Swedish authorities demanded he return to Sweden for interrogation and evidence collection, he refused with the justification that this shithole of a country would just hand him over to be tortured by AmeriKKKa, the Swedish State offered no guarantees or alternative routes for the investigation to take place, so the investigation was closed for lack of viable routes to investigate and prosecute it.
As far as I recall that is what happened in short.
Famously, the average punishment for sexual assault in Sweden is to be tortured to death in America. The Swedish parlament ruled so in 1897. Oddly specific law but what can you do about it? /s
Wasn't the case originally closed for lack of evidence? And then later reopened for reasons unspecified. Can't say what merit the case had, but seems obvious that the re-opening was for political reasons.
He may have done it, but the assumed reason it was pushed was a way to get him into a conviction to extricate to the USA.
As the people in power do not care about rape.
Anybody else remember an interview with him back in 2016/2017? where he said he withheld and released HRC's leaks timed to try and get Trump elected as he was a libertarian and felt that was the best way to bring about the collapse of the US?
Figured this was a good place to ask. Always found it was a bit weird the left rallied around him as much as it did. Critical support and all, but it always seemed to me a lot of what he was about got memory holed in the process.
Assange has always been a dick, but he's also a point to rally around
Self-preservation alone would be enough I'd argue.
It's a hideous and dangerous precedent even in a long and terrible history of dangerous precedents. And Assange was a relatively well connected, broadly (at the time, as far as most were concerned) apolitical figure. If the US had been able to walk through what they wanted, with little to no concern or push back from other states and legal groups, I'm certain they'd already be black bagging and trying left wing journalists and whistleblowers of much lower profiles in secret military courts.
I don't think this plea deal or any amount of public outcry is going to stop the likes of the CIA pulling that kind of thing if they really want or need to enough. But it does make it harder. It does indicate there's stakes for governments who go along with it. It does add a cost to that kind of activity. And it may have helped stop it becoming policy more broadly used.
The Long Ordeal of Julian Assange
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/20/the-long-ordeal-of-julian-assange/
For Assange, his trial has been trial by media. On August 20, 2010, when the Swedish police opened a “rape investigation,” they coordinated it, unlawfully, with the Stockholm tabloids. The front pages said Assange had been accused of the “rape of two women.” The word “rape” can have a very different legal meaning in Sweden than in Britain [or elsewhere]; a pernicious false reality became the news that went round the world.
Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant, saying, “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.”
Enter Claes Borgstrom, a highly contentious figure in the Social Democratic Party then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in Gothenberg. This was Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well, personally and politically.
On August 30, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and answered the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case.
At a press conference, Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed. The reporter cited one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied, “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.”
On the day that Marianne Ny reactivated the case, the head of Sweden’s military intelligence service – which has the acronym MUST — publicly denounced WikiLeaks in an article entitled “WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers [under US command in Afghanistan].”
Both the Swedish prime minister and foreign minister attacked Assange, who had been charged with no crime. Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAPO, had been told by its U.S. counterparts that U.S.-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements would be “cut off” if Sweden sheltered him.
For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the renewed “rape investigation” to take its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq “War Logs,” based on WikiLeaks’ disclosures, which Assange was to oversee in London.
Finally, he was allowed to leave. As soon as he had left, Marianne Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant and an Interpol “red alert” normally used for terrorists and dangerous criminals.
I didn't reread the entire article but this gives a brief outline.
half the people say it was a psyop and the other half say it was legit and he is not a great guy
I am torn between the feds weaponizing rape allegations and a bazinga being a rapist both being extremely common and likely.
Personally I think Assange should just be given a general pardon and fuck off to Russia like Snowden did.
It's both. He's a dick but at least one of the women expressly did not want charges pressed and they went and did anyway whcich makes me so fucking mad.
It’s possible he’s a piece of shit and deserves to be held accountable for sexual assault if true. But if possible, he should be convicted in a neutral, non-extradition country to minimize the possibility of the trial being a proxy for american revenge.
IIRC it was a honeypot setup, one of the alleged victims had ties to mossad
