Amnesty International vetosi Ruotsin hallitukseen Wikileaksin perustajan Julian Assangen suojaamiseksi luovutukselta Yhdysvaltoihin. Vasemmistoradikaalina aktivistina ja tutkivana journalistina tunnettu Martin Fredriksson sai kuitenkin Ruotsin Amnestyn vastustamaan vetoomusta. Mutta Fredriksson ei ole vain palkittu toimittaja tai aktivisti. Hän oli salaa myös turvallisuuspalvelun agentti.
Helmikuussa 2016 Martin Fredriksson paljasti olleensa Ruotsin turvallisuuspalvelun Säpon maksettu agentti sekä toimiessaan Ruotsin Antifan tiedustelussa että myöhemmin Researchgruppen-toimittajaverkostossa. Fredriksson oli Säpon palkkalistoilla myös tehdessään arvostetulla Guldspaden-journalismipalkinnolla myöhemmin palkittuja tutkimuksia.
Antifa (Antifaschistische Aktion, ruots. AFA) on etenkin Saksassa, Hollannissa, Ruotsissa ja Tanskassa toimiva äärivasemmistolainen verkosto. Researchgruppen on Martin Fredrikssonin perustama, äärioikeistoon erikoistunut tutkiva toimittajaryhmä. Swedish Doctors for Human Rights -järjestön (SWEDHR) puheenjohtaja professori Marcello Ferrada de Noli on tosin huomauttanut, että Researchgruppenin paljastuskohteita yhdistää paitsi oikeistolaisuus, myös Nato-vastaisuus.
Fredrikssonin Researchgruppen sai yhdessä Expressen-iltapäivälehden kanssa vuoden 2013 Guldspaden-journalismipalkinnon paljastettuaan kymmenien anonyymien nettikirjoittelijoiden henkilöllisyydet. Rasistisille nettisaiteille kirjoitelleiden joukossa oli mm. ruotsidemokraattien poliitikkoja. Arvostetun palkinnon jakaa Ruotsin tutkivien journalistien yhdistys (FGJ).
Fredrikssonin ryhmän saama palkinto on joutunut Säpo-paljastuksen myötä kyseenalaiseen valoon. Researchgruppen on Säpo-paljastuksen jälkeen tuominnut Fredrikssonin toiminnan.
Professori Ferrada de Nolin mukaan Martin Fredrikssonin julkiseen toimintaan on liittynyt voimakas USA:n geopoliittisten intressien ja niitä myötäilevien poliitikkojen tukeminen sekä USA:n hallituksen kriitikkojen, kuten Julian Assangen ja Edward Snowdenin, ahkera panettelu ja voimakas Venäjä-vastaisuus. Vuonna 2014 professori Ferrada de Noli oli yksi kahdeksasta vaikuttajasta, jotka nimesivät Edward Snowdenin Nobelin rauhanpalkinnon saajaehdokkaaksi. Asemansa puolesta nimeämiseen oikeutettu Ferrada de Noli nimesi ehdokkaaksi tietovuotaja Snowdenin lisäksi Julian Assangen sekä tietovuodoista tuomitun amerikkalaissotilaan Chelsea Manningin.
ASSANGE ON OLLUT JO VUOSIA Ecuadorin Lontoon suurlähetystössä diplomaattisessa turvapaikassa, josta hän ei voi poistua joutumatta pidätetyksi ja luovutetuksi Ruotsiin. Assange ei ole esimerkiksi saanut tavata lapsiaan viiteen vuoteen. Virallisesti hänet halutaan Ruotsiin kuulusteltavaksi, koska häntä epäillään lievästä raiskauksesta vuonna 2010. Assange kuitenkin pelkää ilmeisen perustellusti, että todellinen syy Ruotsin toiminnalle on aikomus luovuttaa hänet Yhdysvaltoihin, jossa hänet vangittaisiin ja tuomittaisiin vakoilusta, pahimmassa tapauksessa kuolemaan.
YK:n mielivaltaista vangitsemista käsittelevä työryhmä totesi helmikuussa Assangen olevan Ruotsin ja Englannin toimesta mielivaltaisesti vangittuna. Työryhmä ratkaisi asian Assangen eduksi huolimatta USA:n ja Englannin voimakkaasta painostuksesta.
