Sweden Seeks to Detain Assange | Hacker News Reader

Sweden Seeks to Detain Assange

nytimes.com

74 pointsCaptainZapp66 comments

For context: Press release from Assange's lawyer:

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/71lsqt

Quote: "Despite his right to silence, my client has repeatedly offered to be interviewed, first in Sweden before he left, and then subsequently in the UK (including at the Swedish Embassy), either in person or by telephone, videoconferencing or email and he has also offered to make a sworn statement on affidavit. All of these offers have been flatly refused by a prosecutor who is abusing her powers by insisting that he return to Sweden at his own expense to be subjected to another media circus that she will orchestrate. Pursuing a warrant in this circumstance is entirely unnecessary and disproportionate."

It would seem to have been appropriate for the NY Times / AP to include mention of this release in its coverage.

Yeah. And I really don't see an agenda on the NY Times' side, as Wikileaks' work has allowed them to write a lot of great articles.

it's just a news article pulled off Associated Press wire for god's sake...

True, however the title was likely chosen by the NY Times editors -- you'd be surprised at how much editorial whim goes into the choice of how to title an article, and how much bias is reflected in the titles.

Also, that the title clearly reads like "They found enough evidence to put Assange behind bars" rather than what actually happens suggests that the AP is either biased against Assange or simply engaging in the worst sort of tabloid journalism.

Update: The request was granted, and an arrest warrant is issued for him. According to the newspapers this might be expanded to an international arrest warrant.

Probably the best news source in English for this: http://www.thelocal.se/30286/20101118/

For those not registered at nytimes.com, here's a bookmarklet to bypass the login page:

http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink

Another easy trick is to google the title of the article -- it is almost the first google hit, and clicking a NYT link from google bypasses their login system.

Thanks,

I always forget that the grand old lady requires registration.

This article stinks. Someone seeking means nothing. Juilan's official response: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/71lsqt

The main point is that it is against EU legislation for arrest warrants to be made public. Every attempt at contacting the wanted person has to be made. This suggests shenanigans at some level: bad journalism from nytimes/the swedish tabloid pushing the agenda of the Pentagon, or some form of corruption/incompetence of government officials in Sweden.

"The main point is that it is against EU legislation for arrest warrants to be made public"

That doesn't even make sense. Even if I interpret this as 'most criminal procedure laws across Europe prohibit...', it's still not true.

"... bad journalism from nytimes/the swedish tabloid pushing the agenda of the Pentagon, or some form of corruption/incompetence of government officials in Sweden."

This is claimed various times in this thread and on other sites, but I have yet to see any proof, even if it's in the form of circumstances that point in this direction, or other small hints in that direction. The only reason people believe this seems to be cognitive dissonance - 'I like the idea of Wikileaks, so the guy that runs it must be a good guy, so everything he's accused of must be false.'. That's not rational at all.

I'll concede bad journalism on my part; my post was rushed and not accurate. The important part is the following taken from the official European Human rights on rights to a fair trial (6.3):

"Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights: to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of...".

Publicly announcing the desired arrest goes against this idea, and that suggests systemic failure inside Sweden, and subsequent bad journalism that started in sweden and is being copied else where, particularly by the nytimes. If you compare EU coverage of the leaks; death tolls, frago 242 (an order not to actively prevent torture) and civilian casualties were the lead. In the US it has been Assange's private life. That smacks of an agenda, and nytimes actually spiked a story on frago 242 and a google search for "site:nytimes.com frago 242" comes back with 4 useless results. Search "site:guardian.co.uk "frago 242" and you get 164 good results.

The initial stub was utter trash, barely above a copy-and-paste of a Swedish tabloid with the good bits removed. The nytimes pushed this article as soon as they could without possibly fact checking. The lengthened article is a little bit better, but still uses any excuse to push the rape charges and the idea that he is a wanted man. More accurately is Assange perhaps facing charges of molestation which is a better translation, and what did he do? Assange claims he had sex (there has been a claim else where this could be unprotected sex) with multiple partners who found out and retrospectively took revenge through legal proceedings. And remember the media has pushed the "rape" charges without evidence, initially just hearsay and from leaked police reports. Again that goes against the idea of a fair trial.

