Julian Assange first expressed his willingness to be interviewed by Swedish prosecutors, who were investigating allegations of rape and sexual molestation made by two women against the Wikileaks founder, in London in November 2010, as this BBC time line demonstrates.
It is common practice for Swedish prosecutors to interview persons of interest in countries other than Sweden via video link, or by travelling to meet with them.
Assange has continued to express his willingness to be interviewed by Swedish prosecutors for five years. However, the Swedish government has not seen fit to carry out this basic next step in the investigation of the women’s accusations.
In fact, the Swedish government has succeeded in validating Assange’s claims that they harbour a hidden agenda: to get him back to Sweden not to investigate rape allegations, which they can do perfectly well in the Ecuadorean embassy in Knightsbridge, but to expedite his extradition to the US.
I have no idea what occurred between the women and Assange. Neither does anyone else, but that didn’t stop feminist Naomi Wolfe from globally slut-shaming them at the time of their complaint, claiming that they insulted all rape victims with their “personal hurt feelings.” Interpol were, Wolfe mocked, the world’s new “dating police” and the women weren’t raped, they were just mad because Assange didn’t call them back.
The women at the centre of the allegations were let down first by their government, who have to this day taken no concrete steps to proceed with their case, and next by a world-famous feminist author who was unable to distinguish between the politically motivated pursuit of Assange, and the fact that he had been accused of sexual crimes.
Things only got worse for the women, who became targets of derision, contempt and hatred from Assange supporters all over the globe. Few of these supporters, it seemed and seems, have the wit to tease out a complicated situation and understand that yes, Assange is indeed being extraordinarily hounded for his activism, and yes, there are sexual allegations against him that need to be investigated, for his sake as well as the sake of the women involved.
Rape victims are indeed being demeaned and insulted by this situation, but not, I would argue, by Assange or the alleged victims. Rather the governments of the UK, Sweden and the US are making a mockery of rape victims by creating a situation in which, yet again, alleged crimes against women are rendered a very poor second to alleged crimes against the state.
Public argument for the last five years has repeatedly returned to the question of whether or not the allegations are true. This is the wrong question. Why do three western governments continue to allow allegations of rape to go unexamined, is the question and the answer is, because women. Women are collateral damage in affairs of the state. It has always been thus, and the Assange case demonstrates it is still thus.
There is now only one allegation against Assange, a statute of limitations having been reached on the others. The Swedish prosecutors have knowingly allowed time to run out. They have deprived the alleged victims and the accused of the human right to natural justice. They continue to deny the alleged victims and Assange the human right to natural justice on the still valid allegation of rape. This act of denial continues to be perpetrated by three western governments claiming a high moral ground in the matter of state security, and Assange’s alleged attacks on that security.
Women? Molestation? Rape? Pfffffft. Tell it to someone who cares.
No Place For Sheep 
Thank for expressing the intricacies with the Assange problem.
Yes, he should be interviewed regarding allegations against him for rape.
Absolutely, the women making charges have a right to a fair hearing and justice.
No, Assange should not be expedited to USA – Edward Snowden doesn’t want to go to the USA either, for good reason. Chelsea Manning has not been treated well and we all know of David Hicks experience with the USA justice system.
I have heard many of our small ‘l’ liberal politicians be they; Liberal, Nationals OR Labor state Assange should return to Sweden – they ALL then go on to claim that Wikileaks has cost people lives.
Yet to see evidence of the leaks by Snowden, Snowden and Manning causing deaths – wouldn’t Manning be up for murder?
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All three challenged state authority and for this they must pay!!!! Sorry, no sarcasm font but you know what I mean.
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He was interviewed in 2010 and the women did not want to lay any charges, he was cleared of any wrong doing and allowed to leave. The Swedish cops then invented stories of sexual assault and put them on the front pages of papers as facts.
Please just get all the facts straight, the only victim is Assange.
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And there is only one way for Assange to be cleared of this, and that is by following the process, which the Swedish prosecutors will not do. I have my facts straight, it is what can be done to end the situation that is important.
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Just when I thought it was safe:
“Snowden, Snowden and Manning” should read Snowden, Assange and Manning
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Love Naomi Wolfe…get her feeds at FB.
The most honest of commentators, never afraid to call a spade a spade.
As an intelligent person said at another blogsite, Assange was “investigated” concerning a “crime” that would not even be on the statute books in a place like Britain.
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How dod you reconcile her attitude to the complainants, then PW?
Yes, but it is on the statute books in Sweden, so that’s not much of a point?
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How many blogs, including this one, have covered the thing microscopically.
You know what I know and I know what you know.
Wolf understood the whole thing was a set up and that the women, one who may have been involved with the CIA and had a chip on her shoulder about men (undergrad “revenge” diary), needed to drop a possibly lucrative slander that suited the authorities and press and that the public needed to be warned emphatically of the red herring and the REAL issue. This was the way she chose to do it, because she is honest, not someone peddling a personal agenda.
