Editorial Comment: The British should observe rule of law
Monday, 20 August 2012 00:00
Threats made by the British government against Ecuador after it granted asylum to whistleblower and WikiLeaks founder Julius Assange, who has been holed up at its London embassy for two months, are not only
an act of war, but
reduce to a sham the Vienna Convention, which all civilised nations adhere to.
What is the bigger picture which prompted London to issue such a threat that it would invoke the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act of 1987, claiming that it allows it to revoke the diplomatic immunity of an embassy on British soil thereby allowing it to arrest Assange?
Before Assange sought asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy, was he not on house arrest in London?
Why did the British government react the way it did after a developing country decided to grant him asylum? Would they have done the same if he had sought asylum in a European embassy?
We also wonder why Australia, which is usually quick to act on matters regarding its citizens’ welfare abroad, has not objected to London’s threats. Is Assange no longer an Australian citizen?
But Britain’s threats are not only a show of hypocrisy and double standards, but they are typical actions of a wounded animal.
The UK knows that it no longer enjoys imperial power so the best it can show its muscle is to use the diminished glory to make small nations squirm.
But it is the international reaction, which should tell the UK and its allies like the United States of America that it is not every nation that they can pulverise. Small as it is, Ecuador took time to study the Assange case. Even the pleas from Assange’s mother did not push them to arrive at a decision as soon as most people wanted.
Before granting him asylum, they weighed the pros and cons, and they knew that there would be some backlash, since they were dealing with a very controversial figure.
Thus Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said last Saturday that Britain’s threats to remove Assange from their embassy were not only “vulgar”, but that as long as he was president, his country would not accept such threats. He also described them as “inconsiderate and intolerable”.
It does not need Assange for the British and Americans to realise that in as much as they want to uphold their sovereignty and self-determination, so do other nations too, irrespective of the power they yield on the international arena.
They might believe that they have the right to get whatever they want, and that whoever is in their way should be eliminated, but Ecuador and other civilised members of the international community have shown them that the Vienna Convention was enacted to create order, not chaos.
South American nations in particular have stood united behind Ecuador and are willing to talk about the Assange case as a regional bloc.
It is clear that there are more strands than the fears that if Assange is extradited to Sweden, there are greater chances that he will be send to the United States for Assange’s popularity does not arise from the alleged sexual assault, but from the fact that he became the world’s well-known whistle-blower who embarrassed the US administration by publishing diplomatic cables and military logs which he received from US citizens.
If the world had kept quiet, this was going to be another attack on sovereignty and a selective application of the Vienna Convention.
Thus the precedent that Britain wants to set is dangerous for international relations — dangerous for itself and the international community as a whole. Every country would apply their laws the way the British wanted to.
Many citizens from various parts of the world have sought asylum in the United Kingdom, some of them using fabricated justifications.
Would the United Kingdom want those countries to attack it or they would want the letter and spirit of the law to be applied?
At the end of the day, we ask who the victor is in this saga that is not likely to end soon?
Why has Assange become the victim when all that he did was to publish material that was given to him? How about the other media organisations like The New York Times? Why are they not being hounded as well?
By over-reacting, Britain was unaware that it will be sitting on the Assange case for some time, and that the threats they issued would not only dent their already damaged image, but that it would be seen as the United States’ proxy in attacking journalists’ freedom of expression, choice and association.
We are glad that small countries like Ecuador now realise that the Western powers, who claim to be champions of democracy, are actually hypocrites of the highest order.
Zimbabwe has been subjected to worse things for over a decade for alleged human rights violations and lack of rule of law, but we all know that this was all a farce because the real reason Harare has been under illegal Western sanctions is that it demanded to control its natural resources.
Labels: EQUADOR, JULIAN ASSANGE
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The Dirty War on WikiLeaks is Now Trial by Media in Sweden
by John Pilger
Global Research, March 12, 2012
War by media, says current military doctrine, is as important as the battlefield. This is because the real enemy is the public at home, whose manipulation and deception are essential for starting an unpopular colonial war. Like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks on Iran and Syria require a steady drip-effect on readers’ and viewers’ consciousness. This is the essence of a propaganda that rarely speaks its name.
To the chagrin of many in authority and the media, WikiLeaks has torn down the façade behind which rapacious western power and journalism collude. This was an enduring taboo; the BBC could claim impartiality and expect people to believe it. Today, war by media is increasingly understood by the public, as is the trial by media of WikiLeaks’ founder, and editor Julian Assange.
