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Comment by black_puppydog | Hacker News Reader

This might be a good moment to remind people that Assange has been the victim of a successful smear campaign since the moment a woman did NOT make a rape allegation against him in Sweden. Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on torture, actually went over the original proceedings and gave a long format interview on the matter lately. He too took some convincing to even touch the case, that's how effective sexual violence as a smear tactic is. Which is a damn shame, given that there's plenty of real sexual violence to go around, and which now once more gets harder to make visible.

Here's the interview: https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...

tl;dr:

Assange was right about everything that has been made falsifiable: secret indictment, spying on his lawyers, extradition to the US, no fair trial, the whole lot. He's showing every mental and physical sign of being tortured. He needs help, and he's being denied the very rights that western society purports to uphold.

EDIT: and that is leaving aside the whole dimension of Sweden, the UK, Equador, and of course the US making (even more of) a precedent out of him. What this means for the free press, and the relationship between freedom (of expression, of information, and in this case of truth, really) vs national "security" (in this case, the national security to not be held accountable for shooting down civilians) should send shivers down everyone's spines.

EDIT 2 To the people downvoting: care to express which part of the above exactly you disagree with? Do you think it's factually incorrect? How about correcting it then? Do you think it's inappropriate? Why so? Off topic?

View on HN

Thank you for your post and for the fascinating (and terrifying) link. I have no idea why you're being down-voted.

I was planning to suggest submitting the link as its own "story" but apparently it already was, two weeks ago.[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22201381

It’s so far from the narrative we’ve been hearing for years now, than even reading your comment triggers a “that’s just some batshit conspiration theory” reaction on the moment.

Going through the link requires putting aside that reaction. I missed the link posted two weeks ago, and I am so glad you commented.

It’s really chilling and takes time to fully process.

And different countries are being fed different narratives, which is why discussions are so polarized and volatile.

Some countries are being fed both. Look at Ecuador.

Ex-president Rafael Correa decries the fact that Assange, who had been granted Ecuadorian citizenship in addition to his political asylum, was dragged out of a sovereign embassy by UK police. He notes that an IMF deal occurred somewhat concurrently with the surrender of Assange.

Current president Lenin Moreno claims Assange wouldn't clean up after his cat and smeared poop on the walls of the embassy. Moreno ejected Assange shortly after blaming WikiLeaks for the publication of photos and messages hacked from the Moreno family's smartphones.

There are things in the interview that are rather subjective (and things that are objective, and that I didn't know, admittedly). But this is ... quite misleading...:

> A constitutional democracy would probably investigate Chelsea Manning for violating official secrecy because she passed the video along to Assange. But it certainly wouldn’t go after Assange, because he published the video in the public interest, consistent with the practices of classic investigative journalism.

An investigative journalist wouldn't suggest to their source that they cover their trails and implicate innocent third parties in the egressing of confidential data[1], assist their source with cracking passwords, passively and actively ("I'm working on it, no luck yet"), or in the event that Assange was doing neither, just leading Manning on, would not lie to their sources while again, still encouraging them to break the law.

[1] by trying to crack someone else's password to use to get access to the same documents you're effectively _setting that person up_ as a patsy.

>An investigative journalist wouldn't suggest to their source that they cover their trails

An investigative journalist should absolutely try to help their source stay safe from danger.

>by trying to crack someone else's password to use to get access to the same documents you're effectively _setting that person up_ as a patsy

The account they were attempting to access was a generic windows admin account tied to nobody. A perfect patsy.

> An investigative journalist should absolutely try to help their source stay safe from danger.

I'm not sure "commit more federal crimes" is "staying safe from danger"

> The account they were attempting to access was a generic windows admin account tied to nobody. A perfect patsy.

This I did not know. My above point still stands, but at least no innocent third parties are being also dragged into things, absolutely.

>I'm not sure "commit more federal crimes" is "staying safe from danger"

If your options are "commit more victimless federal crimes" or "allow the army to punish you" it is.

Maybe that is why journalism serves that many falsehoods nowadays? I don't even want to replicate your train of thoughts to justify the persecution of people making war crimes public, but the surface argument is quite weak.