I believe there is deceit or incompetence somewhere, and that is not produced from cognitive dissonance. The evidence I use is how botched the process has been. If there was evidence of rape, a very serious claim, he could have been arrested in Sweden at the time. He was told he was free to leave, without even the need for an interview. Months have gone by and no attempt had been made. Now he is out of the country (Sweden) it all conspires to portray him as a guilty man on the run. That is the narrative that is being pushed; ignoring the 15,000 deaths the Pentagon lied about, the hint of a molestation is more important.

Well the funny thing is that he's not being charged yet. He's wanted to be interrogated as a suspect. This article from the ECHR does not even guarantee that one needs be told what one is suspected of until charges are being brought against them. Someone can be held for investigation or for reasons of public safety for quite a while without this article being any resort, and after that time another article (on speedy trial, don't know by heart which one it is) will constitute a violation of the Convention. In a case against Russia somewhere in the 1990's this period was set at a few years (i.e., several years was too long). Several cases have held that being detained for a few months did not yet constitute a breach. Apart from this, the ECHR does not mention (as far as I remember - it's been a few years since I last studied this) that charges need to be kept confidential.

Anyway, I'm going on a tangent here. Your original post implied that the Pentagon somehow convinced or coerced the NYT and the Swedish newspapers to run a smear campaign against Assange. Maybe the reporting isn't great, it's hard to say; it's quite common for breaking news to be posted in raw form and then to be updated later.

Your claims that the NYT has an 'agenda' because they don't run items that you think are important is rather paranoid too imo. It's the exact same argument that Teapartiers use to 'prove' that the NYT, WaPo etc. have a 'liberal bias' - they take some minor event that they feel is important and say 'look, the mainstream media are burying the truth!' If they'd have to report on every news item that comes on the wire every day, they'd need to put out a phone book size newspaper every day.

Now, that there is incompetence somewhere, that I'm willing to believe. Actually I'm pretty sure there's plenty of incompetence, it's everywhere, no matter where you look. But incompetence and a government conspiracy that extends to newspapers and tv stations across the world, those are not even remotely in the same league.

On the bad journalism claim: The NY Times article is shown as breaking news and has one update, yet it lacks any mention of the statement issued by Assange's lawyer. Further, the headline and first bit of the story implies that there must have been some new development in the case against Assange, when in fact there has not been.

Nothing against the OP since s/he just copied the title from the article; but that title is really misleading.

A prosecutor requesting a court order to detain someone for questioning simply does not mean 'Sweden' proper wants to detain Assange.

It's an official of the Swedish government, acting officially on behalf of the country. Maybe it's an American thing, but this is pretty standard headline writing.

Over here, such headlines are usually reserved for statements from various ministers of the government. The way I read that headline is as if our minister of justice made a statement about Assange, and it would be a big surprise to me if she had done that.

So from this perspective it's misleading.

It doesn't work like that in the USA either, does it? If a official of the government, say a judge in a city, does something do you have headlines saying USA did it?

Sure it does, if regards foreign citizens.

"The US demands extradition of so-and-so", for example, would be a typical headline in many places.

Here we reserve that for when the president, secretary of state or someone relevant in foreign affairs says or does something, not a prosecutor.

I was under the impression that this was not a mere formality; but rather a request from a lawyer that may or may not be granted. Reading roel_v's comment though I may be mistaken.

Could you clarify:

Are you saying that a country cannot have actions of its own and cannot detain anyone? In that case, yes obviously, but it's common use and nobody will misunderstand. I don't see how it's misleading, what do you feel people are lead to think?

Or are you saying that just because the prosecutor has requested it, doesn't mean that it will be granted or that he's wanted at all? In that case, keep in mind that in several countries the request is a mere formality and is (save for exceptional cases) always granted. If that is the case in Sweden, as I suspect, it's not that much of a stretch to write that he's already wanted.

