniability, but basically foreign intelligence agencies paid to get access via numerous charities and other clean-looking channels. The primary beneficiaries were the Chinese, who Clintons were already doing business with even when Bill was President.
So we had the Clintons selling out the US at the highest level.
Now, knowing that was the case, do you think what Assange did could be characterized as supporting Trump or just trying to put and end to something so utterly corrupt that it defies comprehension? Seriously, the Clintons are the same as the Rosenbergs who, by the way, were executed for their crimes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I mean, there are still people who are fans, but it’s no mystery why he’s unpopular with many groupings.
As I say, I’m not getting into the rights or the wrongs of it, but Assange’s unpopularity is no mystery. Whether or not you think he’s a saint, it’s undeniable he’s annoyed not just a lot of powerful people, but an awful lot of plain people.
It's funny that so many powerful people are quaking in their boots over this guy. Guilty much? Assange is still alive. That tells me that what he has much be unbelievable political dynamite.
The media controls the public, so the question of why the public has turned is the same question as asking why the media has turned.
24/7 anti-assange propaganda by foxnews, cnn, msnbc, nytimes, wapo, etc and you get the current anti-assange sentiment.
Trump hates him, Hillary hates him, the establishment hates him because he exposed corruption. Corrupt people don't like their corruption exposed. Also, the elites want to start wars in venezuela, syria, etc so punishing assange and setting an example and possibly discrediting/getting rid of wikileaks is in their interest. Wouldn't want truth to get in the way of more wars.
Assange did this to himself, with posting antisemitic tweets and courting the alt-right. And you have Assange's legal defense campaign posting tweets blaming childfree women for white people in Europe being replaced by brown people, which is both disgustingly misogynist and disgustingly racist.
The counter-culture is highly feminist and anti-racist, and is generally led by women of color, so there goes any sympathy they might have for Assange.
WikiLeak's big coup was cablegate, the main revelations of which boil down to "diplomats are very frank about people when they're not speaking in public." At the same time, Assange seemed to want it to be compared to the Pentagon Papers leak, which revealed that the US military was covering up the course of the Vietnam War. Instead cablegate was a whole lot of quantity over quality, and don't really merit the comparison.
Since then, WikiLeaks has missed out on the big revelations: Snowden's releases, the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, as well as more regionally important leaks such as Lava Jato. There's no trust among leakers that WikiLeaks is a neutral source for divulging information, and the fact that Assange has seemed to have a specifically anti-US tilt which results in him getting cozy with anti-US anti-press-freedom regimes.
Don't gaslight. Wikileaks' big coup was Collateral Murder, which showed to the entire world how US soldiers enjoy committing war crimes at the behest of senior US military leadership whenever they think they can get away with it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
So let me get banned for speaking my piece in a disrespectful manner. I welcome it. Frankly, if I could find a "delete my account" button, I'd hit it in a heartbeat. Sheep, the whole goddamn lot of you.
For me, it has been necessary to realize that the agitation going on inside me when I lash out at others over such issues is itself a form of violence and war. Not the same in degree, of course; but the same in kind, and that matters more.
They couldn’t make him dead, so they opted to make him irrelevant instead.
The US center to right hated him from the beginning, with leading figures inside and outside of government, aligned with both major parties, calling for his head. There was some sympathy for him (or at least WikiLeaks ostensible mission) on the left.
Being somewhere between a tool and a collaborator in the Russian influence and spinning partisan lies about the source of the information on top of that to conceal that it was a Russian influence op (which itself tends to create the impression that he was more collaborator than tool) soured that, without durably mitigating the hatred the center to right already had for him.
The rape accusations don't help, especially given where what little sympathy he had had was located.
Mostly he gives me the impression that he's in it for his personal glory, and he believes himself above accountability. I still support the original goal of Wikileaks, but I hate how they squandered their credibility due to Assange's antics.
Clinton has nothing to do with it for me.
I know the tech community likes Assange, or at least liked Wikileaks as it was originally conceived. But here are some thoughts that you could maybe run through a bayesian analysis to consider if there is enough of a probability that his accuser is telling the truth and this case should be adjudicated in a court of law.
- Even people one sympathises with are capable of making mistakes.
- Why would the Obama administration go through the risk and difficulty of organising a breathtaking conspiracy to get at him, yet commute Chelsea Manning's sentence?
- Why would the Trump "I love Wikileaks" administration continue that adventure, instead of exposing it, damaging Obama's reputation, and helping their friend?
- There were enough portraits of Assange, by former colleagues and reputable journalists, that he has some tendencies somewhere between "overstaying his welcome" and "complete egomaniac".