We should all just blame the Russians, right? Please, in all cases where media organizations were implicated in spreading falsehoods, this is completely mundane.

> a woman did NOT make a rape allegation against him in Sweden

The article you linked seems to contradict you. It says a woman accused him of surreptitiously removing a condom while having sex, which would count as rape in my jurisdiction.

The article also recounts testimony of him waking up a woman by penetrating her which would also count as rape in my jurisdiction.

The article also explains that this is intentionally falsified by the Swedish police and lists emails as evidence that this tampering took place and contradicts the womans initial statement

The email conversation is not evidence of tampering. The emails is from one interrogator emailing another on how to best record the witness statements in their system. See this thread for English translations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209868

The witness statement is supposed to be verified by the witness at the end of the interrogation. Editing that statement without consulting the witness is tampering, no system would save statements like that.

But the statement wasn't edited... It was copy-pasted into another record, just like the mail conversation shows.

Also, in this supposed grand conspiracy to frame Assange, two crime detectives were dumb enough to leave their marks in emails available to the public, due to Offentlighetsprincipen? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_public_access_to_... It makes zero sense.

The original statement was overwritten, we only have some vague references about what it says. But moving it to another record without the witness present is still tampering.

>Also, in this supposed grand conspiracy to frame Assange, two crime detectives were dumb enough to leave their marks in emails available to the public

The conspiracy was to get Assange into US custody, not frame him of a crime, and that conspiracy has been proven to he true. The allegations didn't need to be flawlessly done.

The FBI does that.

> It says a woman accused him of surreptitiously removing a condom while having sex

Actually, she supposedly accused him of intentionally breaking it, but also said that she didn't notice until later, which casts doubt on the "intentionally" part.

Poking holes in a condom is an intentional act and the woman wouldnt know. So as long as we dont know exactly what she meaned by „intentional breaking it“ we cant really guess who is wrong or right.

Whatever happened with that condom, that definitely falls under "reasonable doubt."

Considering what happened to Assange after that, the first thing that comes to mind is the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Whether that amounts to reasonable doubt is something that could be determined by a jury in a court of law following rules of evidence and procedure, if Assange went to trial.

The charges were dropped.

Because he successfully evaded capture for long enough that the case was no longer viable.

They could have interviewed him in the embassy but declined to do so.

It really isn’t their responsibility to accommodate a fugitive, is it.

It is absolutely the responsibility of the state to act fairly to all.

Which means not making special exceptions for some people, like Assange here.

Are you denying that his claims of being persecuted by the US government were unfounded, given that they have been proven right?

I deny that this is a valid reason to flee prosecution in Sweden.

Does that apply to all proven victims of state persecution or just Assange?

I agree. More information is needed before any judgement could be made one way or the other.

How on god's green earth does that "cast doubt" on anything? That makes absolutely zero sense.

Well, determining intent is difficult at the best of times, but it's hard to understand how you could determine the intent of something that you only noticed later.

The same way you do it many times a day in your everyday life?

I'm confused why you seem to so vehemently disagree with me but simultaneously will only speak in generalities.

Say for example I visit your house, and you notice many hours after I leave that a favorite ornament of yours is broken. How will you determine whether I broke it intentionally or not? If you watch me break it, you could make a reasonable judgement. If you only notice later, it's much harder. I don't understand what is controversial about this idea.

The article is not completely truthful about what happened, at least according to the police report. The interviewee claims to speak fluent Swedish, so there's no way he'd miss it accidentally. Here's the short version of what happened according to the official police investigation[0]:

Assange and a woman have consensual sex. He wants to have sex without a condom, she insist he wears one. Eventually he agrees, and they have sex and then fall asleep in the bed. The next morning she wakes up by him penetrating her. She asks "are you wearing anything?" to which he replies "you". Her main reason she wanted him to wear a condom was fear of STDs, so she thinks there's no point in stopping now since the eventual damage is already done, so they continue. He comes inside her.

When she later asks the police if there's a way of forcing Assange to take an HIV test the police decides that what she's describing constitutes rape, and starts an investigation.

The whole problem is that she gave her consent under the strict condition that he'd wear a condom. When he started having unprotected sex with her while she was sleeping, he didn't have her consent. Call that what you want.

