[btilly]

The wrong event may have been cited, but the timeline was special. As https://www.npr.org/2019/04/11/712306713/12-years-of-disrupt... verifies, here is the order of events.

April, a famous video was released from inside a chopper that was mistakenly shooting journalists. May, Chelsea Manning was arrested for that. July, 75,000 documents were released about the Afghan war. August, the rape charges are filed. October, 400,000 documents about the Iraq war. November, the cable leak.

So the cable leaks did not come first. However there was lots of other stuff already released that could have motivated the US here.

And it is also quite possible that concern over the cable leaks was the motivation. You see, the US knew about everything that Chelsea Manning had already released, and had reason to believe that Wikileaks had it all and was releasing things in stages for maximum damage. (It turns out that a drip drip of bad news has much greater emotional impact on people than a single torrent.) Therefore they had the motivation to find ways to put pressure on Assange to NOT leak what he had. And what they did, didn't work.

Moving on, please check your assumptions about whether he should be held responsible. It is my belief that he is an example of selective enforcement of laws that should be more broadly enforced. Therefore my belief that he was targeted for other reasons is not in conflict with my belief that he should have been targeted. I just think that it is wrong that it takes a guy embarrassing a major military for the police to take a woman's complaints seriously.

[ivarb]

"Moving on, please check your assumptions about whether he should be held responsible. It is my belief that he is an example of selective enforcement of laws that should be more broadly enforced. " Okay... I live in Sweden and my view is not that he is a victim of selective enforcement. All rape allegations reported to the police are investigated in Sweden as far as I know. Unfortunately it is usually hard to find supporting evidence and it is usually word against word, which often is not enough for conviction. That his case was open for so long, and that the prosecutor found a reason to reopen the case (on request of the victim) does indicate that there might be substantial evidence.