- Sweden is generally considered one of the least corrupt countries in the world. To get from whatever high-ranking politician who would have to sign off on a conspiracy with the US all the way down to some local prosecutors would require an unbroken chain of many people suddenly throwing their principles overboard.
- At the time of the supposed rape incident, the most prominent leak was the "Collateral Murder" video. The war cables and Snowden leaks came later. That video was somewhat embarrassing, but in no way important enough to warrant such adventures in diplomatic subterfuge as alleged.
- All subsequent leaks, i. e. Snowden, Diplomatic Cables, were published in partnership with media organisations such as the New York Times, Guardian, or Spiegel. Why invest so much ressources and potential risk into going after Assange, and not those organisations that were arguably more important going forward? The Times may be immune because they are domestic. But the Spiegel or Guardian could certainly suffer an embarrassing loss of, say, all their subscriber data?
- Assange's credibility isn't actually that important. There is nothing Wikileaks published that I consider fake. The Clinton leak was just... underwhelming? There was nothing even remotely illegal in there, and not even much that made her look bad. The Snowden leaks were important. The earlier, lesser-known stuff from Africa etc. was fantastic. The diplomatic cables were already borderline.
- The accuser was some lefty student of Spanish literature at a minor Swedish university. Assange's event there was publicised a few weeks prior. Does anybody believe the CIA has covered secret agents stationed at Swedish feminist literature departments for eight years, just in case some target comes along that needs her couch to crush on?
- Assange was travelling all over Europe and other parts of the world in those times. Why not just wait until he is in a country with the perfect extradition treaty and have him arrested at the airport?
- Indeed, why the rape allegation? If Sweden would be willing to extradite him, they could just arrest him at the airport and send him to the US. What is gained by an extra round through the Swedish criminal justice system?
- If you're intent to discredit Assange among his fanbase, which is largely young, male, and online: isn't rape actually the worst possible crime to smear him? Just look at the prevalence of "obviously fake"/"not rape" and various other character assassination in any thread on this subject.
- The specifics, i. e. secretly removing the condom, seem to invite all sorts of "that's not rape" opinions, making them a rather bad choice compared to stereotypical violent rape.
Perhaps because the US political / justice / military intelligence system contains more people wielding power than just the president.
Sure, why not? It would be an excellent cover persona for that type of spy. From what little I know about how intelligence agencies operate, it always amazes me who their assets are. Look at who the OSS used as spies in WWII. Find out who her parents are before passing judgement. They don't recruit the obvious James Bond types. Find the family connection.
Similarly, believing that everybody who has ever interacted with an anti-Castro organization (the only "evidence" presented of CIA involvement) is a CIA asset is a step beyond which I'm willing to go.
https://justice4assange.com/note-to-editors-sweden.html
The way media has "covered" this, it is not all that surprising to see ignorant comments and cynical speculation. Such deliberate and thorough ignorance as the above is a little more rare.
So, you're welcome. Except, from your recent comments you seem highly averse to becoming familiar with the facts, even when people have put them right in front of you.
With your comment above, even if I assume you were right on all the facts, it is still a personal attack, insulting the other person's aversions and so on. This is not how thoughtful discussion goes, and we ban people that do this on HN.
We've had to ask you quite a lot about this kind of stuff. I don't want to ban you—I'd rather persuade you that following the site guidelines is in your interest. Why not take them to heart? Doing that makes the site better for everyone, including you—just the same as not littering in a city park or having campfires when a forest is at risk. This being the internet, HN is always at risk, and we all need to care for the commons.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In the first case, the complainant willingly had an intercourse with him. But after sex, she realized that the condom had a hole. She claims that he made it.
In the second case, the complainant also willingly had an intercourse with Assange, they slept naked together. The next day in the morning, he penetrated her without a condom while she was sleeping. (The main problem seems to be the "without a condom" part)
This is obviously serious. He could have transmitted STDs to the complainants. Unprotected sex should be agreed by both.
But, when someone reads "rape" out of context, he could imagine that Assange used a knife or something to force a woman to have sex.
Source: https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/4/12/18306901/julian-ass...
This is what forms the definition of “rape”. People might have a different idea when they hear this word, but this is the correct term from a technical standpoint.
https://www.toledoblade.com/opinion/editorials/2019/04/21/st...
Not sure why the legality in the US is material since the act didn't occur in the US, doesn't involve US persons, and the extradition being conducted isn't from or to the US.
Even if that were true, the legal status of his alleged acts had they been committed in the US would still not be germane.
