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Wikileaks founder (no longer) sought for rape
CuddlyCuteKitten
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Didn't see a thread about it. But Julian Assange is now officially under arrest in his absence for two separate counts of rape in Sweden. They are supposed to have happened during his visit last week when he among other things placed the servers hosting his site with the "PirateParty" political movement in Sweden in order to protect them.
He supposedly met both women because of his business in Sweden. He allegedly met the first one during the night between Saturday and Sunday last week and the other one in a small town just outside Stockholm Tuesday morning.
Both women knew each other and thus talked. They then decided to go to the police in order to consult them on what to do. They were supposedly scared and didn't want to press charges and want to stay out of the investigation.
Julian Assange left the country on Wedsneday according to sources and Swedish police have no idea where he is right now.
Edit:
- Tinfoil hat on or
- Guy feeling overentitled going on a power trip?
At least there's a bit of a debate on that on Swedish web forums. The justice system is fairly transparent here so I guess we'll know in time.
Edit2: According to Julian who's now made his first comments the charges are false and just a dirty trick to harm his credibility.
Also sources (in Swedish): http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/anklagelserna-skakar-wikileaks-1.1157157
He supposedly met both women because of his business in Sweden. He allegedly met the first one during the night between Saturday and Sunday last week and the other one in a small town just outside Stockholm Tuesday morning.
Both women knew each other and thus talked. They then decided to go to the police in order to consult them on what to do. They were supposedly scared and didn't want to press charges and want to stay out of the investigation.
Julian Assange left the country on Wedsneday according to sources and Swedish police have no idea where he is right now.
Edit:
- Tinfoil hat on or
- Guy feeling overentitled going on a power trip?
At least there's a bit of a debate on that on Swedish web forums. The justice system is fairly transparent here so I guess we'll know in time.
Edit2: According to Julian who's now made his first comments the charges are false and just a dirty trick to harm his credibility.
Also sources (in Swedish): http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/anklagelserna-skakar-wikileaks-1.1157157
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaow - Felicia, SPFT2:T
CuddlyCuteKitten on
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Not because I think it's impossible that Julian Assange committed rape, but because this seems like hell of a coincidence, given that various intelligence agencies have been publically screaming for his head. They basically need three things:
A means to get Assange arrested and into the justice system, thus restricting his movements and giving the US (for example) the means to apply pressure to have him transferred into their custody.
A means to neuter the ability of Assange to exercise his now-infamous "insurance", which could be accomplished by finding a means to take the moral high ground if he does. If he was arrested for rape, but was to be extradited for espionage, any release of that information could easily be spun as "Man blackmails Governments to get away with rape."
A means to persuade the public to support draconian punitive measures and wide-reaching laws aimed at preventing Wikileaks, or anything like it, from operating, which follows pretty naturally from the second point.
It is incredibly difficult to believe that a man who knows himself to be a target would make this kind of mistake.
EDIT: Also, when people inevitably figure out who the women are, and start digging, there will be one or two that cross the line into harassment, at which point the authorities (any of them) can spin that as "Wikileaks supporters try to silence innocent victims".
This does seem questionable, yes. That said, it would seem to be an enormous risk for any intelligence agency to take – your point about the insurance file necessitates that no one who holds the key decides to make life difficult for those it implicates.
How this shakes out promises to be very interesting, though.
Not much information available at the moment, so guess one can only wait for more to be revealed.
I think its completly possible that he did rape those women. Just because I found his leaks on the Afghan war interesting, does not mean he can't be a complete douchbaggy asshat. Its human nature.
That being said, Japan brings up a fairly good point. This is exactly the sort of thing a good intelligence agency would try to discredit and silence a public opponent.
If the accusations aren't true, the two women are terrible for what they're doing.
So not the CIA then? :P
This is suspiciously odd to be honest, and indeed it wouldn't surprise me either if this was an attempt by a Government to shut him down. I'm looking at you America.
and they knew each other?
not likely
Exactly, it's like "Holy shit, that was great. I'm gonna rape another one!"
And that other one just happens to know the last one?
And he did this within a week?
Somehow I can't see this guy as a serial rapist.
On the other hand that sounds like a fairly shitty CIA undermine-the-enemy operation too.
"Will people think it's weird these chicks openly communicate with one another?"
"Look man that is above my paygrade, shit rolls downhill."
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
think about what sheriff joe arpaio does
100 criminal charges thrown at his political opponent
The swedish source is legit, dn.se usually don't publish things without basis.
"Varför dessa anklagelser kommer är vid denna tidpunkt en intressant fråga. Jag har inte blivit kontaktad av polisen. Påståendena är falska."