Kun Amnesty International vuonna 2012 vetosi Ruotsin hallitukseen sen takaamiseksi, ettei Assangea luovuteta Yhdysvaltoihin, Ruotsin Amnesty asettui yllättäen vastustamaan vetoomusta. Ruotsin Amnestyn emojärjestöään vastustanut kanta muistutti perusteluineen Martin Fredrikssonin järjestölle lähettämää kehotusta. Fredrikssonin sanoma ja perustelut puolestaan muistuttivat vahvasti silloisen ulkoministerin Carl Bildtin – joka on tunnettu uskollisesta USA:n intressien edustamisesta – aiemmin esittämää lausuntoa. Perustelut on myöhemmin osoitettu kestämättömiksi. Käytännössä aktivistina ja palkittuna toimittajana tunnettu Martin Fredriksson onnistui manipuloimaan Ruotsin Amnestyn päätöksen Ruotsin (ja viime kädessä USA:n) hallituksen linjan mukaiseksi.
Säpo-toiminnan julkinen tunnustaminen täytyy ilman muuta laskea Fredrikssonille ansioksi. Paljastuminen myös estää viranomaisia tai tiedustelupalveluita painostamasta häntä uusiin petoksiin ja manipulointeihin.
No kappas, tämäpä hyvä uutinen!
Ruotsin Amnesty todennköisesti kihisee valtion toimiston maksamia miehiä ja naisia. Samoin kuin aktivisti- ja oppositioryhmät yleensä. Alex Jones kerran tuumaili, että militia järjestöissä on FBI-agentteja niin että nupit yhteen kolisee. Samoin uskon, on mediassa: operaatio Mockingbird ei ole koskaan kadonnut mihinkään.
Kertoo paljon valtion arvoista, että ihmisoikeusjärjestöjä täytyy soluttaa ja eikä pelkästään vakoilla, vaan myös vaikuttaa niiden toimintaan. Tässäkin Ruotsin valtio on siis valjastanut ihmisoikeustaistelijat ja vasemmistolaisverkostot NATO:n puolesta käytävään vaikuttamiseen. Mitäs ihmeen demokratiaa tämä on? Ei mitään, vaan nimenomaan maan kaivuuta demokratian perustusten alta!
Kuten aiemmin kirjoitin, selkärangan kasvattamisella toimii itselleen tuhoisasti. En tiedä vielä tapauksesta, mutta mikäli Fredrikkson itse koki toimineensa väärin ja sen johdosta tunnusti, nostan hattua hänelle.
Yleisesti ottaen tämänkaltaiset ihmiset eivät oma-aloitteisesti tunnusta yhtään mitään. Epäilen vahvasti jonkun antaneen valita tunnustamisen ja paljastumisen väliltä. Olisiko joku SÄPO:ssa muuttanut mielensä? Australialaisen 60 minuuttia ohjelman toimittajat saivat Rinkebyssä juuri turpiinsa ja vakavien seksuaalirikosten määrä on Ruotsissa sen verran voimakkaasti noussut puheenaiheeksi, että harkitumpaa pakolaispolitiikkaa ajavien tahojen suosio on kasvanut viime pakolaisaallon jälkimainingeissa huomattavasti. Myös nykylinjan puolustajat ovat aktiivisia. Tälläisissä poliittisissa kysymyksissä, jotka herättävät voimakkaita tunteita, viranomaistahoilta käsin tuleva vinkki ”väärille ihmisille” voi yksittäisen toimittajan kannalta muodostua paljon vakavammaksi kuin julkinen ulostulo ”hyvän poliisin tutun tutun” moraalisia ohjeita noudattaen.
Vaikka valtiot nähdään monesti organisaatioina, jotka tekevät virheitä pienissä asioissa, se ei ole mikään takuu siitä etteivätkö ne tekisi virheitä myös suurissa asioissa. Monesti tämä johtuu keskenään ristiriitaisista intressiryhmistä valtioiden sisäisissä mekanismeissa.