Assange will soon know if the Supreme Court in London is to allow his appeal against extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual misconduct most of which were dismissed by a senior prosecutor in Stockholm and do not constitute a crime in Britain. On bail for 16 months, tagged and effectively under house arrest, he has been charged with nothing. His “crime” has been an epic form of investigative journalism: revealing to millions of people the lies and machinations of their politicians and officials and the barbarism of criminal war conducted in their name. For this, as the American historian William Blum points out, “dozens of members of the American media and public officials have called for [his] execution or assassination”. If he is passed from Sweden to the US, an orange jump suit, shackles and a fabricated unconstitutional indictment await him. And there go all who dare challenge rogue America.
In Britain, Assange’s trial by media has been a campaign of character assassination, often cowardly and inhuman, reeking of jealousy of the courageous outsider, while books of perfidious hearsay have been published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or resuscitated on the assumption that he is too poor to sue. In Sweden, this trial by media has become, according to one observer there, “a full-on mobbing campaign with the victim denied a voice”. Fot more than 18 months, the salacious Expressen, Sweden’s equivalent of the Sun, has been fed the ingredients the ingredients of a smear by Stockholm police.
Expressen is the megaphone of the Swedish right, including the Conservative Party which dominates the governing coalition. Its latest “scoop” is an unsubstantiated story about “the great WikiLeaks war against Sweden”. On 6 March, Expressen claimed, with no evidence, that WikiLeaks was running a conspiracy against Sweden and its foreign minister Carl Bildt. The pique is understandable. In a 2009 US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, the Swedish elite’s vaunted reputation for neutrality is exposed as sham. (Cable title: “Sweden puts neutrality in the Dustbin of History.”) Another US diplomatic cable reveals that “the extent of [Sweden’s military and intelligence] co-operation [with Nato] is not widely known” and unless kept secret “would open up the government to domestic criticism”.
Swedish foreign policy is largely controlled by Bildt, whose obeisance to the US goes back to his defence of the Vietnam war and includes his leading role in George W. Bush’s Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He retains close ties to Republican Party extreme right figures such as the disgraced Bush spin doctor, Karl Rove. It is known that his government has “informally” discussed Assange’s onward extradition to Washington, which has made its position clear. A secret Pentagon document describes US intelligence plans to destroy WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity” with “threats of exposure [and] criminal prosecution”.
In much of the Swedish media, proper journalistic scepticism about the allegations against Assange is overwhelmed by a defensive jingoism, as if the nation’s honour is defiled by revelations about dodgy coppers and politicians, a universal breed. On Swedish Public TV “experts” debate not the country’s deepening militarist state, and its service ti Nato and Washington, but the state of Assange’s mind and his “paranoia”. A headline in Tuesday’s Aftonbladet declared: “Assange’s moral collapse”. The article by Dan Josefsson suggests Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks’ alleged source, may not be sane and attacks Assange for not protecting Manning from himself. That the source was anonymous and no connection has been demonstrated between Assange and Manning and that Aftonbladet, WikiLeaks’ Swedish partner, had published the same leaks undeterred, was not mentioned – censorship by omission.
Ironically, this circus has performed under cover of some of the world’s most enlightened laws protecting journalists, which attracted Assange to Sweden in 2010 to establish a base for WikiLeaks. Should his extradition be allowed, and with Damocles swords of malice and a vengeful Washington hanging over his head, who will protect him and provide the justice to which we all have a right?
For more information on John Pilger, visit his website at www.johnpilger.com
Labels: JULIAN ASSANGE, PRESS FREEDOM, SWEDEN, WIKILEAKS
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WikiLeaks cable leak ‘irresponsible’, says Australia
Thursday, 01 September 2011 02:00
SYDNEY. - Australia's attorney general has described WikiLeaks as "incredibly irresponsible" for publishing the names of 23 Australians accused by security services of having links to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The cable, emanating from the US embassy in Canberra in January 2010, recommended that
11 Australians be placed on a no-fly list and a further
12 on a terrorism watch list.
"The publication of any information that could compromise Australia's national security - or inhibit the ability of intelligence agencies to monitor potential threats - is incredibly irresponsible," said the attorney general, Robert McClelland, breaking the government's longstanding position not to comment on WikiLeaks' material.
"On occasions in the past, WikiLeaks has decided to redact identifying features where security operations or safety could be put at risk," he said.