Even if they had consensual sex previously.
Am I misunderstanding your comment?
I mean, that's a very grey and complicated area. I had an ex who would do that type of thing, and it was never discussed but was absolutely welcome. I suppose after the first time you could argue some type of implicit consent. Or maybe I'm just a Stockholm Syndrome candidate.
I have no idea the dynamics of the Assange case, but the hyper-contractual notion of consent that has come into popularity in the last few years just seems to ignore the humanity of human relations.
Consent has to be given prior to each occurrence, and therefore prior consent means nothing about future consent.
See, for example, the High Court judgment (linked elsewhere in this thread) on the EAW served for Assange's extradition to Sweden in 2011, where the High Court concludes that the offence would be rape under English law.
would that negate previously established consent? As in "hey if you wanna wake me up tomorrow with sex that would be nice"
So yeah, I can imagine myself giving a clear "yes" to something in that state despite being consciously unaware of the entire thing. I'm not sure if "approval" like that should count court - I'm just giving you an example of one possible complication for "determining whether someone is conscious", be it before sex or otherwise.
Right...
I can’t help observe that your implicit assumption that men are sexual predators. The need to speak out against that is the primary reason I’m willing to voice my observations on the subject.
Also, please stop using HN for ideological battle. We've given you a ton of warnings about that already.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
No, it doesn't.
I know someone that was raped while not being conscious. She didn't want to have sex with that person. While trying to press charge, she found others persons that had similar experience with that guy. The cops told her tough luck, not to stay with people she didn't trust (it was a friend...) and they threaten her of making false accusation (the prosecutor herself seemed surprised of that and the cops angrily answered that she wouldn't be accused of that, luckily). The prosecutor has not enough proof to go further with it... there should have been at least someone else in that room that could testify.
That's the current state of rape accusation. Pretty far from your "kissing of a sleeping lover" being criminalized.
Buy a sleep penetration license :)
One can either build an overly-tight system that can incidentally put innocents in trouble or an overly-loose system that risks criminals getting away. Interesting that the Europeans seem to have gone with the latter.
>Interesting that the Europeans seem to have gone with the latter.
Yeah we've gone the same way on marital rape too.
You're creating talking points that I never did, then fighting them down to make me sound like some kind of rape apologist. Kindly piss off.
If I go to visit a very close friend, I might take something of value off their shelf as I'm walking out the door, without asking first. There's not necessarily anything wrong with this.
But, I had better be pretty fucking sure that I know my friend as well as I think I do, because if I misjudged, I'm a thief, and liable to be prosecuted by the full force of a law. Not "kind of" a thief—just a thief.
If I tell you to take a fiver from my wallet and you do it, that's consensual. If you then later take another fiver out of my wallet without my permission, it's not consensual. If I catch you doing it, I might still be okay with it but that doesn't mean it wasn't non-consensual when you did it.
Your cab fare metaphor is a very misleading illustration of this.
I mean, if two people have sex and then sleep in the same bed overnight, and one of the two attempts to continue having sex in the morning ... if you wanna call that rape, rape might not even be a moral crime. Just a technical one. It is diluting the word to the point where it is meaningless. In this particular case the lack of a condom is the troubling part, but not exactly the end of the world.
The law doesn't force us to be perfect at every moment through our entire lives. It doesn't even require us to be good people. If there was evidence Assange has somehow physically, emotionally, financially, what have you, affected these women then that would be a better fig leaf than what seems to be happening.
My memory of the facts is that the girls involved weren't worried about it until they found out it was potentially a pattern of behavior with Assange and wanted him tested for STDs.
If he wouldn't take an STD test I can see how that would justify fining him, or arresting him and forcing him to take a test or something. It isn't obvious it justifies an extradition and all the theater we've been watching.
Nah , that's rape, one of the parties was unconscious .
And, again, that is trivialising rape. Under that sort of definition, there would be a lot of men and women who get raped and literally just wouldn't believe a crime had happened. Might be the legal state of affairs, but it is also clearly stupid.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconsciousness
EDIT I mean, I'd expect to know a bunch of people who are rapists under that sort of standard. I don't know who they'd be, but it wouldn't be an uncommon set of circumstances.
EDIT2 in response to dragonwriter I've added a citation to Wikipedia which does differentiate between normal sleep and unconsciousness (at least as of when I checked :P). Obviously the line is blurry if you want it to be.
Try that as a defence and see how far it gets you.
Sleeping is a form of unconsciousness, not a different thing. It is different from.ither forms, as those other forms are from eachother.