Lieneekö kalikka liipannut suomalaisen valtamedian liki liian pelottavalla tavalla, kun näin mielenkiintoista aihetta ei ole muissa tiedotusvälineissä sivuttu sanallakaan? Ihan näin ”human interest” pohjaltakin ajateltuna sekä vähemmän maltillisen vasemmiston, että yhä intomielisemmäksi käyvän oikeiston manipulointi yhtäaikaisesti ulkomaisten intressien hyväksi kun helposti johtaa yksilön vanhan kiinalaisen kirouksen mukaisesti kohti ”elämää mielenkiintoisina aikoina”. Vai kenties kyseessä oli vaan taannoisen ” luotettavuus julistuksen” henkeen sopimaton aihe. Eihän meillä Suomessa, päätoimittajatkin lupasivat meille!
”…Researchgruppenin paljastuskohteita yhdistää paitsi oikeistolaisuus, myös Nato-vastaisuus.[…]Professori Ferrada de Nolin mukaan Martin Fredrikssonin julkiseen toimintaan on liittynyt voimakas USA:n geopoliittisten intressien ja niitä myötäilevien poliitikkojen tukeminen sekä USA:n hallituksen kriitikkojen, kuten Julian Assangen ja Edward Snowdenin, ahkera panettelu ja voimakas Venäjä-vastaisuus.”
Tai kenties tämä on jäänyt uutisoimatta Suomessa koska juurihan Yle julisti otsikossaan ”Venäjän trollit eivät vaienna minua – CIA:n agentiksi väitetty Ylen toimittaja Jessikka Aro palkittiin” ja tällainen paljastusuutinen olisi todennäköisesti herättänyt ihmisissä’ mielleyhtymiä jollaisia kaikin muodoin halutaan välttää?
Olet oikeassa, se liippaa liian likeltä. Kun tuota tapahtuu Ruotsissa, sitä voi hyvin tapahtua Suomessa.
Koskahan Suomen massamediassa on paljastettu mediaan tai kansalaisjärjestöön soluttautuneen tehneen töitä NATO:n eduksi? Voit olla ihan varma, jos tuo myyrä olikin tehnyt työtä Venäjän hyväksi, se olisi pääuutinen.
Olisiko jotenkin mahdollista,erotaa käsiteellisesti Yhdysvaltalaisuus, Amerikkalaisuus ja vaikkapa CIAn toiminta toisistaan, koska nuo asiat eivät ole pelkkä yhtenevä viitekehys. Olisi kiireenvilkaa luotava ymmärrys niistä ideologis polittisista voimakentistä jolla on nimitys transatlantismi, juuri tuon sylttytehtaan uumenista lähtee ne uuden maailmanjärjestyksen idean kylvämisestä ja juuri he ovat nyt epätoivonvimmassa, koska heidän etsikkoaikansa on pättymässä. Globalisaatio vastainen liike tekee karhunpalveluksen itseleen leimaamalla Yhdysvallat yksioikoisesti pahanvaltakunnaksi,pikemminkin tulisi etsiä sieltäkin yhteistyökumppaneita, nyt maginaalissa olevilta tahoilta,mutta väistämättä yhteiskunnan keskiöön rynnivivistä tahoista. Trumpin ja Sandersin menestys kuvastaa orailaan olevaa muutosta .
”Globalisaatio vastainen liike tekee karhunpalveluksen itseleen leimaamalla Yhdysvallat yksioikoisesti pahanvaltakunnaksi”
Minusta kannattaa puhua globalisteista. En tiedä kannattaako edes sanoa ”länsimainen globalisti”, koska maailmanhallinnan politiikkaa kannattava liike on niin vahvasti painottunut Pohjois-Amerikkaan ja Eurooppaan. Venäjällä ja Kiinassakin on varmaan globalisteja, mutta siellä globalistit eivät johda ainakaan maansa ulkopolitiikkaa.
Amerikklaisten taakkana on, että globalistit ovat maan poliittisessa johdossa laajalla rintamalla johdossa. Patrioottinen liike on Amerikassa kyllä voimakas, mutta poliittisessa johdossa se ei oikein pääse näkymään. Meillä Suomessa on asia vielä paljon surkeammin kuin Amerikassa. Sanot ”Uusi maailmanjärjestys”, niin olet välittömästi foliohattu. Täällä rivikansalainen ei edes tunne globalistien poliittista liikettä!
Uskoisin useimpien ymmärtävän että kun sanotaan/kirjoitetaan Yhdysvallat, CIA tai Amerikka tarkoitetaan hallituksen touhuja, ei tavallisia amerikkalaisia. Ja sama Venäjän, Saksan tai minkä muun tahansa suhteen.