"This has not occurred in this case."
WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, hit back, saying McClelland "bemoans having his department being publicly caught ratting out 23 Australians to the US embassy without due process".
Assange said if McClelland was unhappy about being "caught out" perhaps he should consider cancelling his Australian passport again.
"It (the passport) has not, after all, proven terribly useful to me in the last 267 days of my detention without charge. Or perhaps he could do us all a favour, cancel his own passport and deport himself?" said Assange.
The one common element linking those named in the classified cable is an alleged connection with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, now considered to be one of its most deadly franchises.
Many are accused of having direct contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born cleric allegedly connected to high-profile attacks.
Many of those named in the classified cable are either related by blood or marriage, including a mother and her two sons.
A lawyer acting for her dismissed the allegations as baseless in an interview with a Sydney newspaper. Others named have also rejected any wrongdoing.
McClelland said Yemen had become an increasingly important hub for al-Qaeda-associated terrorist activity, particularly as al-Qaeda encountered mounting pressure in Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Iraq.
"Australian authorities are working together with international partners to identify and mitigate threats, including by preventing Australians to travel overseas to undertake terrorism-related activity," he said. - guardian.co.uk.
Labels: AUSTRALIA, JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS
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WikiLeaks — Why shoot the messenger?
By Julian Assange
WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks. In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."
His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch’s expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.
I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.
These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.
WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?
Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.
People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.
If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.
WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain’s The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.
Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US Special Forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden"; a Republican Bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly.
An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister’s Office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.
And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Julia Gillard and her government. The powers of the Australian government appear to be fully at the disposal of the US as to whether to cancel my Australian passport, or to spy on or harass WikiLeaks supporters. The Australian Attorney-General is doing everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US.
Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.
We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn’t want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.
Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality.
The prime minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.
Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a probably false chorus with the State Department: "You’ll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can’t be both. Which is it?
It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.
US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US Congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. Nato in Kabul told CNN it couldn’t find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.
But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:
l The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.
l King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US to attack Iran.
l Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran’s nuclear programme stopped by any means available.
l Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests".
l Sweden is a covert member of Nato and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.
l The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.
In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained Press can effectively expose deception in government". The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.
l Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. He has since been arrested and is in custody in Britain. This article is reproduced from www.theaustralian.com.au
Labels: JULIAN ASSANGE, PRESS FREEDOM, WIKILEAKS
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Assange besieged: Making a mockey of real crime of rape
by Israel Shamir & Paul Bennett
07/12/2010 00:00:00
THE plot thickens as our favorite hero of the Matrix; our own “Captain Neo” Julian Assange, faces danger yet again. When we last parted company with the legendary founder of WikiLeaks, he was breathing a sigh of relief after dodging spurious double-rape charges. The complaints were dropped, and our hero was free to roam the globe once again.
But soap opera plots are repetitive; the story was quickly recycled and now our brave captain is again under threat of being castrated on Stockholm’s Stora Torget, or whatever the latest craven penalty is for molesting sacred Nordic virgins in a land where Vikings once ruled.
In other words, the farcical rape charges have once again been leveled against the Pentagon’s Public Enemy Number One. Julian Assange now stands accused of: (1) not calling a young woman the day after he had enjoyed a night with her, (2) asking her to pay for his bus ticket, (3) having unsafe sex, and (4) participating in two brief affairs in the course of one week.
These four minor charges, worthy of Leopold Bloom’s mock trial in the Nightown chapter in Ulysses, have been shaken and fermented until they were able to cook up a half-baked rape case! Step down Iran; Sweden takes the cake! While Iran is notorious for unyielding conservative sentences against adulterers, Sweden shows us what the liberal side of the coin looks like as she invents criminal charges for failing to telephone and for careless use of preservatives in consensual acts of affection. Worse, they are purposely conflating consensual sex with rape for political purposes. In this, Sweden makes a mockery of the very real crime of violent rape.
The Swedes have a practical reason behind their deceptively slapstick police-work. The WikiLeaks founder, pursued by malevolent forces around the world, sought momentary relief beneath Sweden’s reputation as a bastion of free speech. But the moment Julian sought the protection of Swedish media law, the CIA immediately threatened to discontinue intelligence sharing with SEPO, the Swedish Secret Service. That got the present right-wing government out of its chair, as it does everything it can to bury the Prime Minister Olof Palme’s legacy of careful neutrality.