[0] https://www.magasinetparagraf.se/wp-content/uploads/content/...

Edit: OK, I see that that's mentioned later in the article. But the part about rewriting the statement isn't completely truthful either: > "Now the supervisor of the policewoman who had conducted the questioning wrote her an email telling her to rewrite the statement from S. W."

What the mail actually says is that there are two hearings, but only one formal one, and they want the second one included too. The supervisor writes: "Make a new hearing. Paste the text in that and assign the hearing to the case. Sign the hearing."

>>The whole problem is that she gave her consent under the strict condition that he'd wear a condom.

It's called "stealthing", apparently, and it looks like it could be an offence under UK law as he only had "conditional consent": https://www.kingsleynapley.co.uk/insights/blogs/criminal-law...

I believe stealthing generally is taking the condom of during sex without her noticing it, but the idea is the same. Consent given under a certain condition is only consent while that condition is met.

I wouldn't believe the police report, the timing of these allegations isn't coincidental, nothing in this case is, and it would not be the first time police have manipulated a witness into giving false or misleading testimony.

While not perfect Sweden is probably one of the most judicially sound countries on earth. I doubt that the Swedish police would intentionally falsify reports/statements to please US interests. This is just absurd.

Melzer has said he was of the same opinion until he started looking into the case.

Don't underestimate how closely tied many European countries are to the United States. Swedish security forces snatched two asylum seekers (that we know of) off the streets in Stockholm in 2001, and handed them over to the CIA. They were immediately flown to Egypt, where they were tortured. All this was done in violation of both Swedish and international law.

Melzer has said in interviews that countries like Sweden have strong legal protections, up until the point at which they consider their own security interests to be at stake. At that point, you can expect all sorts of violations of procedure and law, dirty tricks, etc.

I was trying to find out if they were a reputable news organization, so I did a search, which wasn't very helpful. So then I just started clicking around the website. If you go into Top-Storys, it looks like a link aggregation website even.

Finally, using Chromium, I was able to translate some pages and I guess they are a legit news organization, though quite young. Their first publication was in January 2018. From reading the wikipedia, it seems they operate a bit like lwn, in that direct links will give you the articles, but you don't get access to all of the direct links unless you're a subscriber.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republik_(Magazin)

He seems to think the official docs were altered. Either way, his point is that we are all focused on this trial and accusation, rather than the numerous war crimes that WikiLeaks exposed, and that was the intent all along. Mission accomplished.

That's not what's stopping anyone from investigating the war crimes though. Even if Assange never would have com to Sweden and never would have been accused (guilty or not) of rape, those war crimes wouldn't have been any more investigated that they are now. Look at Khashoggi, nothing happened. Look at Russia's annexation of Crimea, there's some sanctions but the current US administration is against them. Look at China, they have concentration camps for Uighurs. And so on.

I don't have any problem believing that Assange did have sex with a sleeping woman without a condom, it fits what I've perceived as his personality. And him locking himself in the embassy after having exhausted his legal means in the UK was his own doing. But that's all about one person, the war crimes are part of a system that doesn't care about him.

This whole mess is candy for conspiracy theorists. Remember that Wikileaks fanned the flames in the middle of Pizza gate: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wik...

Stop using "conspiracy theorists" as a dirty phrase. Gains no support for your statement.

> The article is not completely truthful about what happened

The article discusses the exact things you're saying it conceals.

> The interviewee claims to speak fluent Swedish, so there's no way he'd miss it accidentally.

Before accusing the interviewee of dishonesty, perhaps you can read the parts of the article where the interviewee discusses the very things you're saying he omitted. Did you just miss these parts of the article accidentally, or did you intentionally misrepresent the article?

This comment breaks more than one of the site guidelines. Please make your points without crossing into personal attack.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The above comment attacks Melzer as dishonest for omitting information, and says there's no way Melzer could have simply missed the omitted information.

I repeated the commenter's own words back to them, showing the irony that they (the commenter) were the one who omitted information, in a way that is very difficult to explain if they had read the article. I think that's legitimate.