"Why these accusations come at this point is an interesting question. I haven't been contacted by the police. The accusations are false" Is the initial comment from julian assange in an e-mail according to the article currently up. Apparently the wikileaks twitter is active about it now.
There isn't much more information about it at this point, but that the accusation do certainly seem to be real. If they are ture on the other hand is a hard question, the timing is simply too convenient.
Considering he met both of them through his work (probably the people who helped organised the trip or one of the two political parties who's functions he was attending) I don't think it's strange at all that they knew eachother. The question is of course WHO are these women. If they are two political activists in a leftist party who despises the USA it would make a CIA coupe far less likely.
The chances of this being a smear by an intelligence agency, particularly one so intimately linked to Assange such as the CIA, are pretty slim. These things, when they do turn out to be smears, tend to be one of three things:
1. Freelance nuts who disagree with target X, have seen too many spy movies, believe that the kind of stuff that you are talking about here actually happens and decide to do it themselves.
2. Local law enforcement agencies, or in some countries, tinpot government agencies, who are working on the same principle.
3. Bullshit media reports / setups.
There are government agencies in the former Soviet Union, China, Israel and the wider mid-East who do this stuff regularly. Assange is unlikely to have been targeted by them. Though there are plenty of reports of the CIA and European agencies doing this stuff by (generally) paranoids without any actual knowledge, the laws governing them are far too restrictive to allow it.
My bet would be on a) an element of truth, b) media mis-reporting combined with c) overzealous local law enforcement prompted by pressure from a Swedish government embarassed by Assange / Wikileaks using Sweden as a legal safe haven to operate against their allies.
Exactly.
Also the woman apparently did not want to press charges, but naturally it still went up the flagpole due to the nature of the crimes.
That's not what I'm concerned about. I'm more concerned about the utter lack of information and investigation.
Well yeah, hopefully there will be some clarity to be had in the next few days. Seems the new broke at most a few hours ago, so guess we'll get a lot more later today.
Really stupid of him to do it if it's true though, makes no sense at all.
Or perhaps the media fallout is more important than actually getting a conviction.
Which is probably why it took several days for the media to get a hold of it. Good timing for him with leaving the country.
What official confirmation?
http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/wikileak-founder-accused-of-rape_5167921.svd <- English link, swedish newspaper.
On-call prosecutor confirms arrest charges against Assange.
The prosecutors office responded to an inquiry by stating that yes they had issued a warrant but there would be no further comments due to the sensitive nature of the case.
At times like this it helps to remember Gary Hart, who dared the press to follow him around and see that he wasn't having an extramarital affair.
A few weeks later they got photos of him on a boat with a model. Quelle surprise. Ego is an amazing thing.
As far as conspiracy theories go, I find this more plausible than CIA actually trying to smear him.
But I also find it quite plausible that he's a rapist.
Not by being anonymous. I have no doubt their identity will leak eventually though and it will probably wreck their lives.
Not impossible, but really, really, really unlikely.
It's like stealing half the money in your coworker's purse. Who would do that sort of thing? The incredulity of the act is a defense in and of itself.
From a conspiracy angle, the question is whether it is more likely that a government agency would do something like this, or if he would do something like this, counting on that defense.
From a practicality standpoint, the better question is whether he's that big of an ass, or if the girls are just bitches.
I'm looking forward to seeing where this case goes. Either way, should be interesting to see how it plays out. Especially on the conservative networks.
But it's probably at a time like this when it'd get to your head. So for a long time you've been an outsider, nobody's known or cared about your exploits. then BAM, within a year you're an international celebrity and you have women go up and tell you how much they admire you. Drunk on power, you try to make a move, but gets rejected, but fuck that bitch, I'm great, bla bla bla. I mean the case of "sexuellt ofredande" ~= Sexual Harassment would certainly fall under a case similar to that.
So I don't know, I think this could go either way, and since he's charged on "likely grounds" rather than "probably grounds" it means the police think they have pretty strong evidence. And "word against word" is not strong evidence, so maybe video, maybe several eyewitnesses.
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
I wish the world was logical enough to realize that even if Assange turns out to be a rapist, that WikiLeaks still does so much more good, and is not really fundamentally linked to Assange. Nor is the Pirate Party. But you're probably right.
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
Putting an actual public face to wikileaks was the dumbest thing an organization with their goals could do.
I don't think having a public face is bad, as much as having that public face be the founder and so closely linked to being the organization rather than representing it.
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
I presume the rest of the organisation wants to keep their anonymity so they don't really have a choice.