(to contract with the US/other common law penal systems and the way people see it happen on Law & Order, those systems are accusatory, meaning that the public prosecutor builds his case against the defendant who get to defend himself, with the whole process being watched by a judge. Most Western European system are inquisitory, meaning that the prosecutor looks for the truth and is not antagonistic against the defendant from the start. This whole process is also supervised by a judge, but that judge is much less strict and will assume more the role of a 'backstop' for egregious violations of procedure. This judge is this type of system is much looser in granting requests for warrants, searches etc. to the point where they are routinely granted, under the assumption that the prosecutor has already thought the request through and wouldn't request it if it weren't necessary.).

Then again maybe someone who actually knows something about Swedish criminal procedure could fill me in here rather than me reasoning from generalities ;)

I see I might have just been mistaken about the process. I was lead to believe, from reading the title, that there was some court action that ruled that Assange be detained.

After reading the article I was more under the impression it was just a request for a subpoena from a lawyer.

After reading your comment I am under the impression that they are basically the same thing.

As I understand, there is a request from the public prosecutor of a Swedish city/district for him to brought before the prosecutor for interrogation. This prosecutor is a government official, prosecuting suspected criminals in name of the state. If by 'a lawyer' you mean someone who works as legal counsel for a private party, then no, they are not the same. What I meant was that a 'subpoena' (to use the in this context more or less equivalent concept in common law system) from a public prosecutor in many Western European countries is usually granted, and as such the headline is not as premature as it may seem.

Anyway, if the confusion is over the word detain then yes I agree that that may not be quite what is happening; I hadn't looked at it that way. It's not like they're going to throw him in jail (for a longer time than it takes to arrange the interrogation), it's just that they want him to be picked up by the police to be interrogated in order to determine the merits of the case.

This stinks of a smear job.

A Toronto newspaper has the front page story "Swedish court orders Wikileaks founder Assange detained in rape case"

"A Stockholm prosecutor started a rape investigation that was dropped by the city's chief prosecutor a day later. Ms. Ny reopened it the following week."

It seems like they are just opening and closing the same case to repeatedly bring media attention to Assange in connection with it.

A bit off topic, yes, but does any one else cringe when they read the phrase "computer hacker" in a major news publication?

Just, ugh.

Yeah I bet Assange feels like he's been able to move way too freely until now, so he decided to start raping women!

He'll probably tour all Western countries, and rape a couple of women in each to make things a little more exciting.

Edit: Wow, what was fast! You really believe this is not bullshit?

Edit2: Or are we just not allowed to discuss reality on HN? Rainbows & Unicorns are much nicer.

You are allowed to discuss reality here. What you are not allowed to do is make jokes about something as repulsive as rape.

If you are civil and respectful, you can make any point you want here. You failed that first test, though.

I don't think he was buried due to his joke about rape. Or at least I hope not. He wasn't pulling rape out of thin air, as it's obviously the context of thread.

I imagine he was down modded for his weak use of sarcasm and abrasive way of making a weak point.

Gizmomagico seemed to be saying 'assange wouldn't have committed what he allegedly did; as it would retard his ability to move freely and he is too smart for that' -- which may or may not be true, and is irrelevant as evidence.

As a side note; getting offended about the content of a joke is really sort of silly. People seem to act like joking about something is somehow akin to 'doing' the thing. I don't think an argument can be made that a joke about rape makes rape any more likely; and while it may be crude and unfunny: making the claim that something is 'off limits' is really weak.

For example: 'statistically 9/10 people enjoy gang rape'

are you really going to try to tease out a scenario where it might be okay to make a rape joke? because even if you succeed, i am calling that a pyrrhic victory, at best. maybe you can do that among friends, but not on a global message board with thousands of readers.

the more sensitive the topic under discussion, the more careful you have to be to avoid offense.

Given that we have already had two rape jokes in this thread, you might want to reconsider your notions of what people "can" and "cannot" do here.

Additionally, I need not "tease out a scenario" where it "might be okay" to make a rape joke. I am knee deep in such scenarios (unless you actually believe jokes about rape to be morally wrong, rather than merely distasteful; I know I don't). Less common are scenarios where I can make a rape joke without negative social consequences, but there's still no shortage of those, either.