The suspicion of whether the rape farce is an orchestrated campaign, might be illuminated by these facts: (1) Sweden sent troops to Afghanistan, (2) Assange’s WikiLeaks published the Afghan War Diary which exposed this cruel and needless neo-colonial campaign. Furthermore, the expected release of new secret materials by WikiLeaks might just influence the general elections on September 19. Perhaps that explains the sudden police raid on a WikiLeaks server.
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An American Tea Party website the RightwingNews.com suggested that “a CIA agent with a sniper rifle rattle a bullet around [Assange’s] skull the next time he appears in public as a warning”. Rest assured that the CIA is wiser than the Tea Party. They at least have learned the lesson of Che Guevara. Nowadays they ruin a rebel’s reputation instead of wasting a bullet. They won’t raise Assange up to become a martyr, they simply use his own erstwhile allies to reduce him to a laughing stock. They stain him with opprobrium.
It is much more certain and final than the marksman’s shot. History is witness to their growing efficiency in using this tactic. In the 70’s, they could only bring themselves to say that Philip Agee was a womanizer and a drunkard. Nowadays they do not stint at charges of pedophilia, for example to humiliate Scott Ritter for failing to go along with George W Bush’s charade of Iraqi WMD. As you might expect, the rape campaign against Assange might be just an initial volley. Perhaps they will decide he is a pedophile too. The unspoken threat is enough to send some faint-hearted supporters of WikiLeaks scurrying for cover.
The bullet can always come later, once the victim has been successfully isolated by the smear campaign. The Gospels tell us that hardly anyone followed Jesus to Golgotha, though just a week earlier the people of Jerusalem hailed Him with hosannas. A Jewish anti-Gospel explains that this was the result of a successful smear campaign managed by Judas, a surprisingly modernist reading for an early medieval story.
For a smear that really sticks, you need to get it from an ex-apostle. An accusation by a Caiaphas does not impress. If you are targeting a leftist, hire leftists. For example, Trotskyites were willing and useful tools against the Communists. Pseudo Anti-Zionists are currently being used to hamstring a genuine Pro-Palestinian movement. Who are the Judases of this campaign against our Julian?
* An anonymous group claiming to be “Wikileaks insiders” uploaded a new site full of “revelations” about Assange’s past and present, claiming he lives in luxury in South Africa on donated funds – though he appears almost daily in Swedish media and police reports.
* Another ex-apostle is the Icelander politician Birgitta Jonsdottir, who is misrepresented as a “Wikileaks spokesperson”. She called on Assange “to step down” and leave Wikileaks to drift without his guidance – as if WikiLeaks is somehow separate from Assange.
* The pseudo-progressive organization Reporters Sans Frontières attacked Assange for endangering the lives of innocent American secret agents in Afghanistan. Despite its ‘leftist’ terminology, RSF is a private organization drawing funds from US government sources aiming to destabilize Cuba. It is connected to Cuban émigrés in Miami.
* Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes that the group is connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner whose CIA ties were exposed here. Note that Ardin was deported from Cuba for subversive activities. In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter. Wikipedia quotes Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo as saying that “the so-called Ladies in White defend the terrorism of the United States.”
However we do not have to accept the single-bullet theory. Life is more complicated than that. In addition to her anti-Castro, pro-CIA streak, Anna Ardin apparently indulges in her favorite sport of male-bashing. A Swedish forum reports that she is an expert on sexual harassment and the male “master suppression techniques”. Once, as she was lecturing, a male student in the audience looked at his notes instead of staring at her.
Anna Ardin reported him for sexual harassment because he discriminated against her for being a woman and because she claimed he made use of the male “master suppression technique” in trying to make her feel invisible. As soon as the student learned about her complaint, he contacted her to apologize and explain himself. Anna Ardin’s response was to once again report him for sexual harassment, again because he was using the “master suppression technique”, this time to belittle her feelings.
Ardin is apparently involved with a “Christian” Social-Democrat group. The Swedish church has a precious few male priests: what was once the struggle for female equality has ended up with men being effectively removed from service. Nowadays very few Swedish male-female couples marry in the church, or get married at all; most Swedish gay couples, however, are proud to become “man and wife” in the church. This is all good news for wealthy Swedes: deserted churches sell their properties (once enjoyed by the community) to be fenced off by the nouveau riche created by the latest privatization wave. So much for Swedish social democracy!
