This is now a prime example in what happens when politics gets involved with justice. The police interviewed everyone involved, including Assange. The district chief prosecutor looked at it and concluded to drop it. Almost a month later, even through there had been no new information available, the political assigned director of Public Prosecution decided to reopen the case and immediately issues a international arrest warrant for Assange who by then had left the country. Assange then later goes into political refugee, while prosecutor refuses to continue with the case for political reasons, which then created a deadlock. A Swedish judge then order the prosecutor to continue with the case, but by then its too late to start diplomatic negotiations to get into the embassy and the case falls through to the statue of limitations.
If the choice had been between the possibility of incompetent police and prosecutor that might cause a criminal go free, or the political mess above, I rather go with the first option. The accused, the potential victims, and the tax payers has all been suffering from this case and the only beneficiary aspect has been the diplomatic relation between Sweden and US. That outcome should be a clear sign that justice and politics do not belong together.
I completely agree with your point in the specific case, but completely disagree in general.
Justice IS political. Justices either run for office as political public figures or are appointed by political public figures. The justice system is an attempt to apply a subset of morality for the betterment of society, which is ultimately a subjective political exercise.
> Justices either run for office as political public figures or are appointed by political public figures
Mon dieu, Baron de Montesquieu must be spinning in his grave! :)
One of the key principles of modern government is (or rather, should be) total independence of the judicial system from political pressure. In practice this is hard to achieve. In the US it turned into a "parallel democracy" with elected judges, who might not answer to regular politicians but are politicians themselves; in Europe it's usually a fundamentally-administrative career path, however in various countries it's more or less influenced by political winds (after all, an efficient Government or Parliament will want someone to actually enforce laws that get passed). Still, there is a clear ideal of purity and independence that original constituents were striving for (usually as a reaction to the arbitrary power of kings and popes), and our failings in reaching it now does not mean we will never reach it.
On your more general point, rather than "justice" I'd rather refer to "law enforcement". Yes, law enforcement is political: it enforces laws written by ruling interests to perpetuate such interests (be those moral, economic, of class or whatever). The degree and intensity of enforcement for any given rule is eminently political. However, "justice" itself is not necessarily the same thing.
At the end of the day, man is not perfect; a system will always be required to address this problem and its consequences. The existence of such a system is not just political but essential to society itself. Pre-political forms of society, where the tribe leader ruled uncontested by virtue of pure physical strength, likely still involved the administration of justice to a certain degree. In a way, the emergence of political structures themselves is an answer to the problem of obtaining justice (who defines what is just? How does he define it? How does he enforce it? and so on).
I don't disagree with your premise, but I can't think of any place outside of the US were judges are running for office and elected. In most places, they are more akin to some sort of civil servant, from an administration independent of the executive and legislative branch.
Regardless of what you think of Assange (personal take: flawed personality but ultimately heroic)...
Regardless of what you think of the charges against him (personal take: No way to know for sure, but gut feel is he made poor choices and wound up in the grey area of undesired sexual experiences that our society is currently struggling with how to properly define. In our natural humane desire to protect potential victims we are defaulting to deeming it "sexual assault", but the reality is more complex as the assaulter is not even fully aware of their state)...
You have to admit it's super fucked up that Sweden is unable to charge someone with a crime if they can't interview them first? What if the suspect is a non-communitative deaf mute?
They certainly can charge in absentia and issue extradition warrants afterwards - read the UK high court judgment. The problem is that as soon as they charge they have to share evidence to get an extradition warrant, and Assange could have beat the request on substantive grounds by demonstrating that there was no crime under British law, something that would have been particularly easy since the Swedish prosecutor would be required to share evidence, including the exculpatory texts.
They did not charge because the requirements to extradite for "questioning" are much weaker and require no proof, just a statement from the Swedish prosecutor that cannot be challenged on any substantive grounds.
What's fucked up? Sweden's justice system seems to be far superior to the US's—both in taking very seriously charges of sexual assault that would probably be ignored in the US, and in taking very seriously the rights of the accused.
Assange has squandered his chance to clear his name, and sure seems to be at the least a creepy dude.
I don't think hearings are strictly necessary, but in order to charge someone the prosecutor must believe there is a case. In situations with little other evidence (technical, witnesses,...) the prosecutor needs more.
> As they drank tea, he started to fondle her leg which she welcomed. Everything happened fast. Mr Assange ripped off her clothes and at the same time broke her necklace. She tried to put her clothes on again, but Mr Assange had immediately removed them again. She had thought that she did not really want to continue, but it was too late to tell Mr Assange to stop as she had consented so far. Accordingly she let Mr Assange take off all her clothes. Thereafter they laid down on the bed naked with AA on her back and Mr Assange on top. Mr Assange wanted to insert his penis into her vagina, but she did not want him to do that as he was not using a condom. She therefore squeezed her legs together in order to avoid him penetrating her. She tried to reach several times for a condom which Mr Assange had stopped her from doing by holding her arms and bending her legs open and trying to penetrate her with his penis without a condom.
