I am slightly updating and reposting this from 2012 because the mainstream media have ensured very few people know the detail of the “case” against Julian Assange in Sweden. The UN Working Group ruled that Assange ought never to have been arrested in the UK in the first place because there is no case, and no genuine investigation. Read this and you will know why.
The other thing not widely understood is there is NO JURY in a rape trial in Sweden and it is a SECRET TRIAL. All of the evidence, all of the witnesses, are heard in secret. No public, no jury, no media. The only public part is the charging and the verdict. There is a judge and two advisers directly appointed by political parties. So you never would get to understand how plainly the case is a stitch-up. Unless you read this.
There are so many inconsistencies in Anna Ardin’s accusation of sexual assault against Julian Assange. But the key question which leaps out at me – and which strangely I have not seen asked anywhere else – is this:
Why did Anna Ardin not warn Sofia Wilen?
On 16 August, Julian Assange had sex with Sofia Wilen. Sofia had become known in the Swedish group around Assange for the shocking pink cashmere sweater she had worn in the front row of Assange’s press conference. Anna Ardin knew Assange was planning to have sex with Sofia Wilen. On 17 August, Ardin texted a friend who was looking for Assange:
“He’s not here. He’s planned to have sex with the cashmere girl every evening, but not made it. Maybe he finally found time yesterday?”
Yet Ardin later testified that just three days earlier, on 13 August, she had been sexually assaulted by Assange; an assault so serious she was willing to try (with great success) to ruin Julian Assange’s entire life. She was also to state that this assault involved enforced unprotected sex and she was concerned about HIV.
If Ardin really believed that on 13 August Assange had forced unprotected sex on her and this could have transmitted HIV, why did she make no attempt to warn Sofia Wilen that Wilen was in danger of her life? And why was Ardin discussing with Assange his desire for sex with Wilen, and texting about it to friends, with no evident disapproval or discouragement?
Ardin had Wilen’s contact details and indeed had organised her registration for the press conference. She could have warned her. But she didn’t.
Let us fit that into a very brief survey of the whole Ardin/Assange relationship. .
11 August: Assange arrives in Stockholm for a press conference organised by a branch of the Social Democratic Party.
Anna Ardin has offered her one bed flat for him to stay in as she will be away.
13 August: Ardin comes back early. She has dinner with Assange and they have consensual sex, on the first day of meeting. Ardin subsequently alleges this turned into assault by surreptitious mutilation of the condom.
14 August: Anna volunteers to act as Julian’s press secretary. She sits next to him on the dais at his press conference. Assange meets Sofia Wilen there.
‘Julian wants to go to a crayfish party, anyone have a couple of available seats tonight or tomorrow? #fb’
This attempt to find a crayfish party fails, so Ardin organises one herself for him, in a garden outside her flat. Anna and Julian seem good together. One guest hears Anna rib Assange that she thought “you had dumped me” when he got up from bed early that morning. Another offers to Anna that Julian can leave her flat and come stay with them. She replies:
“He can stay with me.”
15 August Still at the crayfish party with Julian, Anna tweets:
‘Sitting outdoors at 02:00 and hardly freezing with the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing! #fb’
Julian and Anna, according to both their police testimonies, sleep again in the same single bed, and continue to do so for the next few days. Assange tells police they continue to have sex; Anna tells police they do not. That evening, Anna and Julian go together to, and leave together from, a dinner with the leadership of the Pirate Party. They again sleep in the same bed.
16 August: Julian goes to have sex with Sofia Wilen: Ardin does not warn her of potential sexual assault.
Another friend offers Anna to take over housing Julian. Anna again refuses.
20 August: After Sofia Wilen contacts her to say she is worried about STD’s including HIV after unprotected sex with Julian, Anna takes her to see Anna’s friend, fellow Social Democrat member, former colleague on the same ballot in a council election, and campaigning feminist police officer, Irmeli Krans. Ardin tells Wilen the police can compel Assange to take an HIV test. Ardin sits in throughout Wilen’s unrecorded – in breach of procedure – police interview. Krans prepares a statement accusing Assange of rape. Wilen refuses to sign it.
