Craig Murray's reaction is worth reading [1]. I realize he does not respond to the bail breach directly, but rather to what precipitated this chain of events.
> If the Swedish allegations against Julian Assange were genuine and not simply a ruse to arrest him for extradition to the United States, where is the arrest warrant now from Sweden and what are the charges?
> Only the more minor allegation has passed the statute of limitations deadline. The major allegation, equivalent to rape, is still well within limits. Sweden has had seven years to complete the investigation and prepare the case. It is over two years since they interviewed Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. They have had years and years to collect all the evidence and prepare the charges.
> So where, Swedish prosecutors, are your charges? Where is your arrest warrant?
> Julian Assange has never been charged with anything in Sweden. He was merely “wanted for questioning”, a fact the MSM repeatedly failed to make clear. It is now undeniably plain that there was never the slightest intention of charging him with anything in Sweden. All those Blairite MPs who seek to dodge the glaring issue of freedom of the media to publish whistleblower material revealing government crimes, by hiding behind trumped-up sexual allegations, are left looking pretty stupid.
This whole "if the accusation is real then why hasn't he been charged?" pseudo-fact relies on a rather stubborn misunderstanding of the difference between the Swedish legal system and the UK one. Assange can't be "charged" in the sense that the Anglosphere thinks of it until he is physically present for trail; that doesn't mean that the charges haven't been put to him or that Sweden isn't actively pursuing the investigation.
Much of the commentary around the legal aspects of Assange's case it misleading or outright false.
I think that's how it works in UK to, you get arrested first, then charged, if you flee then you're wanted "to face charges", ie the charges will be pressed once you're caught. Does any legal system have a full court case first, then apprehend only those proven guilty? Surely without essential witnesses that's not possible.
Because Ecuador warned the US they would be kicking him out of the embassy, but did not warn Sweden. I don't think that is in doubt at all.
The US does not need Sweden's involvement to extradite and try Assange. The rape charges are separate and irrelevant to the charges he faces in the US, and whether the UK would even grant his extradition to the US is not a sure thing.
These two cases are unrelated, and the only reason they have been conflated is a concerted effort on the part of Assange supporters to discredit the accusations of sexual misconduct by lumping them in with his WikiLeaks activities and make up a whole lot of guff about CIA plots rather than just accept that he should face the criminal justice procedure for some shitty personal behaviour on his part.
> Ecuador warned the US they would be kicking him out of the embassy, but did not warn Sweden
Ecuador hardly needed to notify Sweden. It was international news. The Guardian article from five months ago that I linked was just one of many. "No one in the Swedish government reads international news" is not a credible explanation.
I see two possible explanations:
1) Sweden doesn't place a high priority on prosecuting famous accused rapists who've escaped justice for years, or
2) Sweden doesn't consider Assange a famous accused rapist who's escaped justice for years.
I don't think either of your "possible explanations" are borne out by the evidence, but then there are a dozen other explanations that are both more plausible, and whose truth-potential is not dependent on whether they make sense to you personally.
> Why didn't Sweden have an extradition request ready
From what I recall about the situation from past threads is that Sweden cannot send extradition requests in advance. Most criminal courts don't go out of their way to break the rules as that costs and they have to justify the budget.
Also why spend extra time and money on something when they could just wait until he was under British custody? Where is the urgency when normal procedures would suffice?
The Americans went out of their way because this is a political matter to them and their budget was approved.
Sweden _can_ send extradition requests; they're just for 'questioning', not 'arrest'. The bail he skipped out on was for a Swedish extradition request.
> In the case of the allegation in Sweden that did fall through the statute of limitation, the accusation was that during the act of consensual sex Julian Assange deliberately split the condom with his fingers, without consent. ... But the split condom given to Swedish police as evidence had none of Assange’s DNA on it – a physical impossibility if he had worn it during sex. And the person making the accusation had previously been expelled from Cuba as working for the CIA.
Interesting, this is the first I heard about the DNA evidence, which is compelling. The prosecutor's dropping of this charge is reasonable given the lack of any DNA present on the sabotaged condom.
Also should mention that Craig Murray is a personal friend of Julian Assange, something his blog readers are well aware of. Murray is the one who testified he personally collected the DNC email leak from a disgruntled DNC employee in Washington DC and hand couriered it across the Atlantic where he handed it over to Assange. This leak origin account contradicts the Russian hacker narrative regarding the DNC email leak.