Aivan kuten muissa maissa lehdet kirjoittavat Finland tarkoittaessaan Suomen hallituksen sohlailuja, Tuskinpa noissa maissa ajatellaan tavallisten suomalaisten kannattavan jotain juttuja mitä hallitus yrittää saada aikaan.
”Tuskinpa noissa maissa ajatellaan tavallisten suomalaisten kannattavan jotain juttuja mitä hallitus yrittää saada aikaan.”
Jos ajatellaan, metsään menee. Valitettavasti demokratiassakaan tavallisilla kansalaisilla on hyvin vähän vaikutusvaltaa poliittisen johdon tekemisiin. Äänestitpä niin tai näin. Poliittinen valta on joka maassa sellaisen klikin käsissä joihin vaalit ei juuri vaikuta, ja sitten on vielä ulkomaiset vaikuttajat. Kansanvalta on nykyään vain nimellistä.
Olen ollut ymmärtävinäni, että esim Wall Street pankkiireja vastustaa 99% amerikkalaisista, mutta jostain syystä eivät voi niille yhtään mitään. Lienee sitä transatlantismia, että sama on levinnyt tänne meillekin.
Seuraavaksi suurimmat ongelmat Suomessa, ehkä juuri siitä johtuen, ovat asuminen ja johtaminen. Molempien hinnat ovat moninkertaistuneet ja laatu romahtanut.
Tapaus Assange on mielenkiintoinen näin länsimaisen arvoyhteisön näkökulmasta. Miestä on pidetty pakolaisena, vangittuna, jo enemmän kuin saisi oletetusta rikoksestaan. Syyte saattaa olla myös tekaistu, tai hän vain käveli ansaan, joka ei maailmanhistoriassa olisi ihan ensimmäinen kerta laatuaan.
Asiaa ei tietenkään voida selvittää ilman, että hänet luovutetaan Ruotsiin. Hän epäilee, että hänet luovutetaan eteenpäin, vangittuna. Epäily ei liene ihan perusteeton. Kaapattiinhan Bolivian presidentin konekin Itävaltaan matkalla Moskovasta kotiin heinäkuussa 2013. Presidenttihän nauttii suurta diplomaattista koskemattomuutta. Kone pakotettiin laskeutumaan, kun epäiltiin Snowdenin olevan kyydissä. Assange sanoi jälkeenpäin wikileaks ryhmän laittaneen verkkoon vähän disinformaatiota, jolla harhautettiin tiedustelupalveluja. Sitä eivät taida antaa anteeksi hevillä. Jostain syystä tuo konekaappausuutinen on hävinnyt meidän totuusmediasta.
YK’n painoarvokin tulee tässä tapauksessa punnittavaksi. Tällä hetkellä näyttäis olevan kevyttä tavaraa.
Paha olo tulee Assangen puolesta.
Joutuu kysymään jälleen kerran: tätäkö on se ’läntinen arvoyhteisö’ johon nwo-eliitti aikoo koko maailman pakottaa?
No, tätähän se on sillä eihän tämäkään mies muuten eläisi elämäänsä neljän seinän sisällä kuin suurikin rikollinen.
Ehkäpä tulisi otaa käytöön vanha termi intressipiirit, mitkä kunkin toimian tavoiteet mielestään paremmasta maailmasta ovat. Se kylmänsdan jälkeinen aikakausi, jolloin sattui niin uusknservativismi kuin uusliberalismikin saamaan hegemonisen aseman maailmanpolitikassa, nyt se alkaa olla ohi tälläkertaa. Assange ja Mainig sekä erityisesti Snowdwn tulevat jskus lähitulevaisuudessa saamaan ,vähintäänkin rauhannobelin, jokin heistä, onhan tuon palkinnon myöntämis perusteina myös vapauden ja avoimuuden lisääminen maailmassa.
Stockholm Syndrome — Swedish women are showing their support for Islam by taking selfies in hijabs after the Brussels bombings.
http://www.infowars.com/dozens-of-swedish-women-show-support-for-islam-by-taking-selfies-in-hijab-after-brussels-massacre/
WOW! Women have absolutely no rights under Islam and these braindead women are holding a rally in support of the barbarians.
