How to Rape Julian Assange Twice
A tale of two stories.Buy It Try It |
Julian Assange has been raped twice. The first act of abuse lasted essentially 23 hours 52 minutes; the second act is ongoing. There's really no connection between these stories. And then again there is. Sort of.
Julian Assange stepped down onto the steps of the High Court in London today in triumph. He was free under certain conditions. He said shortly afterward after leaving a pub on his way out of the city that he wasn't fearful of a possible extradition to Sweden but was seriously concerned by an extradition to the US.
Story One
Story One begins in the early days of August 2010 when a 'legal expert' writes for the Swedish Sydsvenska dagbladet to point out that WikiLeaks doesn't enjoy full source protection under the law because WikiLeaks doesn't have an ansvarig utvigare. And to have an ansvarig utvigare one must have an utgivningsbevis and to get an utgivningsbevis one must be at least a resident of Sweden if not a citizen and one must truly be the individual responsible for publication.The WikiLeaks submission system is fairly secure as is and no whistleblower has got into trouble save through blurting confidential information to others. The matter was therefore essentially one of perception only. But perception is everything. So Julian Assange set course for Sweden where he planned on doing any number of things.
- Seek residence
- Apply for an utgivningsbevis based on this residence permit
- Do a deal with Sweden's Pirate Party so the latter could help host WikiLeaks
The next step was to find a place for Julian to talk. This didn't take long at all - the 'LO Borgen' located at Norra bantorget in central Stockholm just off Vasagatan.
The venue was small so tickets were made available with priority for members of the press.
Julian also arranged to stay in the flat of the girl organising the talk. She herself would be away the week before the gig, visiting family on the island of Gotland, accessible by ferry from the mainland.
The girl in question is Anna Ardin. Anna Ardin has a notoriety that precedes her even before the events that were about to unfold. Anna returned to Stockholm on the ominous Friday 13 August, the eve of the gig she'd arranged. She and Julian talked for a while, then went out for a late bite, then according to her had sex when they returned to her flat.
Anna and Julian went to the gig the following day at Norra bantorget. Another girl of note was present in the audience, a girl with no press credentials who somehow still managed to get inside the tight venue. This girl is Sofia Wilén. Sofia is a photographer, not a journalist. She lent peripheral computer equipment to people in Julian's entourage before the event and then sat front row right and photographed Julian incessantly throughout his talk. She pushed her way into his inner circle after the talk, identified herself as the one who'd helped with the equipment, then got herself invited to lunch at a nearby restaurant.
And so forth.
Shakespeare said hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but Shakespeare never considered what would happen if two women went berserk at the same time against the same victim. For by Tuesday of the following week the two girls Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilén were already plotting how to 'get back' at Julian Assange. At least one of them was not only head over heels in love with Julian and his image but was boasting about town about her conquest. Now they both knew they'd both slept with him and decided together to enact the now notorious '7 step plan for revenge' which the one of them felt rather strongly about.
The plan was simply to go to a police station together and ask questions about STDs about the same man. They wouldn't actually ask to file charges of sexual molestation or rape - they'd let the police do that. Bringing false accusations of a serious crime is in itself a serious crime, something they both wanted to avoid being implicated in.
They also decided that once they'd set everything in motion, they'd contact the evening sleaze tabloid Expressen and give them the story. That would really fix Julian Assange - for not only entertaining the attentions of them both at the same time but also making the one of them - the militant feminist who'd boasted about town about landing the Big WikiLeaks Fish - look an utter pathetic fool.
The girls went to the Klara police station in Stockholm, so named because it's in the inner Klara district of the capital city and probably so chosen because of its proximity to the train station Wilén would arrive at from her home town.
They entered the police station in the middle of the afternoon 20 August 2010. Their objective: to hurt Julian Assange. They spoke with policeman Mats Gehlin.
Policeman Mats Gehlin rang up the prosecutor on duty Maria Häljebo Kjellstrand right before 17:00. He told her he had a rape case or two on his counter and told her who it was about. Gehlin still hadn't conducted any formal interrogations with the girls; he just called ahead to Kjellstrand to tell her the exciting news.
Kjellstrand lit on all cylinders. She issued an arrest in absentia warrant for Julian Assange at 17:00 and she sent Gehlin's finest out to the Stureplan entertainment district in Stockholm to find Assange and drag him back in custody.