"the more sensitive the topic under discussion, the more careful you have to be to avoid offense."

You assumption is that one would want to avoid offense. (note that I don't mean 'not cause deliberate offense') Western newspapers were told to not run the Mohammed cartoons, so as to 'not cause offense'. Feel free to defend the position that people shouldn't make rape jokes, but basing that on 'you shouldn't cause offense' is not an argument.

Gizmomagico seemed to be saying 'assange wouldn't have committed what he allegedly did; as it would retard his ability to move freely and he is too smart for that'

The idea was just to point out the ridiculousness of the bullshit political maneuvering, not to imply that the only reason why he would not rape someone is because it would hinder his movement.

Yes, rape is terrible, and judging by your reaction, you're probably American. Was that a racist slur or just an observation?

Would it also be terrible to be falsely accused of rape, in an internationally public manner?

The problem here is that mine was the first comment to allude to the whole debacle being disgusting bullshit.

There weren't almost any comments in the thread, possibly because if you really wanted to discuss this, you'd have to discuss the whole thing being bullshit, and facing the bullshit-laden reality we live in is unpleasant.

HN doesn't want to discuss unpleasant realities.

That may actually be a good thing for maintaining the high quality of discussions on other, more pleasant subjects - who knows. But on the other hand, spreading awareness of bullshit being bullshit would do us all good in our role of ordinary citizens of various governments.

You are showing no evidence that you heard what I said. This has nothing to do with my nationality, and a lot to do with this site's conventions. pg has worked really hard to keep news.yc from going down in flames, the way every other discussion site in the history of the internet has done, eventually.

You are not the first person here to suspect that Assange may be falsely accused. If you'd put it that same way, like I just did, you would have likely generated some discussion on the topic. As it is, you merely said something inflammatory and inappropriate.

A couple of weeks ago, this site featured a story about a woman who accused a man of groping her at ApacheCon. If there is a more loaded topic for discussion than that, I can't think of it. Yet this community managed to have a very civil discussion about it, due to those rules you are disparaging.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875718

I did acknowledge the potential quality issue, which is what you spent your message talking about. You didn't really address anything I said. I bet I guessed your nationality right, though, didn't I?

> You are not the first person here to suspect that Assange may be falsely accused.

As I said, I was the first one to hint at that quite likely possibility.

> a woman who accused a man of groping her at ApacheCon. If there is a more loaded topic for discussion than that, I can't think of it. Yet this community managed to have a very civil discussion about it, due to those rules you are disparaging.

That's nice, but what did you think the civil discussion might have devolved into? Hypersensitive overreacting about "assault"?

This Assange -story, on the other hand, is not only about alleged rape, but also about the place where conspiracy-theories and reality meet.

Do you have any evidence at all for your allegations?

What allegations?

Your allegations that Assange is falsely accused because of some sort of conspiracy.

Where's your proof that he isn't?

Also: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1917913

Shouldn't you go demand more "proof" from him too, or is it just easier to pile on the heavily downvoted guy?

It shouldn't be too hard to see this is all bullshit, and that's what I originally got downvoted for trying to point out (in a less-than-HNesquely-eloquent manner).

I make no claims about Assange’s guilt or innocence.

Productive discussions demand evidence and you provided none.

Cute

Hans Reiser was, by any account, pretty smart. His journaling filesystem was quite a technological leap over ext2 at the time.

Yet he did murder his wife. Some hardcore fans denied his guilt up (some claiming his mild autism was exploited by the prosecution to make him appear guilty) until the very point where he lead the authorities to where he buried the corpse of his wife.

Do you realize that Assange had nonviolent, consensual sex with those two women and it's only a quirk of the Swedish legal system that the word "rape" being used in relation to the charges against him?

Assange's actions would not be a crime under US law, and would by no means be described by anything close to the word rape.

> and it's only a quirk of the Swedish legal system

Source? The NYT article says nothing about the legal criteria here.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/71lsqt

So, your authoritative source on the merit of a case is the lawyer of the very same guy who is being accused? I hope you see the error in that.

There has been coverage of this elsewhere. I didn't have time earlier to find it so I just pasted in the link other had posted which explains the distinction.

