Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Because it was a shady "character assassination" attempt without real standing in the first place...

  "*The woman of whom Mr. Assange is accused of the offence 
  of "lesser rape" (a technical term in Swedish law) sent an 
  SMS to a friend saying that she "did not want to accuse JA 
  [of] anything" and "it was the police who made up the 
  charges". The other woman tweeted in 2013 that she had 
  never been raped. Both women’s testimonies say that they 
  consented to the sex. A senior prosecutor already dismissed 
  the ’rape’ accusation, saying that there were no grounds 
  for accusing Mr. Assange on this basis. But a third 
  prosecutor, lobbied by a politician who was running for 
  attorney general, took over the investigation and 
  resurrected the accusations against Mr. Assange.* [1]"

That's what happens when you mess with the big powers (and of course it doesn't stop to the "politician who was running for attorney general" being a single bad apple).

[1] https://justice4assange.com/

Strangely, the women's lawyers had a slightly different view of their desire to pursue the matter through the court than the Assange campaign to prevent the matter going to trial.

It stretches credulity to argue that responsibility for the affair lies more with the "big powers" than the decision of two apparently major fans to report him to the police after comparing notes on his sexual behaviour. And suggesting the "bad apple" most at fault for the whole affair is somehow the second prosecutor to look at the case is just unhinged.

Ultimately it was pursued then dropped then pursued then dropped because murky allegations of sexual impropriety are difficult to make up stand up in court, even when the alleged perpetrator isn't an articulate celebrity with an excellent defence team and the accusers desperately want him off the streets. If the state wanted to railroad Assange, he'd have been in jail a lot quicker on much more straightforward charges without the opportunity to change jurisdictions and identify new angles to try to dismiss the whole thing on a technicality.

> If the state wanted to railroad Assange, he'd have been in jail a lot quicker on much more straightforward charges

Such as?

Aside from obscure statutes to do with privacy, computer misuse etc he may or may not (probably not) have been actually guilty of under Swedish law, I'd have thought anti-terrorism legislation (fewer legal safeguards, more reason to seize Wikileaks' digital assets) would have provided the perfect opportunity to put him out of action, as well as being the basis for all these renditions Assange-supporters keep referring to.

If a government conspiracy really wants someone in jail, it's a lot easier to make a proper false allegation - of pretty much any sort - with evidence under their control rather than try to force an existing totally unexpected and rather wobbly one to stand up.

On the other hand, prosecutors and police investigators regularly have differences in opinions about the merits of pursuing borderline sexual misconduct or domestic violence accusations with unenthusiastic witnesses without any semblance of a conspiracy whatsoever.

You'd still have to extradite. I don't see that happening in those cases, for one the EU in general (even the UK, or at least that was the situation in the past, May is an unknown quantity in this respect) has a dim view of the 'war on terror' as it is perpetrated by the US, for another the UK is pretty good when it comes to being consistent in their application of the law. More so than Sweden in any case.

I would also argue the international sentiments since 2012 towards the US's "war on terror" are radically different than they were in 2001-2003. In eg December 2001 the US leaning on a friendly European country saying "but 9/11" packed a much larger punch than the US standing on the corpses of Iraq & Afghanistan saying the same thing.

I mean, I know the US burned a lot of international goodwill invading a country (Iraq) that was completely un-involved with the attack on false pretenses (weapons of mass destruction) while ignoring the mastermind (bin Laden) for a decade, all the while more-or-less flaunting an illegal off-shore prison where hundreds of people, some of whom were definitely innocent and many of whom weren't particularly guilty, in inhuman conditions, but try to remember what things were like immediately after the attacks.

Back in 2001-2003, America was still the good guys, and we'd just had two 100-story skyscrapers in our largest city destroyed in a morning, with thousands of people killed. Hell, at the time we thought it was tens of thousands. Other countries - Sweden and Italy and everyone else - weren't bending over backwards to help us extraordinarily rend people because the CIA has magic powers and can do anything they want, anywhere they want. They were complying because, well, shit, 9/11.

Not since World War II did the US have that much goodwill and they managed to squander all that and then some in a very few years.

You could very well argue that Bin Laden won, especially because I highly doubt a guy like Trump would be able to win the presidency if 9/11 never happened and Trump is doing more damage to the United States' interests at home and abroad than the last 6 presidents combined.

All that's still missing is a war.

>Strangely, the women's lawyers had a slightly different view of their desire to pursue the matter through the court than the Assange campaign to prevent the matter going to trial.

You mean the politician-lawyer Claes Borgstrom who was subsequently fired by the woman in question because he wasn't representing her and "he just wanted to be attached to a high profile case"?

Yeah, nothing suspicious about that.

>It stretches credulity to argue that responsibility for the affair lies more with the "big powers" than the decision of two apparently major fans to report him to the police

"They are trying to arrest him on suspicion of XYZ … It is definitely a fit-up… Their timings are too convenient right after Cablegate." -- GCHQ officer, "straining credulity" with their wacky conspiracy theory.

>And suggesting the "bad apple" most at fault for the whole affair is somehow the second prosecutor to look at the case is just unhinged.

Because cases being dropped and then picked up again suddenly by people much higher up the political food chain isn't at all suspicious. That's just unhinged...

>If the state wanted to railroad Assange, he'd have been in jail a lot quicker on much more straightforward charges

Aside from the whole "first amendment" problem which prevented the straightforward charges, rape is a much better charge than treason if you can make it stick. It kills his credibility and prevents him from being martyred (like happened to Chelsea Manning).

> You mean the politician-lawyer Claes Borgstrom who was subsequently fired by the woman in question because he wasn't representing her and "he just wanted to be attached to a high profile case"? >Yeah, nothing suspicious about that

No. I mean Elizabeth Massi Fritz, the lawyer who is currently making statements on their behalf that it is "a scandal that a suspected rapist can avoid the judicial system and thus avoid a trial in court" and that despite the prosecutor's latest decision her client "can't change her view that Assange has exposed her to a rape", having frequently issued statements calling for a trial over the past few years.

The fact they sacked Borgstrom and hired someone else to continue to pursue the case against Assange actually undermines the Assangist theory that actually the whole thing was a conspiracy by the authorities that his accusers had no agency in.

Yes, it is entirely unhinged (or staggeringly ignorant of how legal systems work) to suggest that a case based entirely on apparently-reluctant witness testimony being reopened on appeal by a more senior prosecutor after an appeal from the hitherto-reluctant accusers' lawyer and interview with the suspect is more likely to be evidence of a conspiracy than a properly functioning legal system.

>actually undermines the Assangist theory that actually the whole thing was a conspiracy by the authorities that his accusers had no agency in.

The thing being a conspiracy and his accusers having agency in it, are orthogonal matters.

Apropos of anything else, let's not pretend that a press release from "justice4assange.com" is going to be any kind of impartial, let alone be used as an authoritative source as to the thoughts and motivations of his accusers. That stains credibility, to say the least.

>than the decision of two apparently major fans to report him to the police after comparing notes on his sexual behaviour

OTOH, it stretches my credulity that the decision lies to the actual fans, with no external motive/pressure on them.

>If the state wanted to railroad Assange, he'd have been in jail a lot quicker on much more straightforward charges

Yes, but character assassination works better even if you have no real charges. It even keeps working after/if one is cleared...

I meant the justification for dropping it from the Swedes

Its a verdict in the Supreme court that regulates how long you can keep warrant for detention out that lead to this, but I'm not an lawyer so there maybe details to this that I miss.

Do you have a source for this verdict?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com