Please make your legitimate points in ways that don't break the HN guidelines. Personally attacking the person you're replying to isn't part of the legitimate point, and is easy to factor out if you want to. For example, your second paragraph there could be reduced to "the interviewee discusses the very things you're saying he omitted", and to make it more helpful, could have included specifics about where and how he discusses those things.

> in a way that is very difficult to explain if they had read the article

It's easy to explain: people remember completely different things in the articles they read, based on their pre-existing feelings and assumptions—just like we see very different things in the world in general. When your feelings and assumptions aren't the same, it's too easy to jump to conclusions about other people, especially online, where we have so little information to go on, and inevitably make up stories about each other to fill in the blanks. (Not talking about you personally—we all do this.) Because these effects lead to stuck, repetitive, and ultimately nasty discussion, the site guidelines try to mitigate them, and commenters here need to follow those.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Someone writes a long comment accusing the interviewee of intentionally omitting information, and forgets that the interviewee talked about that information at length?

My working hypothesis is that the commenter probably only skimmed the article, if that. But the really unforgivable part is that that incorrect comment was then voted to the top of the thread. It looks like a lot of people are voting before reading the article.

I'll keep within your guidelines, but my intention was just to point out the irony of the commenter falsely accusing the interviewee of doing something that the commenter themselves was doing.

Assange attempted to appeal his extradition from the UK. One way to challenge that is to show that what you are being accused of isn't a crime in the UK. The UK High Court judgement is informative. What Assange is accused of (the 4 counts) would be crimes in the UK.

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html

Just one bit from your linked article: “But in the morning, according to the revised statement, the woman woke up because he tried to penetrate her without a condom.”. I'm sorry, Assange tried to penetrate a woman who was asleep?! That's not right

>. I'm sorry, Assange tried to penetrate a woman who was asleep?! That's not right

Though the authenticity of this claim is dubious, the correct response would be to send him to Sweden for trial. That is not what is likely happening, he is being targeted for his political actions.

The accusation here seems to be that the revised statement was simply fabricated by the Stockholm police without any input from the woman.

Very well said.

And thanks for the interview link.

It's sad to see this conspiracy theory being voted to the top.

For HN, the only cause more motivating than functional programming seems to be accusing women of lying. With, in this case, often the gall to claim that this would somehow "protect real victims".

Okay, I have to say I'm sorry for the phrasing of my comment. Not because I think any of it is untrue, but because I could have foreseen that the "NOT" part is not explicit enough about what I mean. So here goes...

What I did mean (and I take this straight from the article) is that at least one of these women explicitely refused to sign a statement speaking of rape, because that was not what she came to report, or what she thought happened. She texted as much to a friend, too. Yet the police not only went ahead with an investigation based on a statement that the only witness had refused to sign, but they also altered said statement afterwards to re-open the case when the first statement was disregarded as a credible account of what happened, yet not an account of a crime. So I'm explicitly not saying that this first woman lied. She said the truth, told her story, and in her story, there was no rape. A prosecutor in Stockholm agreed with her, as did Assange. So this is the word of the police, against the prosecution, the defendant, and the purported victim and only witness. Hence my phrasing of "a woman did NOT make a rape allegation". I hope that clears that up.

And note the singular in that sentence up there. The second woman is different of course, and at least she clearly stated a rape allegation. I'm not the one to pass judgement on that. But the people who are, and who have seen the evidence, seem to not be convinced. Further, at the point where the second allegation even enters the picture, the case had already completely derailed, so if or if not the breaking of the condom was intentional, and if or if not such a condom could credibly hold no DNA whatsoever is pretty moot at that point.

I have no idea why this is getting downvoted. Odd.

Well, Assange does stir emotions in many. That makes him such a hard topic to discuss, even if from a (human and press) rights perspective, the whole thing is pretty cut-and-dry.

Indeed. Assange is an asshole. A lot of people that have tried working with have conformed that. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been successfully smeared (he has), or that hes contribution to journalism should be ignored (it shouldn’t)

> Assange is an asshole.

The smear campaign continues to be successful even in people who consciously know it was all lies.

The human psyche is pretty "amazing".

Some people are assholes. Some people are smeared with crimes worse then “being an asshole”. Julian Assange can belong to the intersection of the two.