Koska meillä?
Assangen kohtalo tukee tätä artikkelia joka kertoo kuinka poliitikot täyttävät muuta väestöä herkemmin psykopatian tuntomerkit
From Democracy to Pathocracy: The Rise of the Political Psychopath
“Politicians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopaths. I think you would find no expert in the field of sociopathy/psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder who would dispute this… That a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience was and is a bitter pill for our society to swallow — but it does explain a great many things, shamelessly deceitful political behavior being one.”—Dr. Martha Stout, clinical psychologist and former instructor at Harvard Medical School
Charismatic politicians, like criminal psychopaths, exhibit a failure to accept responsibility for their actions, have a high sense of self-worth, are chronically unstable, have socially deviant lifestyle, need constant stimulation, have parasitic lifestyles and possess unrealistic goals.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/03/democracy-pathocracy-rise-political-psychopath.html#more-54947
Getting Assange: The Untold Story
By John Pilger
Global Research, May 20, 2017
Region: Europe, USA
Julian Assange has been vindicated because the Swedish case against him was corrupt. The prosecutor, Marianne Ny, obstructed justice and should be prosecuted. Her obsession with Assange not only embarrassed her colleagues and the judiciary but exposed the Swedish state’s collusion with the United States in its crimes of war and “rendition”.
Had Assange not sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, he would have been on his way to the kind of American torture pit Chelsea Manning had to endure.
This prospect was obscured by the grim farce played out in Sweden.
“It’s a laughing stock,” said James Catlin, one of Assange’s Australian lawyers. “It is as if they make it up as they go along”.
It may have seemed that way, but there was always serious purpose. In 2008, a secret Pentagon document prepared by the “Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch” foretold a detailed plan to discredit WikiLeaks and smear Assange personally.
The “mission” was to destroy the “trust” that was WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”. This would be achieved with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”. Silencing and criminalising such an unpredictable source of truth-telling was the aim.
Image result for wikileaks
Perhaps this was understandable. WikiLeaks has exposed the way America dominates much of human affairs, including its epic crimes, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale, often homicidal killing of civilians and the contempt for sovereignty and international law.
These disclosures are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama, a professor of constitutional law, lauded whistle blowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal”.
In 2012, the Obama campaign boasted on its website that Obama had prosecuted more whistle blowers in his first term than all other US presidents combined. Before Chelsea Manning had even received a trial, Obama had publicly pronounced her guilty.
Few serious observers doubt that should the US get their hands on Assange, a similar fate awaits him. According to documents released by Edward Snowden, he is on a “Manhunt target list”. Threats of his kidnapping and assassination became almost political and media currency in the US following then Vice-President Joe Biden‘s preposterous slur that the WikiLeaks founder was a “cyber-terrorist”.
Hillary Clinton, the destroyer of Libya and, as WikiLeaks revealed last year, the secret supporter and personal beneficiary of forces underwriting ISIS, proposed her own expedient solution: “Can’t we just drone this guy.”
According to Australian diplomatic cables, Washington’s bid to get Assange is “unprecedented in scale and nature”. In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has sought for almost seven years to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. This is not easy.
The First Amendment protects publishers, journalists and whistle blowers, whether it is the editor of the New York Times or the editor of WikiLeaks. The very notion of free speech is described as America’s “ founding virtue” or, as Thomas Jefferson called it, “our currency”.
Faced with this hurdle, the US Justice Department has contrived charges of “espionage”, “conspiracy to commit espionage”, “conversion” (theft of government property), “computer fraud and abuse” (computer hacking) and general “conspiracy”. The favoured Espionage Act, which was meant to deter pacifists and conscientious objectors during World War One, has provisions for life imprisonment and the death penalty.
Image result for sweden assangeAssange’s ability to defend himself in such a Kafkaesque world has been severely limited by the US declaring his case a state secret. In 2015, a federal court in Washington blocked the release of all information about the “national security” investigation against WikiLeaks, because it was “active and ongoing” and would harm the “pending prosecution” of Assange. The judge, Barbara J. Rothstein, said it was necessary to show “appropriate deference to the executive in matters of national security”. This is a kangaroo court.