The actual interrogation with the first of the two girls would still not begin for a few more minutes. The interrogation took one hour nineteen minutes. By 18:40 the both girls were essentially through with the first part of their plan of revenge - all that remained was to contact Expressen so Julian Assange's good name could be smeared around the world.
People from Expressen who at the time were out in the countryside for the prime minister's annual crayfish party got the alert from head office on their cellphones at 19:52. They then began piecing together an article.
Critical to publishing such an article was getting corroboration from someone in the prosecutor's office. The Expressen reporters received a phone call from a girl claiming she was one of two girls who'd just seen to it Julian Assange would be charged with rape. But that wasn't enough.
Getting this corroboration from the prosecutor's office should have been impossible and the reporters at Expressen could have been expected to not act on the tip. But things in Sweden aren't always so 'legal' and so the one of the reporters reckoned it was worth a shot to ring up and see what came of it.
Imagine their mirth when they were given the information they wanted with no resistance whatsoever. Note that divulging such information is a crime in Sweden and prosecutors and their staff can be held accountable and sent to prison for violations - staff such as Maria Häljebo Kjellstrand and her glib press spokesman Karin Rosander. Now Expressen had all the information they needed and could publish whenever they wanted.
Expressen finally published at 05:00 on Saturday morning 14 August 2010. They backdated the article to the night before but it wasn't online then. Several people had for other reasons been watching the Expressen website and saw nothing at all - not until 05:00 AM when at least three staff got into Twitter accounts and hammered away at the website for the next ten hours, trying to get the other media in Sweden and the world around to pick up on the story and to scoop it. It took a long time before anyone followed suit.
By the middle of the morning Saturday 21 August 2010 the Internet was chaotic with the story. People felt hit by 'shock and horror'. This continued for several more hours until at 16:52 that same day the Swedish authorities suddenly announced that the case against Julian Assange had essentially been dropped.
Julian Assange had an arrest warrant over his head for 23 hours 52 minutes.
Story Two
Story Two begins on or around 1 September 2010 after all allegations against Julian Assange are dropped. This is done at the instigation of Social Democrat politician Claes Borgström. The agenda of Claes Borgström is a curious one. He's acquainted with Anna Ardin and has made a career out of espousing the most outrageous and attention-getting ideas in an already outrageous ultrafeminist environment. He's currently being held out to dry (pun may be intended) for his behaviour in one of the few legal cases he's been noted for - in legal circles his name has become synonymous with dirt.Claes Borgström contacts old crony Marianne Ny who got her job from Borgström's buddy and business partner Thomas Bodström who in turn has an extraordinarily cozy relationship with Washington DC and who lives there permanently today. Bodström's hire Marianne Ny works on the opposite coast on developing broader definitions of crimes so more people can be put in prison and who is known in legal Sweden for having some very outrageous ideas of her own. Claes Borgström gets Marianne Ny to pull rank on the prosecutor who closed the case against Julian Assange and reopen it.
Story Two is where we are today. The tales of the two girls are still at the centre of this sordid affair but Story Two is essentially a new case being run on its own merits and in its own way and according to a completely different agenda. The first case was judicial; this second case is purely political.
What politics are behind Story Two? Several angles. Obviously.
Story One lasted not fully one day; Story Two is nearly four months old and still ongoing. All that's been written since 1 September - and it's considerable - is about Story Two. The case against Assange in Story One - the legal case - has long since been dismissed.
Julian Assange has three weeks five days of peace on earth at an estate in East Anglia. He has to be tagged, he has to report into a police station every day, and he has to physically be on the premises of this estate for eight hours each day. It could be worse - it could be as bad as Oscar Wilde had it, something Marianne Ny and the blue-eyed Swedes seemed viciously intent on.
Then on 11 January there will be a preliminary extradition hearing. The case isn't expected to come into full swing into some time in February. And the entire process could take up to one year. And WikiLeaks and their Cablegate releases continue to roll on.
Julian Assange's attorneys have to prove to the court that the request for Julian Assange's extradition is not legally motivated but politically motivated. Considering the dramatis personae in this second case Story Two, how they're into politics up to their eyeballs, considering who else such as their good friends at Strandvägen 101 are today obviously involved, this shouldn't be at all difficult.
See Also
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