Also whatever Assange did or didn't do, the handling of the case seems highly suspicious and Swedish resident have standing to request an investigation.
Wow, that's a pretty good analogy to this case, provided that you'd ask her that the day before and didn't wake up until late into the act (or at all, which I shouldn't be possible without assistance of drugs? but, I've seen some people "sleep like a log" through all kinds of commotion, so maybe it is).
Anyway, if what I read in this thread is all true, that would be a marital rape 100% and she'd get (or she should, according to the law) charged with rape if any of you ever mentioned the situation to the authorities.
Well, we're a bit too old already, but it looks like my wife and I were raping each other fairly regularly some years back. We even had fun doing this, which would possibly make it even more serious crime. This is, honestly, quite scary.
EDIT: What the heck? Have my downvoters never woke up next to their loved person and initiated an act as a "good morning" equivalent? Am I just so perverted that I should stay in the closet, or should I give myself over to the police this instant?
What I'm asking is: would the law actually go after both my wife and me (we weren't even married back then, BTW)? Wouldn't that be too much? Yeah, in the case of a one night stand it's probably the correct thing to do (maybe?), but the parent comment alluded to a long-term relationship, which I happen to enjoy (a lot :P).
Again, I'm no lawyer, I've no idea what the law says in this case, I'm but a hopeless pervert who both fucked and was fucked in a variety of circumstances and ways, including while being stoned, drunk and half-asleep (always with the same person, always safe, sane and consensual... oh wait, it couldn't have been consensual! yet it was. that's what I'm asking!) If I was to be persecuted for these acts, it's actually a serious matter for me - it means I can't write about our experiences on a blog under my name, for example. I can't mention it to people carelessly. I could endanger both myself and my wife. I'd need to hide it, I'd need to be ashamed, I'd need to try forgetting about it as if it was a sort of trauma. We've been through a lot of that already, yet there's still more coming my way? This time from people in blue instead of black uniforms?
If so, then there's something wrong with the law or public morals, or both. I don't live - and don't want to, either - in Saudi Arabia, but in an ostensibly tolerant society which accepts all kinds of fetishes without problems. At least I believe in that, but reading the comments and getting downvoted for expressing my confusion - made me start to doubt it.
There may be differences of degrees to the stereotypical violent behind-the-bushes rape. Those should and would be considered for purposes of sentencing. But it's still rape.
I had sex with a girl who lied about being on birth control. Was I raped?
There's a little difference, you wouldn't be the one getting pregnant.
It's more like she lied about being HIV positive.
That is, in fact, a crime.
You can make her pregnant.
If you don't want to risk it, use a condom.
Is it so hard?
If I was uncertain whether someone was truly on the birth control pill, I would insist upon condoms if I wanted to fully hedge my risk.
I do see the point you're trying make, but it's a complex issue. I could easily make an argument for the opposite case, that it is rape. But I think being able to verify a condom is being worn makes the situation different enough to treat differently from lying about being on the pill.
The difference between being tricked into impregnating and being tricked into being impregnated is that impregnation only affects the bodily autonomy of the person being impregnated. There are other consequences and many of them are shared by both persons but the bodily autonomy part is present on in one.
Assange argued that the accused act would not be illegal under English law; the High Court disagreed (and hence the dual criminality test was fulfilled).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_deception
Misleading in order to obtain consent is not the same as getting consent for activity A then undertaking activity B.
In the first instance one can complain that they wouldn't have given consent had they known the truth. In the second instance consent was not given.
This is a very interesting scenario you bring up.
Anna and Bob agree to have sex. Anna would prefer without a condom, Bob insists they must have a condom. Anna sabotages the condom by poking a pin through the package. They have consensual sex with the condom, which unbeknownst to Bob has a hole placed there by Anna. Anna becomes pregnant. Is it an absolute unquestionable legal fact that Anna raped Bob? Should Anna be arrested? If Anna leaves the country, should she be extradited to face justice?
And does this only matter for a particular kind of birth control? Anna tells Bob she is on the pill but she is not. Bob consents only on the condition that Anna is on the pill. They have sex. Is it an absolute unquestionable legal fact that Anna raped Bob? Should Anna be arrested?
What about sex conditions not related to birth control? Bob agrees to sex with Anna only on the condition he be allowed to wear his warm wool socks to bed. During sex, Anna finds the socks to be scratchy and pulls them off. Is it an absolute unquestionable legal fact that Anna raped Bob? Should Anna be arrested?
There is a famous case before the highest court, where a doctor, after forgetting to perform a sterilization a patient requested together with the caesarian birth of her second child, was deemed liable for the financial loss incurred by the existance of her third child.