Presumably the staff of the two separate forensics teams that found no DNA on the split condom were quoted in the 100 page police report are qualified.
They did find DNA in the other woman's condom, but that condom was not split and there was no claim by her of condom sabotage.
No, I mean, he's not qualified to interpret the findings. It's far from obvious that a negative DNA test result means "definitely didn't wear the condom". (And more broadly, such a test is only informative if you can be sure that no other condom was used, which you probably can't.)
To be fair, this seems like a dishonest account of the situation. My understanding is that being "charged" in Sweden normally happens later in the process than in the USA/UK, so the fact that he wasn't "charged" isn't meaningful.
To be fair, you've nitpicked one minor detail in the above quote. The subtantive point still hands. Why is Assange not now wanted for questioning in Sweden?
Please stop spreading misinformation. They have stated in a press release that they will look into this case again. It was 2 weeks ago and these things takes some time.
So was a warrant issued or not? In the US, at least, being "unable to formally notify [someone] of allegations" would not prevent a warrant from being issued.
And current nutjob. Check out his tweets/blogs around the time of the attempted Skripal assassination.
His questioning here is clearly in bad faith. Assange successfully evaded justice on most of his charges in Sweden because they have a statute of limitations. It's not something to celebrate.
The situation with Assange is all public record. Obama DoJ didn't pursue extradition, Trump DoJ did.
Separately to this, Assange was suspected of sexual offences in Sweden, most of which have now expired. Connected to those charges, he committed an offence under the Bail Act in the UK for which he has now been convicted.
Anyone arguing that USA was intending to extradite Assange in 2010 is misinformed or arguing in bad faith. Only Sweden wanted to extradite him in 2010 because they had strong evidence he had committed a sexual offence in their jurisdiction.
Murray is interesting - he's intelligent and well-informed, but he leans so heavily against the UK intelligence services that he's unable to spot situations where they're probably not the villain. Like the whole Skripal case.
He regards "bellingcat" as an enemy; they are the supposedly independent blogger producing OSINT that showed the Russian missile launcher used to shoot down MH-17. These days I'm suspicious of people defending the argument that this wasn't Russia.
Calling Murray a "nutjob" is not conducive to a well-informed discussion about touchy subjects. His last summary of the Skripal case is [1], and while certainly controversial, hardly a "nutjob".
He was removed from his ambassadorship to Uzbekistan because he protested against human rights violations in Uzbekistan. This may not be what an ambassador should do, but displays integrity.
>All those Blairite MPs who seek to dodge the glaring issue of freedom of the media to publish whistleblower material revealing government crimes, by hiding behind trumped-up sexual allegations, are left looking pretty stupid.
Considering how well its working, I'd say they're left looking pretty smart.
What a disgraceful episode for our governments, the media, and the public who seem to have fallen hook, line and sinker for a blatantly orchestrated smear campaign. I don’t understand what the hell goes through people’s minds when they see such blatantly trumped up and unprovable charges levied against a big-time persona non grata of the CIA/Pentagon and decide to take them at face value. No matter that the US sprung their secret extradition request the second he left asylum. No matter that of course Sweden has no genuine interest in pursuing the original ‘case’. No matter that the US will cynically prepare more charges to apply once he’s on their soil. Apparently these sorts of dirty tricks are absolutely fine. Every step of the way we’ll have useful idiots lecturing us on the technicalities of the Swedish legal code.
That is true, but he was hiding in an embassy for the best part of a decade. That isn't a scheme to avoid 50 months in jail.
The jail sentence for skipping bail is the reasonable part of the whole story. No question that it was about as bad a case of bail-skipping as could be imagined.
The issue is more one of why exactly is the justice system involving itself in his business. He didn't think he'd committed a crime in Sweden. His 'victims' didn't think he needed to be arrested. The police didn't think he needed to be arrested at the time either. The word 'rape' seems to be something of a mistranslation on this one.
I gather (from Wikipedia) that he maintained he had consensual sex [0], so it's going to be interesting, if he does get to Sweden before the US grabs him, what actual evidence is involved.
Is there a timeline of when the public turned against him. One which compares it to the spread of information/propaganda about his involvement with helping Trump win the election? I wonder if that was a key event in people becoming willing to accept any other information/propaganda that casts Assange in a negative light.