Not everything bad ever said about Assange is a lie.

Assange isn't an asshole. Assange is a victim of torture.

False dichotomy. And being a victim of torture can in no way be defended by "he's an asshole."

When being or not being an asshole became something of importance regarding the issues at stake? The dichotomy might be false but you're missing the whole point.

I don’t see “being an asshole” to be the issue at stake here at all.

It is for sure an issue for people that are trying to work with him. It is understandable that people bring it up when conversation revolve around him. But it is completely irrelevant when we are talking about his contributions to journalism being censored.

The people smearing Assange frankly come across as the asshole to me. Assange may not be the most pleasant person ever, I have no idea since I've never met the guy. But an asshole calling someone else an asshole makes the allegation lack any real credibility

for some reason, a LOT of people here do not like assange/wikileaks anymore. which is super weird imho.

I suspect it's a result of the apparent politicization of Wikileaks. When it first appeared it seemed fairly neutral, but that neutrality appears to have vanished somewhere along the line.

>When it first appeared it seemed fairly neutral, but that neutrality appears to have vanished somewhere along the line.

Wikileaks has always been as neutral as reasonably possible, given that it consists of human journalists and their human sources, not emotionless impartial machines. They have an excellent accuracy rate. The only thing that changed is that their honest reporting became embarrassing to wealthy and powerful people closely associated with the Democratic party. The DNC leadership loved Wikileaks' reporting on governmental malfeasance prior to late 2008. What changed in late 2008 was not Wikileaks' demonstrated neutrality towards reporting on governmental malfeasance, but the color of the lawn signs of the victorious president.

I suspect there's also some deep resentment from the traditional J-school cohort, who have spent over a decade being embarrassed by outsider Assange and his colleagues. Wikileaks has consistently make them look like obedient stenographers to the powerful, not principled journalists willing to speak truth to power. Wikileaks has publicly exposed many in the media as being too afraid to break real stories for fear of government legal pressure and a reduction in corporate advertising dollars. Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, and Boeing don't advertise their military hardware on the cable news networks because they're trying to sell cruise missiles and fighter jets to the folks at home. They do it to hold something over the cable news networks' execs' heads when embarrassing stories might come to light.

Combine the collective resentment of the leadership of both major American political parties and their connected donors, the national security apparatus, the military-industrial complex, and every mainstream journalist who's getting scooped by an Australian ex-black-hat and his friends who (gasp!) never even attended Columbia, and we end up with a vicious and unfounded anti-wikileaks narrative festering within the politically-acceptable conversation today.

> Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, and Boeing [...] advertise their military hardware on the cable news networks

I had no idea that was happening. Sounds like American television is getting pretty wacky.

It's been like that for at least 15 years.

but wikileaks was always political.

i mean, we all remember collateral murder and the amount of stuff leaked re: gwb and the iraq war.

Wikileaks has always been a political project, why would you expect anything else from the left-wing anarchist CCC crowd that runs it?

Not really.

"Tell a lie enough times and people will believe it".

Sadly, that's still true. Even in people who consciously know that it was all lies. That's the human mind for ya.

The last US presidential election cycle really soured public opinion on Assange.

After the Hillary email leaks, Democratic Party rhetoric turned against Assange. Many in the party hold him culpable for Trump's election.

I don't know if he was favoring one party or the other (as some Democrats purport), or if he was a Russian mouthpiece, or if he was just leaking the information that came to him unbeknownst to the state actors at play.

He lost a lot of the goodwill he built, and that put him in a very dangerous spot.

wikileaks published the DNC emails which harmed the DNC and Hillary in particular. It was a factor in low turnout and Hillary's loss. Since then wikileaks has been associated with Russia / Putin / Trump (bad). The collateral damage era has been mostly forgotten.

"harmed" seems like an odd choice of words. The leaks made public a lot of exceedingly unflattering facts (and perhaps illegalities) that put the DNC and Clinton in a very different light. AFAIK, few or none of those facts has been refuted. To me, it looks like the leaks were a great public service.

(I have not much doubt that one could find a similar cesspool on the RNC side.)