21 August Having heard Wilen’s interview and Krans’ statement from it, Ardin makes her own police statement alleging Assange has surreptiously had unprotected sex with her eight days previously.
Some days later: Ardin produces a broken condom to the police as evidence; but a forensic examination finds no traces of Assange’s – or anyone else’s – DNA on it, and indeed it is apparently unused.
No witness has come forward to say that Ardin complained of sexual assault by Assange before Wilen’s Ardin-arranged interview with Krans – and Wilen came forward not to complain of an assault, but enquire about STDs. Wilen refused to sign the statement alleging rape, which was drawn up by Ardin’s friend Krans in Ardin’s presence.
It is therefore plain that one of two things happened:
Either
Ardin was sexually assaulted with unprotected sex, but failed to warn Wilen when she knew Assange was going to see her in hope of sex.
Ardin also continued to host Assange, help him, appear in public and private with him, act as his press secretary, and sleep in the same bed with him, refusing repeated offers to accommodate him elsewhere, all after he assaulted her.
Or
Ardin wanted sex with Assange – from whatever motive.. She “unexpectedly” returned home early after offering him the use of her one bed flat while she was away. By her own admission, she had consensual sex with him, within hours of meeting him.
She discussed with Assange his desire for sex with Wilen, and appears at least not to have been discouraging. Hearing of Wilen’s concern about HIV after unprotected sex, she took Wilen to her campaigning feminist friend, policewoman Irmeli Krans, in order to twist Wilen’s story into a sexual assault – very easy given Sweden’s astonishing “second-wave feminism” rape laws. Wilen refused to sign.
At the police station on 20 August, Wilen texted a friend at 14.25 “did not want to put any charges against JA but the police wanted to get a grip on him.”
At 17.26 she texted that she was “shocked when they arrested JA because I only wanted him to take a test”.
The next evening at 22.22 she texted “it was the police who fabricated the charges”.
Ardin then made up her own story of sexual assault. As so many friends knew she was having sex with Assange, she could not claim non-consensual sex. So she manufactured her story to fit in with Wilen’s concerns by alleging the affair of the torn condom. But the torn condom she produced has no trace of Assange on it. It is impossible to wear a condom and not leave a DNA trace.
Conclusion
I have no difficulty in saying that I firmly believe Ardin to be a liar. For her story to be true involves acceptance of behaviour which is, in the literal sense, incredible.
Ardin’s story is of course incredibly weak, but that does not matter. Firstly, you were never supposed to see all this detail. Rape trials in Sweden are held entirely in secret. There is no jury, and the government appointed judge is flanked by assessors appointed directly by political parties. If Assange goes to Sweden, he will disappear into jail, the trial will be secret, and the next thing you will hear is that he is guilty and a rapist.
Secondly, of course, it does not matter the evidence is so weak, as just to cry rape is to tarnish a man’s reputation forever. Anna Ardin has already succeeded in ruining much of the work and life of Assange. The details of the story being pathetic is unimportant.
By crying rape, politically correct opinion falls in behind the line that it is wrong even to look at the evidence. If you are not allowed to know who the accuser is, how can you find out that she worked with CIA-funded anti-Castro groups in Havana and Miami?
Finally, to those useful idiots who claim that the way to test these matters is in court, I would say of course, you are right, we should trust the state always, fit-ups never happen, and we should absolutely condemn the disgraceful behaviour of those who campaigned for the Birmingham Six.
I’m not sure what to think of reports allegedly of Anna Ardin’s communications in social media and interviews, and subsequent reports of deletes. If these reports are true, they present an image of a person who is immature, out of (self) control and resistant(?) to the good legal and personal advice that she has (or should have) received from lawyers and friends – ie “shut up and lay low”.
I have for some time held the opinion that Ardin is a bit of a restless and reckless adventurer. Her reported international exploits and multiple political activities are interesting, but hard to reconcile with the personality that is implied by many reports of her personal conduct. Is it just me who thinks that this woman cannot be trusted to participate in sensitive, covert activities on behalf of the state? Or political schemes that demand a measured, calm and professional attitude? Maybe she is just an example of a typical modern Swede. Puzzled!