He never had much support once the smear that “two women accused him of rape” was intentionally leaked and broadcast. Most people don’t dig into the details, and no one wants to defend “a sex offender.” And, since the British high-brow media are such a bunch of weasels, he didn’t have much chance of overcoming it.
It changed when people realised the truth that was being revealed was the wrong truth. People remembered that huge swathes of society are built on lies and deceit and they aren't prepared to do better.
While I am saddened by this decision I hope he now is able to get proper medical care and fight the case against extradition. As long as he is not on London streets the US can't just snatch him up. [1] [2]
There may not be and extradition case. It doesn't seem like Sweden is still keen, and on balance, the US mightn't want him either at this point.
It's not a guaranteed conviction. The president has an embarrassing YouTube reel where he "loves WikiLeaks" 50 times. It'll drag the contents of contentious leaks back into the spotlight. It could be more convenient to let it go.
> The president has an embarrassing YouTube reel where he "loves WikiLeaks" 50 times. It'll drag the contents of contentious leaks back into the spotlight. It could be more convenient to let it go.
But America isn't a dictatorship so the decision isn't exactly up to him. There's a whole legal system operating under their own framework that the president doesn't have much control over.
You should probably let the Met know. They seem to think there is one.
>UPDATE: Julian Assange arrest.
>Julian Assange, 47, (03.07.71) has today, Thursday 11 April, been further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities, at 10:53hrs after his arrival at a central London police station. This is an extradition warrant under Section 73 of the Extradition Act. He will appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates' Court later today (Thursday, 11 April).
It is an extradition case: the US have made an extradition request for conspiracy to hack (only). Assange is currently held for that as well as the Bail Act offence.
Not in London, but GP linked two examples (one in Macedonia and one in Italy). There are also many other examples of CIA-run extraordinary rendition[1].
However in these cases they were both done with co-operation from the local police (or military) and government as part of the US "war on terror" (abductions without local government approval have also happened in the past -- Mossad did this in the 1960s[2] -- but I don't recall a US example).
> The case was picked by the international media as one of the better-documented cases of extraordinary rendition carried out in a joint operation by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Italian Military Intelligence and Security Service (SISMI) [emphasis added]
A joint operation implies there was co-operation. I'm not saying the US has never conducted extraordinary rendition without local government involvement, just that the two examples aren't like that.
You are right then. I missed it because I was focusing on the way the Italian judiciary handled the case afterwards, which indicates the clandestine nature of the co-operation.
They've done it in countries to which they are way less "aligned" than the UK [0] and the UK has historically been the US's strongest partner on all things "national security/terrorism".
In that context, I wouldn't really be surprised if it's happened before, tho the blowback potential, if it should become public, would be massive so it will probably be kept under extremely tight wraps.
> Two other charges of molestation and unlawful coercion had to be dropped in 2015 because time had run out.
I expect better from the BBC. He was never charged with anything related to that investigation. There were no such charges to drop; this statement is factually inaccurate.
I suspect that the USA isn't keen to make him a martyr, and that key players recognize the minimal value in prosecuting him now. It will be interesting to see how they utilize this nearly year-long reprieve from Assange's political posturing.
I'm not sure many folks would think of him as a martyr. A lot of the previous good will about leaking important documents seems to have been washed away by Wikileak's crafting things to form their own narratives.
Having a bias and "crafting things to form their own narratives" are two very different things. Yes, Assange has an anti-HRC bias because of his beliefs (rightly or wrongly) of how she would act as president. Unfortunately, all reporting is biased. I would love it if WikiLeaks was a completely-unbiased news source but such a thing really doesn't exist. Publishing the Iraqi/Afghan war logs was an example of having an anti-war bias.
But all of the leaks were factual, no "crafting" to form a narrative involved. The DNC did undermine Bernie Sanders, she did say she had "private and public positions", and a whole host of other things. Just because they didn't publish what the RNC was doing doesn't make the leaks any less true or important.
Their own tweets about what they're going to release and their actual actions, their own characterization of the information, their choices not to release some information.
I also really don't think it is a difficult concept to understand that when choosing what to release and what you don't release you can greatly influence what is "true".
Let's say I was a military organization and I released some information that I killed 12 terrorists.... but I didn't say that I killed 200 civilians doing so. I could use your same argument "point out something I said that wasn't true"... but obviously I wasn't telling the whole story.