Do you remember it?
First of all the story is titled "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"
But, most importantly, the boy was "crying wolf" when there was no wolf.
You can shout at clouds and try to change the language if you want, but that’s an extremely unproductive and entirely pointless path to take.
Uh, what? You then go on:
"This is obviously serious. He could have transmitted STDs to the complainants. Unprotected sex should be agreed by both."
You think the serious part is the lack of protection, rather than that she was asleep? I'd advise you read up some more on what constitutes rape and what constitues consent.
Sterile men are not allowed to initiate unconsented sex, just because there can be no pregnancy.
Not saying it's justified to commit rape but waking up the next morning and having sex again seems relatively routine. If not then I as a man have several women who belong in jail for morning after sex. But I bet you wouldn't see it that way huh?
Isn't it?
Every man should be prepared for every one of their sexual partners to become pregnant, even if BC or condoms or other contraception are involved. It comes with the territory, and you can be sure that women are aware of the risk (since pregnancy is a first-person risk for them).
"What about men comment" - what misandrist ignorance. Men need rights and they currently have none.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's not a tangent it's a direct corollary.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
First, I repeat: What he allegedly did is a serious and horrible crime.
Also, people need to see the elephant in the room. These two victims' case is weaponized by some governments to scare whistle-blowers. Assange directly or indirectly exposed many horrible crimes, including war rapes, group rapes, mass murders. People need to remember this video of soldiers in Irak shooting at human beings from far away while laughing and listening to rock music, and shooting again at wounded survivors crawling on the floor. People need also to remember the images of war prisoners tortured, humiliated, forced to be naked and raped with sticks.
But, more importantly, people need to make sure that future whistle-blowers fell safe to expose this kind of hideous crimes.
Prisoners' case [nsfw]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone...
Supposedly he did this because he was afraid that he’d be hauled off to Guantanamo Bay or whatever, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
At any rate, we should separate these things. The whistleblowing done by Assange and the rape (allegedly) done by Assange are unrelated. Talking about the whistleblowing should not involve minimizing the rape.
The prosecutor dropped the charges because the alleged victims were quite obviously lying about having been raped using any conventional definition of the term, there was also no way to resolve any dispute about whether someone was asleep when sex happened, and they would never reach the level of "beyond reasonable doubt" by any jury as a consequence.
The charges were later mysteriously resurrected by a different prosecutor so he could be questioned again. Or maybe it's not such a mystery after all. Either Sweden is doing as the USA asked for some convoluted reasons, or the Swedish justice system is a complete joke when the R word gets involved.
The other woman, who alleged lesser offenses, never dropped charges, though the statute of limitations have since expired on them.
Assange was told early on in the investigation that he was not restricted from traveling, but as the investigation developed further and it became clear they wanted to prosecute him, he went missing.
After multiple failed attempts to schedule another police interview, the prosecutor told his attorney she'd be filing an arrest warrant that day. Five hours later, Assange arrived at the airport and bought the next available ticket to Berlin.
Assange claims that's just a coincidence. That he was avoiding contact with his lawyer because he was afraid of "threatening statements made by politicians in the U.S"
Then you haven't been following this story very closely. A few brief examples: (1) The case was closed before he left Sweden. (2) They could have questioned him remotely, which they often do, but declined to. (3) The women didn't even want to charge him. (4) There is a USA extradition order in place. How can you doubt the USA wants to extradite him? (5) This isn't "rape" by any standard definition.
The "Miss W" allegation in particular is rape by almost every country's legal definition.
Yes it is. He engaged in sex with partners without their consent. That is the definition of rape.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cable...
Ockham's razor says if there's any connection at all between the two dates, it's Assange ordering Wikileaks to release the files as soon as possible after the arrest warrant was issued to get himself more sympathetic news coverage.
April, a famous video was released from inside a chopper that was mistakenly shooting journalists. May, Chelsea Manning was arrested for that. July, 75,000 documents were released about the Afghan war. August, the rape charges are filed. October, 400,000 documents about the Iraq war. November, the cable leak.
So the cable leaks did not come first. However there was lots of other stuff already released that could have motivated the US here.
And it is also quite possible that concern over the cable leaks was the motivation. You see, the US knew about everything that Chelsea Manning had already released, and had reason to believe that Wikileaks had it all and was releasing things in stages for maximum damage. (It turns out that a drip drip of bad news has much greater emotional impact on people than a single torrent.) Therefore they had the motivation to find ways to put pressure on Assange to NOT leak what he had. And what they did, didn't work.