I wrote this as a response to a query by John Goss in the thread about the Mavi Marmara murders. Anna was press secretary for the Swedish part of Ship to Gaza that time. But this info should be here.
Colonel (överstelöjtnant)Mattias Ardin, is Anna’s cousin. He was leading the Swedish troups in Afghanistan in 2006. He must have developed contact with all top Nato people then.
Here is the agenda for a meeting with RUSI in november 2007. He was then Deputy Head of Operations, Swedish Joint Forces, Land Component Command 1415.
http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/Programme_16112007.pdf
A curiousity is this: Mattias Ardin is a member of “Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani”. In English known as the “Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem”.
@jemand at 1.18 pm.
Your observations of Anna seem to be near the truth. My impression is that she is egocentric, unbalanced, lacks good judgment and does not bother to think through the long term consequences of what she does. She loves to be in the limelight. She throws her self into things. Perhaps Claes Borgström, in spite of his shortcomings, managed to keep her away from the media for a while, but that is probably gone now. But she could have been used by people for that very reason.
– “Yes [I’m preparing a new major leak of documents that can compromise important banks]. We always have several projects on hand that are ready to be published. ”
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Frac1.org%2Felmon%2Fblog%2Feua-mha-volgut-segrestar-i-assassinar%2F
Interesting. This is Sweden’s Expressen newspaper on the GCHQ messages obtained by Julian Assange that the case is a “fit up”, as reported yesterday by the Guardian.
http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/julian-assanges-nya-angrepp—i-tv/
The headline in English, Julian Assange’s new attacks – on TV, is predictable enough but perhaps that headline could be seen as necessary to getting this news out at all in Sweden. The rest of the article is pretty straightforward and presents facts that are not usually mentioned in the Swedish press. A sign, perhaps, that the long omerta on reporting the more disturbing aspects of L’Affaire Assange is lifting?
“GCHQ is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. However, it is understood that Assange’s request was a subject access request, a mechanism under the Data Protection Act that can be used by individuals to obtain personal information that bodies hold about them.”
Not sure how it works in UK, Arbed, but FOIA in the US is subject to redactions and outright refusals, with legal notes, that is.
But the opinions, attitudes and Beliefs of security icons, is certainly fodder for overarching, and non-paranoid speculations.
Live webcast of public lecture at La Trobe University on 23rd May “Julian Assange and Wikileaks – Philosophy, Politics, Plight
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/events/all/free-public-lecture-julian-assange-and-wikileaks-philosophy,-politics,-plight
It is now clear that it was Sofia Wilen, not Anna Ardin, that dumped Borgström earlier this year. Anna is still with Borgström and Borgström has explained that he intends to go on representing her.
Sofia’s new lawyer, Eliabeth Massi Fritz, wants Sweden to be more aggressive against Ecuador. Push harder. And she is saying that Sofia is suffering psychologically from her trauma every day. In a statement, published yesterday, she mentions Assanges name 7 times in a negative way, but never gives the name of her client once. This is breach of good legal practice in Sweden.
The good thing about all this is perhaps that a more energetic lawyer will push the case towards a solution, and break the present deadlock.
Alex Gibney is now resorting to lies to justify his treatment of Assange in the documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks. This is what he says:
Gibney actually shows a picture of the condom from the police report – twice – in this documentary. BUT, apropos of his comment above (which comes from a “rebuttal” to a negative review), there is only ONE picture and only ONE condom in the police forensics report, and Gibney knows that full well if, as he claims, he’s researched the Swedish case. So, yes, if Gibney shows a used-looking condom with a bloody great tear in the top then that’s the one that Assange supposedly “deliberately ripped” during sex and the fact it has no trace of any DNA on it – not male, not female either – is a very big deal indeed. A very big deal. And Gibney knows it. (What was submitted to the forensics lab from the other woman is only a fragment of a condom. That does have DNA on it, but she’s the one who claims he DIDN’T use a condom.)