The effect of the leaks would have been rather minor if all involved would have just issued a mea culpa and fired the head of the DNC outright. Instead, it felt like they just told us all to suck it up.

That was a pretty "clever" part in the smear campaign.

First declare him a "rapist". But that didn't cut it.

So they made him a "Trumpist". And many people still believe it up to this day.

"they" did?

So emails and conversations that show the Trump campaign and family communicating with Assange over leaks and timings were ... what ... smear?

* https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec...

* https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/14/563996442...

* https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-campaign...

> On Oct. 3, WikiLeaks, writing a day before it was set to announce the release of hacked Democratic emails, wrote to Trump Jr.: "Hiya. It'd be great if you guys could comment on /push this story."

Yeah. Can't imagine why he might be considered a "Trumpist"...

What's interesting is, many of the same people who criticize the leaks for hurting Hillary's chances would also applaud the leaks for demonstrating DNC bias against Bernie.

I would assume some associating it with Trump is behind it.

I wouldn't call it weird.

The whole Russia deal and him taking sides is something many can not ignore.

Although, that's kinda what you (read: Clinton) can expect from someone she helped maneuver into a corner...

Can you? Why? It's not like it helped him much to align himself with Russia (or Putins politics and world views) or did it? It didn't even help him to help Trump get elected by leaking this stuff at the right moment in time and it's not like Trump couldn't help him out (see Roger Stone or Flynn soon).

He projected himself as an Anarchist once. The independence in persona. This independence was what brought him trust. He lost all that. He did not lose that because the USA wanted to see him in jail. Snowden is still a respectable person for example.

If that ever really happened the way it was presented.

He presented himself at least on twitter this way.

I think one reason for the "Assange is an asshole" hate is that there are many people all over the West who love and believe in the USA as a unequalled force for good, and they are filled with resentment towards Assange for destroying that belief.

They can't deny the terrible acts perpetrated by the US, so they try to reclaim some moral superiority by accepting and repeating the completely unsubstantiated (and in some cases, ridiculous) smears against Assange.

Probably because every time this comes up, it's the same one guy making asburdist claims like Assange's completely self-enforced time in the Ecuadorean embassy was illegal detention by the UK government.

The "same one guy" is one way of describing Nils Melzer, here's another:

> The problem for the propaganda system targeting Assange is that Melzer is not just someone blogging on the internet; he is the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. In addition, he is a professor of international law at the University of Glasgow and holds the Human Rights Chair at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in Switzerland, where he has been teaching since 2009, including as the Swiss Chair of International Humanitarian Law (2011–2013). Melzer even speaks fluent Swedish. In other words, it is hard to imagine anyone better qualified to comment on the Assange case.

- https://www.medialens.org/2020/burned-at-the-stake-the-un-sp...

You might want to address the issue that his claims are absurdist nonsense rather than his CV.

That's your opinion. If you're aware of who Melzer is and his credentials (calling him "same one guy" suggested you weren't), maybe onus should be on you to explain why you think Melzer's claims are absurd. Have you read/watched interviews with him where he's answered many questions about the Assange arrest and detention?

For something to be self-enforced, doesn't one have to be able to walk away freely if one so chooses?

Not if there's a warrant out for your arrest, no.

No idea if its "the same guy", but this is a link to an interview with the UN special rapporteur on torture about his investigation into Assange.

That doesn’t sound too different from many prisons. Is it not detention if it’s “easy” to escape?

Yeah, the threat of being illegally and immorally extradited and potentially facing a death penalty and being stripped of human rights really makes his asylum "self enforced"

It is downvoted because Assange became the enemy of many people in the so-called American "left".

Which is bizarre, Assange just hates the US in general. Of course he’d want the least competent people running the country.

He’s much further left than any US democrats.

Saying he hates the US is really unfounded and you're perpetuating fake news

You are leaving out a LOT of the story in this post. Such as his connections with both the Russian state and the Trump campaign, or his person history of sexual misconduct and awful behaviour towards women.

1. He was not accused (by Swedish, UK, or US authorities) of being a horrible person, and if he were, they'd be laughed out of court.

2. Even if what you said was provably true (which, to stress, it is not. Go read the article I linked) then none of what you listed would justify stripping him of his fundamental rights like access to a lawyer, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, etc.