As I said above, Assange was investigated for something not even on the statute books in most countries and you yourself have said it is not right to use rape allegations when crying wolf, because the actual crime of rape itself is too serious to be handled in the cavalier way this nonsense has. Yes, it was a pretty fair point.
I am tired this evening.
The worst you can accuse Assange of is (maybe) being a dud root and although that perhaps should be a crime, Wolf was probably right that they were making a mountain out of a molehill for ideological and perhaps other motives such as pressure from the authorites.
I’ve had a gutful of this disgusting, sly, slimy saga and have reached the stage where I only have contempt for the cranks perservering with it and their string pullers.
I’ll go away now.
If I stay I will lose patience, say things I might later regret and be forced off another blogsite for quarrellling with the mods.
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PW You won’t be forced off this blog.
Wolfe may be right, but her position is conjecture, Assange may have walked into a trap in which women were used as bait, this is also conjecture. At this point, surely we have to leave the conjecture, and demand that facts be established.
I hope you have a good night’s sleep, friend.
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With the benefit of four hours sleep am my cheerful self.
Of course it is only conjecture.
Therefore the folk slagging off at Assange, screaming guilty till proven innocent let’s have a lynching, are wrong also?
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Yes. Wrong in the sense that the man is entitled to proper process and it’s incumbent on Swedish prosecutors to speedily enable that. Which they haven’t, and they won’t.
They might be right about his guilt, but it’s just their opinion at this point.
Four hours? It takes me at least eight to restore my civility and at times even that doesn’t work.
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If my memory serves me correctly the allegation of rape consists of not wearing a condom during consensual sex which in Sweden amounts to statutory rape…go figure.
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Yes, but this is irrelevant really, if it’s a crime in Sweden. He can still be pursued for an alleged offence.
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Whatever the allegations made, the women have a right to be heard AND Assange has a right of reply under safe circumstances – why is Sweden so beholden to the USA?
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Anyway, where HAVE these women been? Have they been PREVENTED from making public statements explaining their position and their real motivations?
They have been assigned roles within the overall psycho drama they seem unable to cast off?
I beleive the underlying story involves two things that have parallels in Australia, to do with the suppression of whistleblowers generally and censorship and surveillance. Secondly and parallel with the first point, the downfall of the Guardian, the last of the broadsheets, so successful in its reportage of the Establishment last decade that a massive reaction has set in against it from the very top to ensure it toes the line, much the same as with public broadcasting in Australia, most of all concerning issues of the Assange/rendition type. No doubt in my mind, that Assange is the world’s most high-profile refugee.
Have myopia and bloody mindedness prevented many people from grasping that the last despairing hopes of facilitating change in western society may have been dashed on petty pursuit of of a scapegoat, against wilfully ignored reallties?
But I don’t blame some feminists so much as I blame sly conservatives and zionists in the background, whose actions are calculated, cold blooded and base rather than reactive anxiety-driven ones from those concerned at, or victims of, the black history of women’s treatment over history.
I understand why some want an example made of Assange, but to me this is incredibly risky, misguided and self defeating, conducted on rigid doctrinal rather than plastic thinking.
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“….where HAVE these women been? Have they been PREVENTED from making public statements explaining their position and their real motivations….? ”
Paul, you might want to check out Swedish law, pending court hearing and public discussion.
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Ok. Presumably you have an answer for that question and I won’t call your bluff, if that’s what it is.
You would concede it was a fair question?
Once again, very convenient, if they are legally muzzled.
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Ah, OK, diannaart, it’s to do with legal prohibitions on them, perhaps.
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I do not know anything, for certain. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if law was being conveniently used to justify situation – not unlike our own government doing questionable things ‘legally’.
My personal opinion is that Assange was indeed framed – but I try to look at all sides of an issue.
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I agree with pretty much all that comment, PW. As far as the whereabouts of the women: I have no idea if they’ve been prevented from speaking, or perhaps urged to speak out against Assange in the first place.
Making an example of Assange would seem a futile exercise. It didn’t stop Snowden, and it hasn’t stopped Wikileaks.
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It’s an uneasy topic, when you realise how many women you know have been harmed by men. I suppose some feel if you can convict on Assange, it would be easier to convict on many worse cases.
It looks more and more like it is going to take a long, long time before it all comes out the wash.
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I’ve always had time for Assange, but I am wondering if I would have become radicalised so intensely as to Julian Assange if it hadn’t been for some exceptionally rough treatment I copped at the old Larvatus Prodeo blog when the story first broke.
They were a bright crew, but some were vicious beyond your dreams.
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Ha, yes, I can vouch for that.