Gibney is also now claiming this:
This, too, is complete bunkum. Is Gibney seriously suggesting that Swedish law makes it possible to charge someone with a crime and put them on trial before the police have even questioned them a first time? Assange has only been questioned by police about an allegation of NON-sexual molestation, as that was the only allegation still in existence at the time, the other lady’s case having been closed by a senior prosecutor after reading her testimony with the words “I do not think there is any reason to believe Assange has committed rape. I don’t disbelieve her but there is no reason to think that a crime has been committed.” Assange has therefore never been given a opportunity to give his side of the story to police for three out of the four current allegations. What kind of justice system charges people before even talking to them?
FYI, Mr Gibney, under Swedish law it is not permitted for a prosecutor to decide whether to prosecute until the preliminary investigation is completed (including all questioning, obviously). Then, if they charge, they have to hand over the entire police file, including all the stuff they are not even using for their prosecution. Wonder how they feel about doing that to the world’s most prolific publisher…?
And this really takes the bisquit:
The Swedish prosecutor has never said any such thing. And, again, Gibney would know that if he had done any research. This is Gibney’s OWN theory, which he expounds at length in his hatchet job of a film. Presumably Gibney believes that Assange – to quote from Fibney’s film – can fulfil his “primal urge” to go around the world “spreading his seed” by deliberately damaging condoms “to trick women into pregnancy” without actually exchanging any DNA?
Alex Gibney is a fraud and a liar, and clearly wants to frame Assange using fake evidence.
Wikileaks has leaked a full annotated transcript of the film, with links to documentary evidence proving its many lies. Fascinating reading:
http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/gibney-transcript.html
You can click on all the annotations in this transcript and post links direct to that note. Here’s the one that deals with the DNA issue:
http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/gibney-transcript.html#2682
They could actually have linked to many more newspaper reports about the lack of DNA on the condom Gibney shows. Here’s a few I found:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/7689322/Assange-condom-DNA-inconclusive
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/17/assange_case_police_report/
http://www.skynews.com.au/world/article.aspx?id=795622
http://rt.com/news/assange-condom-no-dna-277/
http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/assange-sex-case-no-dna-in-condom-used-as-proof_799984.html
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/missing-dna-evidence-in-assange-case/story-e6frf7jo-1226475431376
http://www.news.com.au/world/missing-dna-evidence-in-assange-case/story-fndir2ev-1226475236312
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2203920/Condom-used-evidence-Assange-sex-case-does-contain-DNA.html
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/279089/assange-sex-case-no-dna.html
http://www.smh.com.au/world/no-assange-dna-on-torn-condom–report-20120916-260vs.html
@Arbed
It seems, the mods aren’t so easily contactable or movable on clearing comments. Can you please try to post your blocked comment in parts?
Cheers.
Axel, are you sure that Ardin is still being represented by Borgstrom. This Sydney Morning Herald report from March clearly states that Ardin has got Eliabeth Massi Fritz to represented her. Can you provide a link please?
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/assange-prosecutor-quits-while-accuser-sacks-lawyer-20130328-2gwjk.html
Axel, I’ve found this link.
http://www.thelocal.se/48074/20130523/
It mentions about one of the accused, the other one to the one represented by Eliabeth Massi Fritz having talked about how stressed out she is on her blog. Although we know Anna did that both women could have written similar things about stress. Does Sofia Wilen have a pseudonymous blog we don’t know about? Or is it clear that Fritz is representing Wilen.
Ah, my “awaiting moderation” comment has disappeared entirely. Never mind, perhaps this will fix it. I’ve replaced the 10 links I had at the bottom – I’m sure that was the problem – with a single link where you can find all 10 listed.
So, here’s my amended comment.