Moving on, please check your assumptions about whether he should be held responsible. It is my belief that he is an example of selective enforcement of laws that should be more broadly enforced. Therefore my belief that he was targeted for other reasons is not in conflict with my belief that he should have been targeted. I just think that it is wrong that it takes a guy embarrassing a major military for the police to take a woman's complaints seriously.
Rape is sex with a person who does not consent. Period. What Assange is accused of is rape. Anyone who thinks otherwise should get a reality check and realize that there is no shade of grey here. Her body, her rules. Have sex without her consent, and that is rape.
Having sex without birth control with someone who didn't consent to that specific activity is legally rape in both the UK and Sweden. This is based on conditional consent, do something outside of the conditions under which consent existed, and you no longer have consent. More and more jurisdictions are recognizing this. Furthermore sex with someone who cannot consent due to being unconscious or sleeping is rape in a broader set of jurisdictions. (I do think that California goes too far by saying that you cannot consent in advance to being woken that way, but that is a different story. In this case there was no indication of consent given in advance for what he is accused of.)
So Assange is not being charged with some minor crime. He is being charged with rape.
Whether the charges would be pursued if he were someone else, well, that gets into selective enforcement. But this is at worst selective enforcement of a very reasonable law.
I don't think it is that clear in Sweden at least. Especially not if you just say birth control, i.e. what if I woman says she is on the pill and we have sex and it turns out she lied? I don't think she would get a rape charge.
I think it is also likely that someone in Sweden would get charged with a lesser crime than rape if it turns out they just removed the condom during sex. Having sex with someone that is sleeping and has not consented would be rape though.
EDIT: After having verified some more it he was not accused of rape for the condom thing. The rape charge is having sex with a sleeping person without a condom as it can be reasonably argued that she would not have consented to sex.
I know that the UK court which agreed to extradite him concluded that, under UK law, removing the condom was rape. But I'm not as familiar with the actual Swedish charges.
I don't know what else they may have concluded. But standard legal practice is to come to a conclusion about each charge regardless of what others you decided in case some of your conclusions are overruled on appeal.
For example if you conclude that either the condom or the sleep charge is sufficient, then the extradition can go forward even if the sleep charge got dropped.
Question is, if he gets freed, what will happen then?
When the first prosecutor decided not to proceed with the case, her lawyer asked for this decision to be reviewed. Why would her lawyer do this if she didn't want the case resumed?
This is not a big secret, the facts of the case are there for everyone to find.
"In the case of most crimes, the prosecutor has what is known as an absolute duty to prosecute.
This means that the prosecutor is obliged to initiate a prosecution if he or she considers there to be sufficient evidence to prove that a crime has been committed and that a certain person has committed it.
This in turn means that not even the victim of the offence can decide what is to happen in connection with the investigations. In other words, there is nothing on the lines of “withdrawing the charges”. The prosecutor must make sure that the crime is investigated, irrespective of the feelings or wishes of those involved.
The reason for this is that society has an interest in ensuring that the perpetrators of the crime are also tried for it. Exceptions are made for certain offences where it may be felt that the interests of the general public in instigating legal proceedings are not strong enough. Examples of such offences are defamation, breach of domiciliary peace and crimes of unlawful appropriation, or stealing, within the family (i.e. theft etc.)."
https://www.aklagare.se/en/the-legal-process/the-role-of-the...
If you seriously believe that, than you are either very naive or lying to yourself. It is obvious that influential people who feel threatened by Wikileaks fabricated the whole incident.
How else could it be? Think seriously about it. If you manage to convince yourself that there is a real chance of rape happened, then tell me how you did it. Maybe you can convince me too.
Maybe. That's what I offered already. So, can you convince me?
Maybe Assange is innocent. Maybe the allegations are true. We just dont know right now, but neither of these options is obvious right now
After that I’d try to disappear in Sweden if I were Assange.
> The packages constituting the diplomatic bag must bear visible external marks of their character and may contain only diplomatic documents or articles intended for official use.
But also part of Article 27
> The diplomatic bag shall not be opened or detained.
So you are stuck in a Catch 22. You suspect the bag doesn’t contain official documents or articles but without searching it you can not be sure.
If you believe the leaked documents they actually planned to smuggle Assange out using this method. https://www.wired.com/2015/09/ecuador-considered-smuggling-j...
How it’s usually handled is diplomatically. It’s reported to the higher ups, who will search the bag themselves but they can always refuse.
There are cases where a host country has opened diplomatic bags but they usually come with diplomatic protests.
