Julian Assange - WikiLeaks (36 page)

The female police officer ended her report with the following:

“Everyone I spoke to was in earnest agreement that this was a case of rape.”

That same Friday night, Maria Kjellstrand, the on-call prosecutor was contacted. She confirmed that Julian had to be considered as a rape suspect. At 5 p.m., she accused Julian in absentia: even though he was absent, he was suspected of raping Sofia Wilén and not having respected the freedom and will of Anna Ardin. In Swedish, the prosecutor qualified the mistake made as ‘
ofredande,
' which best translates as ‘denying someone's freedom,' as English law has no equivalent.

The report on the two young women was completed around 6:40 p.m. A Swedish collaborator of WikiLeaks later said that Julian had accepted to take an STD test the same night, but all the clinics were in fact closed for the weekend.

That night, journalist Niklas Svensson of the tabloid
Expressen
was covering proceedings on the budget of the elected coalition in Sweden. He was at Harpsund, the secondary residence of Swedish
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. The second he caught wind of Julian being suspected of rape he raced back to Stockholm.

“I shifted my attention towards that case pretty quickly, so to speak. One and a half hour later I was back at my office in Stockholm. My colleague Diamant Salihu managed to get the prosecutor to confirm the case and I was working separately on my own sources.”

Niklas Svensson, age thirty-eight, was a well-known political journalist in Sweden. He was controversial and aggressive, and many Swedes didn't like him. According to sources in Stockholm, he worked for one of the most widely read newspapers in the country. He commonly wrote about crimes or celebrities, but in the past few years he's been increasingly interested in politics. His approach has been likened to that of the paparazzi. He has never done any deep analysis; he loves sensationalism, and enjoys alluding to it. He would even sometimes bend the truth to create a story.

In 2006, Svensson was fired from
Expressen
for illegally hacking into the database of the Social Democratic Party. In reality, all he did was use a password he wasn't supposed to have. He then went freelance and ran the blog
Politikerbloggen
(literally,
The blog of politicians
, which posts dirt on politicians) for some time. In 2007, the blog was bought up by a television channel and Svensson eventually went back to work for
Expressen
in February 2010.

The next day, Saturday, August 21 2010 at 9:15 a.m., Julian tweeted: “We were warned to expect ‘dirty tricks.' Now we have the first one.”

As for Anna, she was interrogated again by the police and confirmed the allegations of sexual abuse against Julian.

The journalists at the
Expressen
finished a story that would soon explode throughout the Western press. A bit later that day, a storm hit the office of the Swedish prosecutor. Karine Rosander, Director of Communications, then tried to explain the arrest warrant against Julian Assange.

Chief Prosecutor for the Stockholm region Eva Finné was alerted by the media at the same time as she received the file at her place. Right away she rejected the accusations of rape, but didn't say anything about the sexual assault. She didn't refute Sofia's testimony, but didn't consider it to be a confirmation of rape.

In other words, at 4:48 p.m., Eva Finné decided to rescind the arrest warrant against Julian Assange, who had yet to contact the police to find out whether he was suspected of sexual assault.

From New York to London, journalists were wondering how a rape charge could be dropped in less than a day. Rosander was very uncomfortable when she tried to explain the strange turn of events to a host on television channel Al Jazeera. The host couldn't understand how such a mistake could be made. She answered succinctly.

“You can't call it a mistake because the prosecutor in question has to make a decision based on the information available at the moment of the decision.”

The young woman, known to be intelligent, elegant and educated, defended her office in the interview by saying that the on-call prosecutor followed standard procedure and had to make a decision very quickly. She pointed out that Eva Finné, who rejected the rape charge, had access to more information
on Saturday than the on-call prosecutor had on Friday. If false rumors were spread on the subject, it was probably because the accused was a hyped up celebrity. And so, Rosander refused to provide any more details.

The same night, police investigators searched nightclubs of the Stureplan district to see if the founder of WikiLeaks was perhaps out partying, but they couldn't find him.

On Sunday, August 22, 2010, the story broke in
Expressen
with a sensationalist title: “
Julian Assange accused in absentia of rape and sexual assault
.” The article appeared both in the printed edition and online as early as 5 a.m. Svensson was pleased with it:

“When I went home around 2:30 a.m. I realized this would become one of the largest scoops we've ever had.”