> Indeed she was concerned he had not put a condom on. She felt his penis with her hand to check he had really put it on. She felt that the edge of the condom was in the right place on the root of his penis. They therefore continued to have sex, as she said that she thought that she just wanted to get it over with. After a while AA noticed that Mr Assange had pulled his penis out of her and started to arrange the condom. Judging by the sound AA thought he was removing the condom. He then penetrated her again and continued sexual intercourse.
> When she started to move her body she noticed something was seeping out of her vagina and understood it must be his semen. AA told the police she was convinced that Mr Assange, when he pulled out of her, broke the condom by the glans and then continued the intercourse until he ejaculated.
> Her statement then describes in some detail the conduct that forms the basis of Offence 4. She fell asleep, but was woken up by his penetration of her. She immediately asked if he was wearing anything. He answered to the effect that he was not. She felt it was too late and, as he was already inside her, she let him continue. She had never had unprotected sex. He then ejaculated inside her.
Not a "grey area of undesired sexual experience" here. Just straight up exceeding the scope of consent.
EDIT: downvoted by either the pro-rape crowd or the anti-copyright infringement crowd.
This video does a pretty good job of explaining consent for those that don't think AA's description sounds like rape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbei5JGiT8 (Tea Consent)
The first 3 dot points read more like a case of a broken condom than exceeding the scope of consent. A lot of the evidence is what she thinks he was thinking - this is not high quality evidence. He seems to have done everything she asked him to do.
The last dot point is from the other set of charges (SW rather than AA). That one is a fairly clear case of straight up exceeding the scope of consent. If it happened like that, it is bad behavior. He could reasonably be unwise rather than malicious. A formal apology and a moderate fine for any medical expenses seems appropriate to my moral judgment, although the courts would know what is appropriate legally.
At any rate, the two cases here are rather minor compared to the suspicion that the US government is setting him up with a smear campaign. The forces against him include a government which apparently has a secret court and a spy network that was being run by the executive without the apparent knowledge of the American congress. These charges may not exist in a vacuum. Lots of people are not perfect, the issue is that he deserves some freedom from persecution for his political actions. Someone obviously agrees with me here that these charges were politically motivated, because the Ecuadorians are granting him asylum.
So you're saying Assange should be allowed to do whatever he wants, because USA?
And re: Ecuador, there are certainly reasons why they have granted asylum.
Wanting to protect a victim of persecution is virtually guaranteed not to have been a real consideration. Pissing off the USA and the UK is the obviously much bigger motivation.
I'm being quite specific, saying that this extradition order for these specific charges should be ignored, because USA.
If they had solid evidence that he was dragging women off the streets and threatening them with a knife then this is all reasonable. No-one is alleging anything like that.
I'm also throwing in an uninformed opinion that people are throwing 'sexual assault' and 'rape' around expecting a strong reaction, but I don't see the justification for getting worked up here. Setting aside any STDs (basically, assuming Assange doesn't have aids), the issue is that he did something that didn't hurt anyone, doesn't appear calculated to humiliate, was in circumstances where he might have misunderstood as having consent (given he was already having sex with these women), and can be rectified in 24 hours with drugs and a doctors visit. This would be grounds to discipline him, but not grounds to get worked up.
> the issue is that he did something that didn't hurt anyone, doesn't appear calculated to humiliate, was in circumstances where he might have misunderstood as having consent (given he was already having sex with these women), and can be rectified in 24 hours with drugs and a doctors visit. This would be grounds to discipline him, but not grounds to get worked up.
I honestly can't conceive that you could apply this logic. Not all rape is the same in severity or impact - but it is sure as hell all rape. And feeling like someone had sexual contact with you in a way that you did not want is pretty much the end of the story. Whether there are explicit physiological medical repercussions or not.
I'm in agreement with you; I listed 4 things and medical outcomes were only a part of it. But I'm not sure that my point was clear so I'm going to restate it while choosing my words as carefully as I can:
For the sake of argument I'm happy to say that this is a rape, that it is bad and that it does deserve some sort of punishment.
Leaving aside any legal framework which isn't at all relevant to what I'm saying (and how many people on HN are up-to-date on Swedish law anyway). But that leaves the question of what punishment is appropriate (not necessarily mandated by law, but appropriate given a reasonable person. Opinions will differ).
I think that a sincere apology and a monetary fine seem like an appropriate level of punishment. I don't think international condemnation by strangers is called for.
1) No actual harm appears to have been done done
2) As I've said in other parts of the thread:
2a) The evidence that this was intended to humiliate or remove any sense of agency is not convincing
2b) There is evidence he complied with everything the women asked him to do, except in one instance where he should have worn a condom
I don't think these circumstances raise grave questions about Assange's moral character. If this is rape, which strictly speaking it may be, then I ask rhetorically why is it outrageous?
You're ignoring the part where he's holding her arms down and forcing her legs open. He's no different than the "dragging women off the streets" rapist, he just didn't need to do that in this case.