There has been attempts to make Assange a diplomat of a country or two in an attempt to allow home to leave the embassy and leave the UK but the host country has to accept the status of a diplomat (usually done before they enter the country) and the UK government refused to recognise Assange's status still leaving him stuck.
I say all this as a non-US observer. The US' media and political figures are completely unfit for purpose.
Meanwhile, there has been a simultaneous attack on outlets that might actually spit the truth out there: the recent "changes to Facebook's algorithm" resulting in outlets like MPN, Democracy Now, and Wikileaks go from regular 20k shares to the 7-900 range practically overnight is suspicious in the extreme.
(Also I'm euro and don't have a dog in this fight, I just lost all respect for Assange and Wikileaks).
A year or two?
Why not publicly made an example of?
It's useful to read this court document which sets out some of his claims, and why they fail: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html
Nor do the inconsistencies in her account and text messages relied upon by Mr Assange assist. In one sent by her she described herself as "half asleep" and she accepted in a further interview that she was not fast asleep. These are matters of evidence which would be highly relevant at trial. But it is not for this court to asses whether the allegations may fail.
So, after all this, the case could still fall apart under the slightest scrutiny and be abandoned by the prosecution or dismissed by the judge.
Could you link me to the sources you’re using that have you believing this so adamantly?
Is it wrong? Yes, of course it is. Is it "rape"? No, but the media has repeated it often enough that now the general public think Assange is a rapist.
> 4. Rape
> On 17 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [SW] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep. was in a helpless state.
This was ruled by the [High Court] to be rape under [English] law.
EDIT: Corrected as per gsnedders below.
Technically untrue. That ruling is from the High Court of Justice, making a judgment under English law (they made no declaration as to its criminality under Scots or Irish law, nor are they competent to do so).
The later Supreme Court appeal didn't consider the question of dual criminality at all (it almost solely rested on the "judicial authority" of the issuer of the EAW).
The supporters who put money and assets forward where doing it to show their faith that Assange was not a flight risk. This has been proven to be false.
In other words, if he did surrender according to terms, the money would have gone back to Assange who would have returned it to the donors himself.
I am not sure the donors have any legal way to get the money back now. Unless there were agreements Assange signed, all that money was basically gifts.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/63/section/9
Even lifetime in a Swedish prison would be preferable to solitary confinement torture.
[0] ... Which makes the Brexit soap opera a bit more interesting.
Nobody had ever been extradited for this sort of thing. Sweden is special in that it enabled it based on a testimony, even after the testimony has been revoked and without the victims pressing charges or even agreeing with the interpretation of the police.
This is not an example of the legal system taking too much liberty of the notion of rape. This is much more likely an example of state level conspiracy.
Men are not under threat, sharing potentially incriminating information about the USA just means that nobody is playing by any rules.
Don't embarrass yourself or others to have this debate about rape. As an academic exercise, sure go ahead, but this case does not prove that rape laws in Sweden are used unfairly. It just proves Sweden, like most smaller Western nation's have little choice but do what the big man in Washington whispers in their ears.
This also does not prove Assange is guilt free. But at least if we want to maintain any illusion that we live in a free world: he is a deserved a court case about the actual actions that are fuelling this hunt.
So please just don't use the word rape and Assange in the same sentence. It's a disservice to actual victims, whistle blowers and our cultural identity as such.
> maintain any illusion that we live in a free world
That would require the crimes betrayed through the leaked information to have consequences. There also needs to be more control exercised on people responsible, that this cannot happen again. Otherwise, you could skip this trial as well.
According to the EU there were over 16000 warrants issued in 2015 (the latest number I could find)[0].
And way back in 2009 we were worrying about how easy arrest warrants could be attained and that Poland might be getting extradition happy - going after chicken thieves.[1]
Assange is certainly deserving of his day in court - he's the one who did everything in his power to avoid it!
[0] https://e-justice.europa.eu/content_european_arrest_warrant-...
[1] https://www.economist.com/britain/2009/12/30/wanted-for-chic...
Did those 16000 also enjoy 16 million pounds of police surveillance and an international man hunt?
This is great news. If we continue to invest so much effort in solving the slightest hint of sexual inappropriateness we'll completely eliminate sexual crimes. Perhaps even sex itself.
..what a curious case of a "rape prosecution".
What international manhunt? Man runs into embassy escaping bail - police wait outside. What other outcome could there have been?
Alternative outcome: the brits spare 16m £, which they can then invest in fighting real crime.
They arrest the alleged offender when flying or at any routine control, since he's not a danger to anyone. Anyone except those unmasked by the leaks.