3. You totally fail to mention the rest of the context like... oh I don't know... that he published documents that clearly and without a doubt documented war crimes and others crimes that had wilfully been covered up.

He was never, for even a second, stripped of his fundamental right of access to a lawyer. He, by his own free will, chose not to take part in the legal process that would grant him his access to a lawyer. Nor was any cruel or unjust punishment enforced on him. No punishment whatsoever was enforced on him. Every thing that happened to him happened, again, of his own free will. He chose to lock himself in a house. Nobody forced him to do so. He could, every hour of every day of all those years, open the door and walk out.

Seriously? Read the article. Especially the later part about, how the UK and the US are... denying him access to his lawyers.

The article makes so many misrepresentations, I am not very inclined to take what is says at face value.

It tries hard to make it sound like he does not have access to a lawyer, but what it actually seems to say is that he is not able to bring documents to his cell from the lawyer that he does have access to.

Did you actually read the interview? It lists and explains evidence that this history of sexual misconduct is, at least in large parts, intentionally constructed by the public authorities

There are other cases that are not related to these particular two at all.

could you point me to some article about that?

This is an article about general absolutely awful behaviour: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...

Also, https://www.thedailybeast.com/free-press-group-set-to-cut-of...

While both these articles go into details about unsavory awful behavior, there is no indication of (additional) sexual misconduct in them. Claiming that there are more cases despite that seems misleading. While I do not approve of Assanges actions and statements as detailed in the intercept article, being a douche is not evidence of sexual misconduct

It is not, but there is a strong correlation, and you should bear it in mind when evaluating how likely you think those accusations are to be true.

I am sure I have read other more direct accusations, but unfortunately I am not finding the sources at the moment.

I still think these articles are more than enough to cast some pretty strong doubts over the claims of his defences, and I think nobody who has read them should be quite so eager to run to his defence.

Assange can be a horrible person and also be targeted for his political actions. The Snowen documents confirmed that the US had been targeting him since around 2008.

Any Trump or Russia connections do not make the Manning leaks a crime.

True. But it also does not make him a good person, or worthy of support. He very deliberately turned Wikileaks into a propaganda tool for Russia. And their motives are no more pure than those of the US.

He has done massive damage by allowing his organisation to be used to promote the oppression and cruelty of the Trump regime, and he has throughly poisoned the waters for anyone else wanting to leak information.

"it also does not make him a good person, or worthy of support."

What's that got to do with anything? How about just upholding the rule of law? Justice isn't supposed to be a popularity contest.

What law is not being upheld?

As I said in cousin comment: his access to lawyers, right now. For starters.

>He very deliberately turned Wikileaks into a propaganda tool for Russia. And their motives are no more pure than those of the US.

Though I don't agree with this statement, that is not a crime and not what he is being charged with.

>He has done massive damage by allowing his organisation to be used to promote the oppression and cruelty of the Trump regime, and he has throughly poisoned the waters for anyone else wanting to leak information

I agree, seeing Assange get tortured for 8 years probably has caused people to become less willing to publish leaks. I don't see how you can blame the person undergoing such treatment for trying to escape it.

> Though I don't agree with this statement, that is not a crime and not what he is being charged with.

I am not interested in what is legal, I am interested in what is moral.

> I agree, seeing Assange get tortured for 8 years

Assange tortured himself for 8 years. He was free to walk out the door every hour of every day of those eight years.

He’s not being extradited for rape, he’s being extradited for being a Russian asset. The rape allegation being falsified could be completely accurate and still irrelevant to his crimes. He stopped being protected as a journalist a long time ago.

That link white washes Assange to an incredible level. Snowden was a hero, Assange is a Putin lackey who got caught.

Rape falls under public prosecution. That means that the prosecutor is forced to press charges whether the plaintiff wants it or not. According to the two women he did some questionable things that the prosecutor thought could be enough to convict him. The two women's stories are out in the open while Assange instead opted to flee the country and has not commented on the allegations.