For Assange, his trial has been trial by media. On August 20, 2010, when the Swedish police opened a “rape investigation”, they coordinated it, unlawfully, with the Stockholm tabloids. The front pages said Assange had been accused of the “rape of two women”. The word “rape” can have a very different legal meaning in Sweden than in Britain; a pernicious false reality became the news that went round the world.
Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant, saying,
“I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.”
Enter Claes Borgstrom, a highly contentious figure in the Social Democratic Party then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in Gothenberg. This was Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well, personally and politically.
On 30 August, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and answered the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case.
At a press conference, Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed. The reporter cited one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied, “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.”
On the day that Marianne Ny reactivated the case, the head of Sweden’s military intelligence service – which has the acronym MUST — publicly denounced WikiLeaks in an article entitled “WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers [under US command in Afghanistan]”.
Both the Swedish prime minister and foreign minister attacked Assange, who had been charged with no crime. Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAPO, had been told by its US counterparts that US-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements would be “cut off” if Sweden sheltered him.
For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the renewed “rape investigation” to take its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq “War Logs”, based on WikiLeaks’ disclosures, which Assange was to oversee in London.
Finally, he was allowed him to leave. As soon as he had left, Marianne Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant and an Interpol “red alert” normally used for terrorists and dangerous criminals.
Assange attended a police station in London, was duly arrested and spent ten days in Wandsworth Prison, in solitary confinement. Released on £340,000 bail, he was electronically tagged, required to report to police daily and placed under virtual house arrest while his case began its long journey to the Supreme Court.
He still had not been charged with any offence. His lawyers repeated his offer to be questioned in London, by video or personally, pointing out that Marianne Ny had given him permission to leave Sweden. They suggested a special facility at Scotland Yard commonly used by the Swedish and other European authorities for that purpose. She refused.
For almost seven years, while Sweden has questioned forty-four people in the UK in connection with police investigations, Ny refused to question Assange and so advance her case.
Writing in the Swedish press, a former Swedish prosecutor, Rolf Hillegren, accused Ny of losing all impartiality. He described her personal investment in the case as “abnormal” and demanded she be replaced.
Assange asked the Swedish authorities for a guarantee that he would not be “rendered” to the US if he was extradited to Sweden. This was refused. In December 2010, The Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US.
Contrary to its reputation as a bastion of liberal enlightenment, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA “renditions” – including the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and in WikiLeaks cables.
“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the multiple twists and dangers that faced Assange, “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.”
The war on Assange now intensified. Marianne Ny refused to allow his Swedish lawyers, and the Swedish courts, access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police had extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the “rape” allegations.
Ny said she was not legally required to reveal this critical evidence until a formal charge was laid and she had questioned him. Then, why wouldn’t she question him? Catch-22.
When she announced last week that she was dropping the Assange case, she made no mention of the evidence that would destroy it. One of the SMS messages makes clear that one of the women did not want any charges brought against Assange, “but the police were keen on getting a hold on him”. She was “shocked” when they arrested him because she only “wanted him to take [an HIV] test”. She “did not want to accuse JA of anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges”. In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her”.
Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, “I have not been raped.” The women were manipulated by police – whatever their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they, too, are the victims of this sinister saga.
Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote:
“The allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction… The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will. [Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential step in their investigation? What are they afraid of?”
Assange’s choice was stark: extradition to a country that had refused to say whether or not it would send him on to the US, or to seek what seemed his last opportunity for refuge and safety.
Supported by most of Latin America, the government of tiny Ecuador granted him refugee status on the basis of documented evidence that he faced the prospect of cruel and unusual punishment in the US; that this threat violated his basic human rights; and that his own government in Australia had abandoned him and colluded with Washington.
The Labor government of the then prime minister, Julia Gillard, had even threatened to take away his Australian passport – until it was pointed out to her that this would be unlawful.
The renowned human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, who represents Assange in London, wrote to the then Australian foreign minister, Kevin Rudd:
“Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions… it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged.”
It was not until she contacted the Australian High Commission in London that Peirce received a response, which answered none of the pressing points she raised. In a meeting I attended with her, the Australian Consul-General, Ken Pascoe, made the astonishing claim that he knew “only what I read in the newspapers” about the details of the case.
In 2011, in Sydney, I spent several hours with a conservative Member of Australia’s Federal Parliament, Malcolm Turnbull. We discussed the threats to Assange and their wider implications for freedom of speech and justice, and why Australia was obliged to stand by him. Turnbull then had a reputation as a free speech advocate. He is now the Prime Minister of Australia.