But...this is a serious crime we're talking about here, I'm not sure why you think otherwise?
If you think these charges are bogus because of some grander conspiracy against a personal hero of yours just say, there are plenty of others in this thread who'll gladly back you up.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange...
It definitely paints a picture of him being a dirtbag but I don't know if this would even be illegal in the U.S. or what people would conventionally describe as rape.
It's such a shame that any country in the world can issue an extradition request to any other country in the world for any reason, and that other country has no choice but to immediately comply with it.
Also I don't think non-consensual condom removal is illegal in the U.S. though it definitely should be.
The public should focus on the war crimes, torture and corruption, because this will end up in the history books.
The US extraditing him for conspiracy charges would be really tragic. Sweden wanting to hold him accountable for his behavior afterwards is completely fine.
Why is everyone focusing so much on a person that's had their minutes of fame instead of the crimes they exposed?
This whole thread is full of people debating the definition of rape. Is everyone working for the Swedish prosecution or how is this in any way relevant to anything...
Please point to an actually case where Sweden has issued an European arrest warrant for a lesser crime. I have looked and could not find a single one.
What would you call having sex without a condom with a sleeping person, whom you barely know, when they have not consented to it?
Sorta-rape? Kinda-rape? Minor hooliganism? Did we all forget what the point of consent is, or something?
Or are we using the medieval definition, where it is a one-time-good-for-life sort of thing?
The thing that both of these women reportedly felt violated by was his disregard for their explicit request to use a condom.
Does it, though? I got the opposite impression: that Sweden is potentially willing to go against US interests and compete for Assange's extradition. It's possible their plan is to convict Assange and then extradite him to the US, but who knows?
He's actively hurt the goal of radical transparency with his antics. Actual people with principles abandoned Wikileaks a decade ago.
The Swedish government doesn't discuss them (which is what's allowed Assange's version of events to get so popular). The US hasn't mentioned it. The UK gave him a fair trial based on them.
As far as the Swedes go, the Swedish government discussed the case when it closed it for the first time. If the government hasn't been public about the case since it was re-opened by a political appointee, perhaps it is because there is zero evidence against Assange. We know this because the pretext for re-opening the case was the "discovery" of new physical evidence (a broken condom) that lacked any of Assange's DNA. This is all public knowledge, btw. Funny how it isn't discussed much in the press.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/no-assange-dna-on-torn-condom--...
https://www.rt.com/news/assange-condom-no-dna-277/
Assume that people can get their hands on the UK high court ruling. It takes only a bit of reading to confirm the complete accuracy of the statements above.
Swedish LE when they refused to hear the case with Assange in the embassy. Whether he's guilty or innocent, I can't take it as anything other than "we don't care about the case or the victims, we just wanted the extradition".
What’s next should you be able get trial over FaceTime while evading the police without any consequences?
But let say this did create a precedent that you can dictate where the interview is located by seeking political asylum. Is that bad? In the US you can escape the reach of justice by just being pardoned by the president. Apple to apple comparison, the situation with political asylum seem like a better precedent.
Charging him for running away also seems irrelevant to the original question - was this case more than a political play.
Ofc not, they should be marked as fugitives and held in contempt until they can brought in.
This wasn't a political case this was an asshole trying to escape justice, he knew he wouldn't be extradited to the US from Sweden he just hoped to play that while he plays the UK authorities while he spins this as political prosecution to his fans and the media to gather public support.
Reuters editors saw parts of the footage within a couple of weeks of the event. Two of the people killed in the strike were working for Reuters.
I'm sure North Korea or China say some people are criminals and must be executed. As an outsider should we just agree because 'the situation in your own jurisdiction is irrelevant here'? I think not, morality and truth should not be restricted to the definition of the law where it presides. It's possible what Assange allegedly did was in fact rape, but illegal or not shouldn't be the defining factor when assessing the truth of that claim.
As a commentator, I am not beholden to novel terminology used elsewhere, let alone in a country that doesn’t even use English as their primary national language.
What’s wrong with sexual misconduct, for example? I realise it doesn’t have the emotional charge of “rape”, but isn’t that a good thing? We shouldn’t choose words based on our opinions.
I don’t believe for a second that this is related to US pressure in any way, I believe the prosecutors simply want to show that they do things by the book and want to show that they are capable of prosecuting “international” cases like this one. Assange isn’t going to be in any deep legal trouble over this. It’s a formality I’d say. That doesn’t make it pointless though. Formality is important.
I think that proves that he was scared shitless.