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I have been very disappointed with Labor’s rhetorical response to Assange – that they prefer to put blame on the whistleblower doesn’t suggest anything particularly progressive in their thinking. As for the LNP – well we don’t expect much at all – the days of people like Petro Georgiou are history.
Conservatives to the the right of us, conservatives to the left…
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paul, I was attacked for having thought and written about those Swedish women on one blog. On the other one I got attacked for not writing about them.
Finally I felt like Sybil’s mum (Faulty Towers), I just could get it right and left the issue well alone.
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could NOT
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Yes, I know that feeling, Helvi. True believers can be alienating.
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Gets nasty in cyber space, these sorts of click- bait button-push issues, Helvi. Fear, loathing and deep rooted anxieties seem at the bottom of it, in some cases also a response to actually occurred personal traumas.
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Two explanations may exist for this viciousness you experienced.
One is that your viewpoint is seen by some, who are promoting an already fixed agenda, as a threat to what they perceive to be their status in that part of the blogosphere.
The other is one that has come to light largely via the medium of wikileaks itself in revealing the existence of persona managment software and various social media disruption tools, the purpose of which is the covert influencing of public discourse. One of the steps in the manufacture of consent.
The first explanation is a diffuse, spontaneous, and relatively unco-ordinated one that is likely to be encountered in any discussion forum.
The second explanation points toward a generally co-ordinated effort to covertly eavesdrop upon and influence the direction of public (and commercial) discourse worldwide. Mind control, perhaps?
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They never wanted any charges laid at all, the cops made it all up later, if you want to write about something get all the facts.
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The best way for this to be demonstrated is for the Swedish prosecutors to interview him & come up with nothing. The facts are evident in the BBC TL I linked to. I know they initially dismissed the allegations, everyone knows that.
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When the first of the women attempted to recant her story and got shut down, I got suspicious and started to read a bit more about the case and decided for myself that it was highly likely the whole thing was a political setup. It’s the favorite scandal of that part of the world to publish Sex based headlines especially in such August publications like “The Sun”. The facts, such as they are known warrant a hearing but not the expense of an extradition or all the fan fare thats gone along since this all came to light. Assange is a bit of a “look at me” character anyway and probably enjoyed the infamy for a while. Personally I think this whole thing is a “Nothing to see here folks, move on” situation. Yes the women are entiteld to have the case heqrd (providing of course they still want to which is in some doubt now anyway) and yes Assange should be given the opportunity to clear his name, but if Cardinal Pell can give evidence from afar on a far more serious case, so can Assange in this one in my opinion.
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Yes, there is no reason for the Swedish prosecutors not to have interviewed Assange in London years ago, and proceeded with or concluded the matter.
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Jennifer, he was interviewed in Sweden 5 weeks before he left and there was found to be no charges to lay on him.
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Yes, I know this.
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You don’t seem to appreciate Marilyn, that a situation has been created that there is only one way out of. Unless Assange is cleared of the rape allegations he’s stuck in the fucking Ecuadorean embassy, no matter whether those allegations have a basis or not.
I don’t know what pressures those women were subjected to and neither do you. No matter what you and I think about the situation, it is now a legal process and there’s nothing to be done but to proceed with it, or wait until the statute of limitations kicks in. There is no other way out for Assange except through the Swedish legal process.
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“There is no other way out for Assange except through the Swedish legal process.”
I wonder.
What if, now that the UNWGAD report is to hand, Ecuador was to grant Assange citizenship AND appoint him to some diplomatic post? Would Assange be able to leave the UK under diplomatic immunity if, for example, he was recalled to Ecuador for consultations?
What if subsequently Assange was to be appointed to some Ecuadorean diplomatic post in Australia? Would he be subject to any continuing arrest warrant or would he enjoy diplomatic immunity in Australia? Or, for that matter, in Sweden?
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This is the sort of comment that has me much more fond of FG than many who comment at various blogs.
Only a good heart could write that post.
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I’m sure Jennifer Robinson, and colleagues Garson and Ratner have considered every angle.
This seems a good place to state that the attempts to intimidate Robinson, and Assange’s legal team in general, were and are unacceptable. Assange is entitled to his defence. Robinson is clearly a fine lawyer and extremely articulate on his behalf.
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Yes. She is stoic. You would want most, this sort of person beside you in a warfare situation.
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Well, I hadn’t considered that alternative, but who knows?
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Ha, ha. That will be rejected, but isn’t it true, how convenient or inconvenient things are made depending on your location proximate to the establishment.
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It looks as though he has been framed to me.
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Got it in one.
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FG, just reading your tweets feed then Cool as Sheep and that astonishing comment from Chris Kenny a few days ago…must be blooper of the year.
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The Cambridge Union tweet to which Wikileaks posted a link has either been deleted or suppressed. Just embedding this exchange here for the record. It tells its own story.
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