

Sweden Seeks to Detain Assange - CaptainZapp
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/11/18/world/europe/AP-EU-Sweden-WikiLeaks.html?_r=1&hp

======
dsplittgerber
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."

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

~~~
jrockway
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.

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

~~~
grandalf
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.

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henrikschroder
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/>

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

<http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink>

~~~
mrcharles
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.

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charlesattlan
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.

~~~
roel_v
"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.

~~~
charlesattlan
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.

~~~
roel_v
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.

------
eof
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.

~~~
jrwoodruff
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.

~~~
danik
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?

~~~
michael_dorfman
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.

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

------
mrtron
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.

------
joshes
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.

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gizmomagico
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.

~~~
Erwin
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.

~~~
grandalf
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.

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

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

~~~
grandalf
<http://www.twitlonger.com/show/71lsqt>

~~~
roel_v
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.

~~~
grandalf
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.

~~~
roel_v
"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.

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

~~~
roel_v
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.

------
sneak
Julian Massage