Alex Gibney is now resorting to lies to justify his treatment of Assange in the documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks. This is what he says:
Gibney actually shows a picture of the condom from the police report – twice – in this documentary. BUT, apropos of his comment above (which comes from a “rebuttal” to a negative review), there is only ONE picture and only ONE condom in the police forensics report, and Gibney knows that full well if, as he claims, he’s researched the Swedish case. So, yes, if Gibney shows a used-looking condom with a bloody great tear in the top then that’s the one that Assange supposedly “deliberately ripped” during sex and the fact it has no trace of any DNA on it – not male, not female either – is a very big deal indeed. A very big deal. And Gibney knows it. (What was submitted to the forensics lab from the other woman is only a fragment of a condom. That does have DNA on it, but she’s the one who claims he DIDN’T use a condom.)
Gibney is also now claiming this:
This, too, is complete bunkum. Is Gibney seriously suggesting that Swedish law makes it possible to charge someone with a crime and put them on trial before the police have even questioned them a first time? Assange has only been questioned by police about an allegation of NON-sexual molestation, as that was the only allegation still in existence at the time, the other lady’s case having been closed by a senior prosecutor after reading her testimony with the words “I do not think there is any reason to believe Assange has committed rape. I don’t disbelieve her but there is no reason to think that a crime has been committed.” Assange has therefore never been given a opportunity to give his side of the story to police for three out of the four current allegations. What kind of justice system charges people before even talking to them?
FYI, Mr Gibney, under Swedish law it is not permitted for a prosecutor to decide whether to prosecute until the preliminary investigation is completed (including all questioning, obviously). Then, if they charge, they have to hand over the entire police file, including all the stuff they are not even using for their prosecution. Wonder how they feel about doing that to the world’s most prolific publisher…?
And this really takes the bisquit:
The Swedish prosecutor has never said any such thing. And, again, Gibney would know that if he had done any research. This is Gibney’s OWN theory, which he expounds at length in his hatchet job of a film. Presumably Gibney believes that Assange – to quote from Fibney’s film – can fulfil his “primal urge” to go around the world “spreading his seed” by deliberately damaging condoms “to trick women into pregnancy” without actually exchanging any DNA?
Alex Gibney is a fraud and a liar, and clearly wants to frame Assange using fake evidence.
Wikileaks has leaked a full annotated transcript of the film, with links to documentary evidence proving its many lies. Fascinating reading:
http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/gibney-transcript.html
You can click on all the annotations in this transcript and post links direct to that note. Here’s the one that deals with the DNA issue:
http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/gibney-transcript.html#2682
They could actually have linked to many more newspaper reports about the lack of DNA on the condom Gibney shows. Here’s a few I found [go to list at bottom of linked article]:
http://rixstep.com/1/20120917,00.shtml
@ John Goss, 2.46pm
No, it’s emerged that it’s Sofia Wilen who moved to Massi Fritz urgently a month or so ago. The coverage in the Australian that first broke the story apparently got confused because the complainants have at various times been given different codes. Everyone assumed complainant A meant AA, but Wilen was originally called A and Ardin B, you see? [Ardin is apparently sticking with Borgstrom, we think]
Flashback are busy revisiting Claus Borgstrom’s bill to see what it now tells us about Wilen: that she has been very involved and pro-active; was annoyed that she often had to deal with his secretary rather than him; that she badgered him to speak to the press more often (he billed for 80 hours press-time but claimed it was much more than this); she’s been interviewed by police at least 8 times, including the day after the forensic report came back from the lab (her ‘contribution’ there, of course, is a fragment of condom that DOES have DNA on it plus a mysterious note that she – at some point, we’re not exactly sure when – “heard noises like someone pulling on a balloon” in the dark and found the fragment of condom “under the bed on the side where the suspect lay”).
It’s all starting to look much more determined than a vulnerable woman “railroaded” by the police, isn’t it?
Arbed, I wonder what inducement has been made for SW to pursue a case she never wanted to be involved in. What kind of bribes have been dangled before her. I know how these people operate. They will have told her she cannot lose, probably offered her a massive promotion that will keep her more than comfortable for life, designed the questions to be asked, then arranged to get a favourable judiciary to ensure, like they did in the case of trying to get an inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly to make sure the right result is delivered.