The second accuser, Sofia Wilen, 26, is Anna’ friend. Here is a video of an Assange press conference where one can see the girls together. Those present at the conference marveled at her groupie-like behavior. Though rock stars are used to girls dying to have sex with them, it is much less common in the harsh field of political journalism. Sofia worked hard to bed Assange, according to her own confession; she was also the first to complain to police. She is little known and her motives are vague. Why might a young woman (who shares her life with American artist Seth Benson) pursue such a sordid political adventure?
The brilliant Israeli writer Gilad Atzmon describes, in his funny novel My One and Only Love, how the secret services employ young ladies for honey-traps. Is this the case here? Perhaps it is nothing more than a case of gold digging. New legislation, in Sweden and all over Europe, has made men extremely vulnerable to extortion scams of this sort.
A young Swedish woman, 26 (her name withheld) succeeded in winning over a million dollars during the course of one vacation in Greece, as reported by the Daily Telegraph. She complained of being raped. Four men were arrested, their names disclosed, and their jobs jeopardized. She went back home a millionaire, her sacred identity safely preserved. Her success begs imitation: according to an EU report, Sweden has twenty times more rape complaints than were generated by the hot-blooded Italians. Most are dismissed right away, and justly so.
Rape is a horrible crime, and it should not be stretched to encompass minor misdemeanors and moral failings (like the failure to give an encouraging phone call the next day). Tellingly, when the complainant’s advocate was asked why the young women were unsure whether they were raped, he replied: “They are not lawyers”. Rape (like murder) is a crime that one needs no lawyers to understand. Rape is a capital crime: if the rape charges are proved false, then certainly the complainant should be charged with criminal defamation.
As for Julian Assange, we need him. We need our captain Neo, whether chaste or womanizer, in order to uncover the secret doings of our governments behind the Matrix. For our own sakes, we must all do our part to protect him from castrating feminists and secret services alike.
This article was originally published on www.counterpunch.org. Israel Shamir can be reached atadam@israelshamir.net
Labels: JULIAN ASSANGE, NEOLIBERALISM, RAPE, WIKILEAKS
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WikiLeaks founder arrested
by Reuters
07/12/2010 00:00:00
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange handed himself in to British police on Tuesday after Sweden issued a warrant for his arrest over allegations of sex crimes, London's Metropolitan Police said. Assange, whose WikiLeaks website is at the center of a row over the release of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, was arrested under a European Arrest Warrant.
Swedish prosecutors want to question the 39-year-old Australian about allegations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. He denies the allegations.
Assange was due to appear before City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in London later on Tuesday when a date for an extradition hearing is likely to be set. This must take place within 21 days of his arrest.
"He is accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010," London police said in a statement.
Assange has spent much of his time in Sweden and earlier this year was accused of sexual misconduct by two female Swedish WikiLeaks volunteers.
This led Swedish prosecutors to open, then drop, then re-open an investigation into the allegations. The crime he is suspected of is the least severe of three categories of rape, carrying a maximum of four years in jail.
Police said Assange was arrested by officers from its extradition unit at about 9.30 a.m. (0930 GMT) after he appeared by appointment at a London police station.
His whereabouts had been previously undisclosed.
If a judge is satisfied his extradition is warranted and will not breach his human rights, then he will order the WikiLeaks founder to be extradited, although Assange can appeal against that decision to higher courts.
Assange's Swedish lawyer has said his client would fight any extradition and believed foreign powers were influencing Sweden.
WikiLeaks has angered the U.S. government and others across the world by releasing details of 250,000 diplomatic cables it had obtained.
Zimbabwe ranks on the top 10 of the most discussed countries on the cables, ahead of Pakistan and Afghanistan -- hotbeds of terror, according to Washington. WikiLeaks says there are 2,998 cables that relate to Zimbabwe, 39 of which are categorised “secret”, 1,542 as “classified” and 1,417 “unclassified”.
Only two "classified" files on Zimbabwe have been released so far, and the website says it could take months for all the cables to go online.
The first cable on Zimbabwe was a 2007 memo to Washington by the United Staes' outgoing ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell, in which he gave his appraisal of Zimbabwe's political leaders.
His pointed criticism of then opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as a "flawed figure" drew fire from his MDC party which said he was out of touch. The criticism has bolstered President Robert Mugabe's supporters who say the MDC leader is unfit to govern.
Asange's arrest is not expected to halt the leaks.
Labels: JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS
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