Julian Assange: rapist or not?

[Here_to_learn]

JA is quoted in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet:

"– Jag skulle jättegärna resa till Sverige, om Sverige kan garantera Ecuador att jag inte utlämnas till USA."

My translation: "I would happily travel to Sweden, as long as Sweden will give a guarantee to Ecuador that I will not be extradited to USA"

The rest of the article is about the three laptops that JA claims where stolen.

 

[BenBurch]

He knows he is asking for something that will NEVER be given.

I hope he spends the rest of his pathetic life living in that women's washroom.

 

[Joey McGee]

LOL his Wikileaks party was a total failure, 1 percent of the vote, down from an expected 4 probably due to the vicious infighting and immaturity displayed as they tried to put a campaign together... wow that part was shocking... Julian's leadership suspect? It couldn't be...

 

[trustbutverify]

I think this blog article, written in February, proved to be prophetic concerning Assange's waning popularity.

LONDON – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange risks turning from a popular hero into an L. Ron Hubbard figure, tolerating only “blinkered, cultish devotion”, said one of his former backers Jemima Khan.

Claiming Assange had alienated his supporters, Khan, associate editor of the New Statesman, wrote for the weekly British magazine that Assange s anti-secrecy organisation was now “guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose”

 

[Here_to_learn]

So maybe there wasn't a sealed indicment after all...

Washington Post reports:

The Justice Department has all but concluded it will not bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified documents because government lawyers said they could not do so without also prosecuting U.S. news organizations and journalists, according to U.S. officials.

[...]
“The problem the department has always had in investigating Julian Assange is there is no way to prosecute him for publishing information without the same theory being applied to journalists,” said former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “And if you are not going to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, which the department is not, then there is no way to prosecute Assange.”
[...]
There have been persistent rumors that the grand jury investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks had secretly led to charges. Officials told The Post last week that there was no sealed indictment, and other officials have since come forward to say, as one senior U.S. official put it, that the department has “all but concluded” that it will not bring a case against Assange.

 

[BenBurch]

And in fear of that he has imprisoned himself for longer than he would have been likely to serve on the charges if proven.

 

[theprestige]

And in fear of that he has imprisoned himself for longer than he would have been likely to serve on the charges if proven.

Nah, if he were in fear of a sealed indictment, he would have stayed in Sweden.

 

[BenBurch]

Nah, if he were in fear of a sealed indictment, he would have stayed in Sweden.

Well, you would have to assume more intelligence than I give him credit for, but point taken!

 

[PhantomWolf]

I guess we'll now get to see the mettle of the man, will he keep on hiding and claiming that the US are after him, when it's now clear, as some of us have been saying, that they aren't and can't, or will he step up and face the music for his actions, now both in the UK and Sweden?

I suspect that the answer is that he's going to remain in his self imposed prison cell.

 

[EHocking]

I guess we'll now get to see the mettle of the man,...

I suggest we already have.

 

[BenBurch]

I guess we'll now get to see the mettle of the man, will he keep on hiding and claiming that the US are after him, when it's now clear, as some of us have been saying, that they aren't and can't, or will he step up and face the music for his actions, now both in the UK and Sweden?

I suspect that the answer is that he's going to remain in his self imposed prison cell.

Forever, I sincerely hope.

 

[PhantomWolf]

One does also wonder, if the DoJ actually puts this on the official record and states that they can't and aren't going to charge him, would that mean that Ecuador would no longer be willing to shield him from UK and Swedish Justice?

 

[Mycroft]

Is there anyone left still defending Assange?

 

[EHocking]

Is there anyone left still defending Assange?

"It remains to be seen whether the claims by these unknown, anonymous officials are more than just an attempt to reduce public support for WikiLeaks."

They can't afford to desert their martyr...

 

[Here_to_learn]

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Round and round we go....

Today three lawyers for JA wrote an opinion piece in a Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter.

Basically their story is that the investigation in the US is still ongoing and there is a real risk that Sweden would extradite JA to the US.

The also say:

Att USA hotar journalister med årtionden i fängelse eller mer för att de publicerar material som de har fått från sina källor är extremt oroväckande. Att en åklagare i Sverige håller en sådan journalist inspärrad år efter år på en liten ambassad i London (med hjälp av en europeisk arresteringsorder) i stället för att åka dit och förhöra honom är en skandal.

Slutsatsen är att Sverige inte respekterar den asyl som Assange fått (av Ecuador) för att skydda honom från att tillbringa resten av sitt liv i amerikanskt fängelse för sina journalistiska avslöjanden.

My translation:

That the US threatens journalists with decades or more of imprisonment for having received material from their sources is extremely worrying. That a public prosecutor in Sweden holds such a journalist under lock year after year in a small embassy in London (using an EAW) instead of going there to interview him is a scandal.

The conclusion is that Sweden does not respect the asylum that JA has receoved from Ecuador) to protect him from spending the rest of his life in US prison for his journalistic exposures.

So nothing has changed, including the arguments.