I gave him Gareth Peirce’s letter about the threat to Assange’s rights and life. He said the situation was clearly appalling and promised to take it up with the Gillard government. Only his silence followed.
For almost seven years, this epic miscarriage of justice has been drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. There are few precedents. Deeply personal, petty, vicious and inhuman attacks have been aimed at a man not charged with any crime yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife. That the US threat to Assange was a threat to all journalists, and to the principle of free speech, was lost in the sordid and the ambitious. I would call it anti-journalism.
Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and an assumption that attacking Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive.
The previous editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published, “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years”. Yet no attempt was made to protect the Guardian’s provider and source. Instead, the “scoop” became part of a marketing plan to raise the newspaper’s cover price.
With not a penny going to Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous”. They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”.
Journalism students might well study this period to understand the most ubiquitous source of “fake news” — as from within a media self-ordained with a false respectability and as an extension of the authority and power it courts and protects.
The presumption of innocence was not a consideration in Kirsty Wark’s memorable live-on-air interrogation in 2010.
“Why don’t you just apologise to the women?” she demanded of Assange, followed by: “Do we have your word of honour that you won’t abscond?”
On the BBC’s Today programme, John Humphrys bellowed:
“Are you a sexual predator?”
Assange replied that the suggestion was ridiculous, to which Humphrys demanded to know how many women he had slept with.
“Would even Fox News have descended to that level?” wondered the American historian William Blum. “I wish Assange had been raised in the streets of Brooklyn, as I was. He then would have known precisely how to reply to such a question: ‘You mean including your mother?’”
Last week, on BBC World News, on the day Sweden announced it was dropping the case, I was interviewed by Greta Guru-Murthy, who seemed to have little knowledge of the Assange case. She persisted in referring to the “charges” against him. She accused him of putting Trump in the White House; and she drew my attention to the “fact” that “leaders around the world” had condemned him. Among these “leaders” she included Trump’s CIA director. I asked her, “Are you a journalist?”.
The injustice meted out to Assange is one of the reasons Parliament reformed the Extradition Act in 2014.
“His case has been won lock, stock and barrel,” Gareth Peirce told me, “these changes in the law mean that the UK now recognises as correct everything that was argued in his case. Yet he does not benefit.”
In other words, he would have won his case in the British courts and would not have been forced to take refuge.
Ecuador’s decision to protect Assange in 2012 was immensely brave. Even though the granting of asylum is a humanitarian act, and the power to do so is enjoyed by all states under international law, both Sweden and the United Kingdom refused to recognise the legitimacy of Ecuador’s decision.
Ecuador’s embassy in London was placed under police siege and its government abused. When William Hague’s Foreign Office threatened to violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, warning that it would remove the diplomatic inviolability of the embassy and send the police in to get Assange, outrage across the world forced the government to back down.
During one night, police appeared at the windows of the embassy in an obvious attempt to intimidate Assange and his protectors.
Image result for assange asylum in ecuadorSince then, Assange has been confined to a small room without sunlight. He has been ill from time to time and refused safe passage to the diagnostic facilities of hospital. Yet, his resilience and dark humour remain quite remarkable in the circumstances. When asked how he put up with the confinement, he replied, “Sure beats a supermax.”
It is not over, but it is unravelling. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention – the tribunal that adjudicates and decides whether governments comply with their human rights obligations – last year ruled that Assange had been detained unlawfully by Britain and Sweden. This
is international law at its apex.
Both Britain and Sweden participated in the 16-month long UN investigation and submitted evidence and defended their position before the tribunal. In previous cases ruled upon by the Working Group – Aung Sang Suu Kyi in Burma, imprisoned opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, detained Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian in Iran – both Britain and Sweden gave full support to the tribunal. The difference now is that Assange’s persecution endures in the heart of London.
The Metropolitan Police say they still intend to arrest Assange for bail infringement should he leave the embassy. What then? A few months in prison while the US delivers its extradition request to the British courts?
If the British Government allows this to happen it will, in the eyes of the world, be shamed comprehensively and historically as an accessory to the crime of a war waged by rampant power against justice and freedom, and all of us.