Civil disobedience doesn’t necessarily require rolling over when a power you’re standing against assets itself. He can maintain his legal innocence and moral standing if he wants to.
I’m sure he is fully aware that his actions have put his life in danger, but I’m also sure he doesn’t believe he should accept this fact without fighting.
It’s very debatable that that’s what the ‘civil’ means. Frankly, the term is ambiguous, and really that ambiguity seems to be intentional - it can mean many different things to many different people. I haven’t read Letter From An Alabama Jail, but a person’s civil disobedience doesn’t stop being civil disobedience because they don’t follow MLK’s formula.
To imply he was responsible or even warranted such an expensive operation is ludicrous. Second, it's bad - but not unexpected - that the US' secret arrest warrant, which it turns out did exist, was not factored in.
Assange is not responsible for deliberately skipping bail?
I'm somewhat shocked by the idea that people should be allowed to get away with breaking the law just because it would be expensive to catch them. I don't think many British people would agree with that attitude.
I imagine a few people a year skip bail, and I think it's fair to say most of them don't have a 16 million police operation thrown at them.
People also seem to be happy to forget the UN has found he has been arbitrarily detained [0]. The judge could have factored that in, she did not, probably to save face in light of a ridiculous 16 million pound police operation and pandering to US relations.
>I imagine a few people a year skip bail, and I think it's fair to say most of them don't have a 16 million police operation thrown at them.
So? It's only to be expected that more money will be spent on enforcing the law when it's being flagrantly violated in the public eye.
I think in reality you object to any attempt to hold Assange to account for skipping bail, and you'd be no happier if only, say, £10,000 had been spent in attempting to do so. If you don't object to the law being enforced, I don't think you can really object that "too much" money is being spent. It's up to the relevant authorities to figure out when enough is enough, financially speaking.
The UN finding was daft, as Assange was not detained at all, and hence obviously not arbitrarily detained. If you look into that in more detail, you'll find a dissenting view by one member of the relevant panel - presumably the only person with his or her head screwed on:
> The finding in Assange’s case is a surprising one. As a dissent by the working group’s Ukrainian member, Vladimir Tochilovsky, points out, there is a thin basis upon which to argue that Assange is detained in the Ecuadorean embassy. “Mr. Assange fled the bail in June 2012 and since then stays at the premises of the embassy using them as a safe haven to evade arrest,” Tochilovsky wrote. “Indeed, fugitives are often self-confined within the places where they evade arrest and detention.”
I will note that the "secret arrest warrant" (grand jury indictment) appears to have only existed for a little over a year; there is currently no evidence that one existed for the majority of Assange's residence in the embassy.
(the following in quote marks are direct quotes from the alleged victims.)
On 17 August, SW wrote "JA did not want to use a condom".
On 20 August, while at the police station, SW wrote that she "did not want to put any charges on Julian Assange" but that "the police were keen on getting their hands on him".
According to the statement she was "chocked (sic shocked) when they arrested him" because she "only wanted him to take [an STD test]".
On 21 August, SW wrote that she "did not want to accuse" Julian Assange "for anything" and that it was the "police who made up the charges (sic)"
On 23 August, SW wrote that it was the police, not herself, who started the whole thing.
On 26 August, AA wrote that they ought to sell their stories for money to a newspaper.
On 28 August, AA wrote that they had a contact on the biggest Swedish tabloid and SW wrote that their lawyer negotiated with the tabloid.
> If the Swedish allegations against Julian Assange were genuine and not simply a ruse to arrest him for extradition to the United States, where is the arrest warrant now from Sweden and what are the charges?
> Only the more minor allegation has passed the statute of limitations deadline. The major allegation, equivalent to rape, is still well within limits. Sweden has had seven years to complete the investigation and prepare the case. It is over two years since they interviewed Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. They have had years and years to collect all the evidence and prepare the charges.
> So where, Swedish prosecutors, are your charges? Where is your arrest warrant?
> Julian Assange has never been charged with anything in Sweden. He was merely “wanted for questioning”, a fact the MSM repeatedly failed to make clear. It is now undeniably plain that there was never the slightest intention of charging him with anything in Sweden. All those Blairite MPs who seek to dodge the glaring issue of freedom of the media to publish whistleblower material revealing government crimes, by hiding behind trumped-up sexual allegations, are left looking pretty stupid.
> [...]
[1] https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/04/so-where-is-...