@John Goss,
It is easy to get confused. Elisabeth Massi Fritz is now Sofia’s lawyer. As far as we know Ardin is still represented by Borgström.
This is a link to the press statement Massi Fritz did a couple of days ago. She refers to her client as the person that has been raped, and suffers every day from this, but she does not give Sofias name.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/142979433/Advokat-Fritz-Pressmeddelande-22-maj-2013
Unfortunately it is in Swedish. One thing that this statement claims is that it was Sofia herself that made the complaint that she was raped, not the police. (presumably it means that she could draw it back also).
Sofia has not got a blogg. Anna Ardin wrote about her sufferings in her blog a while ago.
Thanks Axel,
Here’s an English translation of Sofia Wilen’s new lawyer’s statement:
http://rixstep.com/1/20130526,00.shtml
John – Axel’s right, this statement says that Wilen was the instigator of the rape report. As I have said all along, the key to unravelling this mess is what the two women told Wassgren together (which I think is that they BOTH claimed Assange had deliberately damaged a condom) BEFORE Sofia changed her story back to that Assange had initiated sex without a condom when she was half-asleep in her interview with Krans. But, even without the addition of my little theory there, it is nevertheless very dumb of Wilen/Massi Fritz to come out with this “news” that Wilen had intended to report rape from the start – because that conflicts with what she told her friends at the time. Their police witness statements are full of phrases like “she felt she had been railroaded by others around her” and “Sophia only ever wanted him to be tested for HIV”. Doesn’t exactly add to her credibility as a complainant that she seems to change her story all the time.
Arbed, Axel, thanks. While I agree that Sofia Wilen has been stupid, so has Anna Ardin. But the whole purpose of this concoction is not to put JA on trial in Sweden but to get him there. I believe, and I think he believes too, that before he got to any trial he would be picked up by the CIA. The CIA worked with the Swedish government to render the two Egyptians. They are in cahoots. It would be another Mordechai Vanunu-type abduction and his freedom would be lost forever, as with Vanunu.
@John,
It would not be as easy to pick him up this time. The political costs in Sweden would be considerable; could swing an election almost (next one is in September 2014).
I believe that the handing over of Assange to the US would have to be differently organized. For instance, a rapid court procedure which concludes that there is no legal obstacles to hand him over to the US to face charges in USA, or alternatively to let the US “lend him temporarily” as a witness in another case.
Stefan Lindskog, judge in the Supreme Court, pronounced that in such a case he would not be part of the Supreme Court team. I wonder why he had to say anything about it at all?
Surely, Julian Assange did fall into this legal black hole?
http://www.thedaily.sk/european-arrest-warrant-a-legal-black-hole/#ixzz2UdCzkWf7
Socialite Jemima Khan promoting herself on the coat tails of Julian Assange –
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/the-unlikely-activist/
Axel, I guess you have the Bradley Manning trial in mind for the witness loan? I’m not so sure about your logic, though of course it is a possibility if a legal path was taken. Legal procedures, even in Sweden take time. Any rapid court procedure would be challenged and these things can drag on, though I bow to your knowledge since I have never really studied the Swedish judicial system. I still doubt there is any intention other than for the CIA to pick Assange up at the airport and straight on a military plane. It would sour relations with the US for a week or two and Julian Assange would never walk free again. That seems to be the way we’re heading. It sounds sinister but we live in a sinister world, with extra-judicial drone murders, imprisonment without trial or charge and other obscenities which would never have been allowed when I was young.
Jemand, 7.24am
Yes, and still peddling lies such as “he never replied to my questions about his legal situation” despite this:
http://justice4assange.com/Response-to-Jemima-Khan.html
and this, the 60,000-word answer to her queries Wikileaks put together for her:
http://justice4assange.com/extraditing-assange
60,000 words! That seems an inordinate – and respectful – effort to inform one of Assange’s bail sureties. If she is still making the claims she is in the New York Times piece you’ve linked Jemand, I doubt she even read it. So much for someone who claims “I don’t like lies”.