What I think is a shame is that you are accusing these two women of being part of a smear campaign and/or a secret conspiracy to frame Assange when there is exactly zero evidence for that theory. We don't know what happened in those bedrooms - it's word against word. But the words of two people generally weighs heavier than the word of one. Especially when this one refused to be questioned by the police.

EDIT: It's fine if you downvote my comment or flag it. It's still true.

>What I think is a shame is that you are accusing these two women of being part of a smear campaign and/or a secret conspiracy to frame Assange when there is exactly zero evidence for that theory.

Those women appear to be an unwilling part of the smear campaign, it is not a shame to call attention to this fact. The records provide ample evidence for this theory, such as their direct statements, the ordered rewrite of their complaints, and the media reporting statements the day before they were made.

Even if they have legitimate complaints against Assange, theiy are being used as part of a smear campaign.

>The two women's stories are out in the open while Assange instead opted to flee the country and has not commented on the allegations.

People that flee the country don't typically wait until they are denied a visa, and then check in with the authorities immediately before leaving the country. Assange has repeatedly opted to comment on the allegations, he just wants assurance they wouldn't send him to the US. Sweden refused to let him.

Are you that naive? Evidence and witness testimony can be easily fabricated by authorities (happens all the time), especially when the authorities are out to get someone and have political and personal reasons to do so. What's your reasoning for believing these women's testimony other than made up fact by police?

What is your reasoning for believing they WERE made up?

It certainly isn't evidence of any kind.

The interview in the top-level comment seems to cover that.

The interview with the guy who is making a claim that it's all a conspiracy based on... him not knowing how the Swedish justice system works?

"Why would a person be subject to nine years of a preliminary investigation for rape without charges ever having been filed?"

Because in Sweden, the suspect is first interviewed, and then charges are filed, and Assange himself has chosen to not make himself available for interview?

That is not a great way to establish credibility, and the tone he says this stuff in is entirely that of someone who is pushing an agenda with little regard for truth.

>Assange himself has chosen to not make himself available for interview

*Except for the appearing at the police station and giving an interview with a policeman, then spending three weeks scheduling multiple meetings that the prosecution deferred, getting written permission to leave the country, agreeing to return if assurances would be made that he would not he sent to the US, offering to conduct the interview in the UK or over video link as allowed by Swedish law.

Besides, why would they organize such a grand conspiracy case only to drop the investigation shortly after a US ally obtained custody of Assange?

I was thinking of the bit where he says

"Now the supervisor of the policewoman who had conducted the questioning wrote her an email telling her to rewrite the statement from S. W."

and then provides physical evidence of that.

That, as far as I can tell, is a misrepresentation.

I don't understand what you mean. The women who have testified against Assange are alive and well. One (Anna Ardin) is a public figure and both are active in Swedish left-wing politics. The idea that these women would be part of a conspiracy to frame Assange is ludicrous as they both supported Assange's cause. Their testimonies are public knowledge and if they didn't agree with what is written in the records, it would be easy for them to protest it.

Also, you have to offer me some evidence that Swedish authorities can easily fabricate evidence and witness testimony and that it happens all the time. Not that I know how it is relevant since the witness testimonies in Assange's case are clearly not fabricated.

You can not prove that the evidence is not fabricated or that witnesses are being truthful or were not pressured into their statements, you chose to believe in what the authorities put out there (that is your choice, it does not prove anything except that you believe the authorities). People say things all the time, that does not make it true, just because two women said something does not make it more true than if only one said it and looking at the circumstances it seems like a lot of powerful forces are at work against Assange. You think it is not possible at all for "evidence" like this to be untruthful and that damaging Assange's reputation would be of benefit to some? You chose to look at the world in a certain way, that things are good and that authorities can be trusted however if Assange and Wikileaks have taught us anything it's that that premise is not true. It's not a conspiracy, it's what's happening, you just don't want to see it.

Can you prove that they were? As said, these women are alive and well and still active in left-wing politics. If they didn't agree with their recorded testimonies they would have had ample time to set the record straight! Sweden isn't a police state like China.

Wow... I couldn't disagree more with your EDIT. This is flat out untrue. I didn't say they were smearing him, and neither does Melzer. Did you read the article?

If you carefully read Nils Melzer's report(s), you'll see that both women are unwilling victims of what's going on.

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