Assange did not force anyone to have sex or physically violate anyone. Swedish law calls it "rape" when a woman has regrets about sex later on.

"Assange did not force anyone to have sex or physically violate anyone."

Well we don't know, do we. You seem to be very certain he didn't, I'm wondering what you're basing that on. It seems like the conspiracy theory is the only 'reason' being given.

"Swedish law calls it "rape" when a woman has regrets about sex later on."

Right. Do you feel a claim like that passes the smell test? Or do you have any other sources that are not Assange himself or his lawyer? You seem to be referring to one of the articles that basically quotes one of these two, I have yet to see one that actually substantiates this. Furthermore I haven't seen the lawyer say what you are saying, either; he's just claiming that there was no rape, that it was consensual.

I am under the impression that it was revealed by Swedish officials that neither woman claimed that she had been physically assaulted.

That would make it different. However, I have seen a few suggestions on forums in this direction, but no statements in newspapers or similar to this effect. If the prosecutor knows and is convinced that there was no coercion nor deceit, and still presses a case, that I would object to. I have no reason (no even just somewhat 'objective' sources, as in not coming directly from the accused) to believe that this is the case though.

Then again I'm not following it any closer than the most prominent articles that make the popular nerd news sites, and a mainstream headline here or there, so it's very well possible that I'm not up to date on all aspects.

I'm afraid I'm misunderstanding something. I read the whole press release, and see nothing in there about any Swedish legal "quirks" regarding the definition of rape. In fact, it takes the position that Assange's actions have not met any possible definition of rape: "the allegations...do not constitute what any advanced legal system considers to be rape".

In Sweden, the definition of "rape" is when a woman has any regrets about having had sex. In this case, the women found out Assange had slept with both of them, decided to file the complaint.

They have both stated that the sex was consensual.

Wait, you mean they assumed he was innocent until he was proven guilty. That IS shocking. How dare they.

And Reiser's case proves that Assange is a rapist, no doubt?

I don't see why you are being downvoted. The allegation of rapes, both filed on the same day, sound like the cheapest way to get an international mandate for him indeed.

The question is, is there any factual proof that the claim is a fabrication, or is it all a big conspiracy theory? If Assange commits a crime, is it always made up because he ticked off the government? Merely claiming it's a trumped up charge for the sole reason that he's the Wikileaks guy is not a strong argument. (it's not a valid argument at all, I'd say).

"The question is, is there any factual proof that the claim is a fabrication, or is it all a big conspiracy theory?"

That's not how most legal systems work. The prosecution is the one with the burden of proof. That said, for all I know, Assange may indeed be guilty. Perhaps we'll find out.

Well yeah legal system, but the burden of proof for the public opinion is different. If a rapist is acquitted because of a legal procedural error, did he not do it? Of course not, he's still a rapist. He's not send to jail for it though. Those are different things. 'innocent until proven guilty' is a purely legal axiom, not more. Not being proven guilty by the standards set by law doesn't make someone not guilty.

The OP was, as I understood it, not making a legal claim, but merely stating his opinion on whether or not what he is accused of did or did not happen. Proof on this position can come from both sides, but claiming that it must not have happened because the government is after him does not pass Ockham's razor.

The legal system works that way for a reason and in a perfect world, the court of public opinion would work similarly. It's an all too common occurence to find out that all sorts of allegations of crimes turn out to be false and that the accused is permanently, materially harmed due to the allegation.

I have to say, high profile person embarassing a lot of people... I'm a little more skeptical than usual. I'm not dumb enough to give him a free pass just because of who he is, but I'm sure as hell not defaulting to assuming guilt.

The last two biggest enemies of the U.S. government had wars started against them based on made up evidence. How many more times does this have to happen before the default position is assuming that the charges are trumped up?

Probably there is no proof therefore it is a conspiracy theory.

However - pitting women against enemies - either to seduce them or to just get them out of the way (via extortion) has happened before.

I can see why you're being downvoted though..

Looks like a loss/loss deadloop

OMG! I got trapped in the loop! -4

Julian Massage

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