Julian immediate responded to it on Twitter:

“Reminder: US intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks as far back as 2008.”

All the details of the charges made against Assange were revealed in
Expressen,
a newspaper that can be compared to the
Herald Sun
in Great Britain: same style, same politics. Founded in 1944, it's Sweden's center-right newspaper, and its editorial line can be described as ‘liberal and independent.' It's also highly criticized and its reputation is a little spotty.

The leaks had to come from the plaintiffs or the police. Had the two women called up a tabloid to embarrass Julian even further? Svensson denied it.

“If it was Anna who tipped me off? I can firmly deny that I have had any contact with her. We haven't talked to each other at all.”

The shock wave was imminent. Within a few hours, the international press had landed in Sweden. Julian, however, denied all the accusations made against him. Suspected, Julian affirmed that he did nothing wrong and that the sex he had with both women was consensual.

As for Anna, she gave an anonymous interview to the newspaper
Aftonbladet
(which translates to: ‘evening paper'), the most widely read daily in all of Scandinavia. Anna confirmed that Julian was not violent or intimidating. Here's a selection of affirmations.

In the same article Anna refuted the accusations of an international plot to trap Assange.

“The charges against Assange are of course not orchestrated by either the Pentagon or anyone else. The responsibility for what happened to me and the other girl is
with a man with a warped attitude to women and a problem with taking no for an answer.”

The
Aftonbladet
got in touch with Julian and asked him if he had had sex with his two accusers. His answer was clear:

“Their identities have been made anonymous so even I have no idea who they are. We have been warned that the Pentagon, for example, is thinking of deploying dirty tricks to ruin us.”

That evening the two women hired, or more precisely accepted the services of Sweden's most famous and most expensive lawyer, Claes Borgström. He was a mediator for sexual equality in the previous Social Democratic government before going back to practicing law in 2008. In fact, this pro-feminist lawyer was chosen to represent the two plaintiffs even before the preliminary inquiry was complete. But who was he exactly? And more specifically, who was paying for this case? It was clear that neither Anna nor Sofia could afford him.

Claes Borgström was the associate of former justice minister Thomas Bodström, who, among others, was the author of an editorial for the
Aftonbladet
in which he pled for an extension of the legal definition of rape. As a pro-feminist lawyer, Claes Borgström has been credited with several controversial proposals. In 2006, he got attention by suggesting that Sweden boycotted the World Cup, which was organized in Germany to protest against the presumed rumor of an intensified trafficking of women during the event.

Swedish rape legislation is exemplary in Europe, and has been stricter than its neighboring countries since 2005. The law has three types of legal gradations for rape: rape, punished by six years in prison, aggravated rape good for ten years in prison, and lesser rape that involves four years in prison and consists of sex
with a person who is unconscious, drunk, ill or asleep. Many cases revealed that this last type has led to many convictions. Swedish law is in fact very strict with men who do not respect the word ‘no,' particularly if the victim is not in a position (or of sound mind or sober state) to be giving their consent for sex. This also holds true if sex is already underway, as a woman always has the right to say ‘no' and a man who doesn't respect this can be accused. Extending the law has tripled the amount of complaints in Sweden because what was formerly called ‘sexual assault' is now classified as ‘rape.'

Sweden holds the European record for the number of rape complaints: 53 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010, which is twice as much as in Great Britain and four times as much than in France. Swedish law has made it easier to bring up charges. The police listen to victims without prejudice. Society has freed women of guilt to give them the power to say ‘no,' no matter what they wear or how many drinks they've had.

Nevertheless, only five to ten per cent of people accused of rape are actually condemned. A rape without any trace of violence is difficult to prove, as it falls under a he-said/she-said situation. Reforming the law has given so much weight to women's voices that some Swedish critics have joked that soon people won't have sex without first getting written consent from their partners!

“Why these accusations are coming at this point in time is an interesting question. I haven't been contacted by the police. The allegations are false and extremely disturbing.”

This question came up in the last week of August 2010. Was destabilizing the founder of WikiLeaks, whose website embarrassed so many governments, the point of all this? The day after he was accused of rape, the charges against Julian Assange were dropped.

• Statement of Prosecutor Eva Finné on August 23, 2010

• Statement of Prosecutor Anders Perklev on issues of transparency and confidentiality on August 23, 2010

• Events of Friday, August 20, 2010 to Saturday, August 21, 2010