But really the purpose of the NYT piece is to defend her involvement in the excretable We Steal Secrets documentary, thoroughly debunked by Wikileaks’ fully sourced, annotated fact-checking exercise on the leaked audio transcript of the film:
http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/gibney-transcript.html
Personally, because of things such as Gibney using a picture of the “deliberately torn” condom on screen that comes from the police forensics file (and interviews sympathetically the woman who handed it in to police) without telling his audience that two pages further on in the same report is the finding there’s no DNA at all – neither male nor female – on that condom, is a disgrace. No decent documentarian would be that cavalier with the facts. The film is a bogus hit-piece – it didn’t get any co-operation with Wikileaks, ostensibly its subject, so has had to resort to deceptively edited stock footage. If the money didn’t much go on filming new material then most of its $2.5m budget is going on a massive, targeted publicity campaign (cf Jemima’s oh-so-timely puff piece in the NYT).
I think the effort to get Assange transferred to the US via Sweden BEFORE THE END OF BRADLEY MANNING’S TRIAL is being ratcheted up – and is now being played dirty in the court of public opinion. Alex Gibney’s film is a part of that effort. The title is a dead giveaway.
I encourage everyone to use selected links from the annotated transcript (each note can be clicked on and linked separately) liberally in comment columns under any reviews claiming We Steal Secrets is “balanced, fair and exhaustively researched”. Fight the ignorance of the facts that this hype relies on!
Speaking of which, does anyone have any ideas of how we could actively promote some of the facts in the Wikileaks’ annotated audio transcript of the film?
I’m thinking particular of the fact that Gibney has deliberately used the same false evidence – the DNA-free “torn” “used” condom – that is being used in the efforts to extradite Assange to Sweden. I mean, this is in a way a golden opportunity to get people to question why the Swedish prosecutor insists on extradition to pre-charge detention in a jail cell in Sweden in the full knowledge that the “evidence” she has – the torn condom with no DNA on it – indicates the allegations against Assange are likely false, yet insists she will not question him to get his side of the story in any other venue. FACT: the forensics lab report came back on 25 October 2010 so she had it weeks before writing out the EAW extradition warrant. See here, page 77:
http://wlcentral.org/sites/default/files/AssangeSexAllegations%20FUP%5B1%5D.pdf
That’s the original Swedish-language police protocol, including the forensic report. It’s less widely available on the internet than the English-language versions, which don’t usually include the forensics.
Salander, 8.38am
He certainly did. That’s a good article you link to. It exposes what a mess the whole EAW system is, given there is no mechanism for compensating someone when an EAW is issued in error, or – as in Assange’s case – by abusing due process.
Arbed, yeah it’s not going to work out for Jemima in the long run. History will not be so kind to her for her role in defaming JA and undermining the work of Wikileaks despite her ostensible support for the organisation.
I’d like to see this doco-film fail at the box office, and in online sales and rental of dvds. It would be shame if someone did the wrong thing and uploaded a torrent for interested folk to download a copy out of curiosity.
Arbed
PS – promoting the annotated transcript can involve having a pdf version available as a torrent with appropriate tags to respond to early searches for the video.
Jemand, 3.12pm
Good idea, are you able to fix something up? I’m hopeless with techie stuff, and working with torrents would utterly bamboozle me.
John Goss wrote about a possible court procedure in Sweden in response to an extradition request:
“Any rapid court procedure would be challenged and these things can drag on…,
Very true. But if you remember Assange’s appeal about the EAW, it was processed record quick.
15 of Nov 2010: the police investigation is put together (the leaked 100 page document).
18 of Nov 2010. The lower court, Stockholms Tingsrätt, accepts the arrest order, based on the 100 page document, and thereby open up for the EAW
24 0f Nov 2010. The higher court, Svea Hovrätt, rejects Julian’s appeak against it.
A few days later the Supreme Court decides not to listen to an appeal against the Svea Hovrätt.
So, there can be a fast track procedure, when needed.
But, yes, the world is sinister…
Arbed, I’ll look into it. Will let you know how it goes.