So my answer to that is below; just in closing the wikipedia article insinuates [1] that the reason that any of this was reported to the police was because the women involved wanted Assange tested for STDs, not because they wanted him prosecuted for rape. The Chief Public Prosecutor didn't think it was rape at the time.
This seems pretty reasonable, and to me says that rape in Sweden is potentially about as serious as a traffic violation - there was potential, if other things had gone wrong in a somewhat unusual conjunction of events, for someone to have been harmed. An unsavvy woman (potentially those involved) would have been completely unaware that she had been raped.
I'd need to see something new, but while Assange may have committed a crime in Sweden he shouldn't be stigmatised. The word rape, in this very specifc case, is being used in a very technical manner and is clearly a slightly arcane legal term. Maybe discipline is required, but it isn't clear-cut what sort of penalty is needed. Again, I think an apology and some time with a doctor seems in order. Maybe a fine. Possibly this could be handled outside the courts. An extradition is uncalled for.
> I'm being quite specific, saying that this extradition order for these specific charges should be ignored, because USA.
Wow, I never thought I'd see someone advocating that rape / coerced sex / exceeding consent repeatedly is totally fine because the person might be wanted internationally for other crimes.
> The first 3 dot points read more like a case of a broken condom than exceeding the scope of consent.
Whether or not it was a broken condom or he ripped it on purpose is a red herring. If the allegations are true, he was trying to have sex with a woman he just met while holding her arms down and trying to force her legs open. That's attempted rape.
> After a while Mr Assange had asked AA what she was doing and why she was squeezing her legs together. [...] Mr Assange let go of AA’s arms and put on a condom [...]
I can read this as being not that great at sex. Depending on how long "a while" is, he might just be in the habit of grabbing his partner. This doesn't seem malicious.
That might be reasonable, unmalicious behavior if you have a history with someone and can infer things about their state of mind. It's utterly reckless as to someone you just met.
Pretty outrageous that the prosecutor hasn't questioned him in London by now. This has been a huge police cost and is a great disservice to the alleged victims who would surely want the case to progress quickly.
I haven't seen any plausible reason why the prosecutor couldn't question him in London, especially given the exceptional circumstances of the case.
edit: Yes, I have seen the reasons put forward by the SPA mentioned in the article, but these complications were easily foreseeable and it is clear the Swedish prosecutor did not allow enough time to resolve them. Indeed the prosecutor claimed until this march (at which point she changed her mind) that it would be completely impossible to interview Assange at the embassy.
The article covered that about half way down - the short version is that the Swedish authorities tried to interview him in London but Ecuador wouldn't let him be interviewed by the Swedish authorities unless Sweden agreed on a pre-condition that they couldn't lawfully agree to.
> In March 2015, however, the SPA changed its position and requested to interview Assange in London. A spokesperson for Assange welcomed the development and said Assange wanted to be interviewed.
> This was followed in June 2015 by a formal request to the English and Ecuadorean authorities.
> But the SPA were not able to proceed as Ecuador did not give the requisite permissions. The trip to London by a Swedish prosecutor had to be abandoned.
Did you read the article? It's not normally acceptable to demand to be questioned in another country, and when the prosecutor agreed to make an exception, a new (and impossible) condition was added. This is what the author of the article called "calling the bluff".
The Swedish prosecutor has had at least 3 years to organize questioning in the embassy but has left it until the last moment. Now it appears there is not enough time to sort out the (obviously complex) details. Whose fault it that?
The obvious counter-argument to 'calling the bluff' is that the prosecutor has kept the case in limbo for 5 years and then left it too late to organise questioning at the embassy. This allows the prosecutor to save face, and maximises Swedish US relations.
Assange is not setting the rules. The Ecuardorians set the rules for questioning in their embassy and the Swedish have no rules against questioning suspects abroad if necessary.
> If he was innocent why did he argue against going to Sweden?
Because if he was innocent, why should some random person in Sweden, in office or not, be allowed to mess up his travel schedule, just because they want him for "questioning"?
If St. Kitts and Nevis were to file an Interpol Red Notice tomorrow, seeking a person going by the alias "youngtaff" on hackernews: would you drop everything and fly there to sort out whatever mess they've made?
There seem to this normally accepted statement that Sweden do not "normally" perform questioning in other nations, but doing just a lazy google search I find plenty of examples where Swedish police has ventured to other nations to conduct questioning with suspects, victims or relatives. Normally those news articles are about murders, but that is the focus of most news articles when dealing about crimes.
I would be very interested to see statistics on how often police from Scandinavian countries visit each other, interview criminals that jump borders, or simply ask the local police to do the questioning. I personally doubt its such a rare and exceptional occurrence, as I saw a article where police from south of Sweden was lobbying to address speeders who cross the bridge between Denmark and Sweden.
Dude, it's not like Assange is chained to a pipe inside the Ecuatorian embassy, he has been free to get a flight to Sweden for YEARS.
His continual refusal to do so is not a very convincing reason to concede to his demands, to quote Green:
"It is not for any person accused of rape and sexual assault to dictate the terms on which he is investigated, whether it be Assange or otherwise."
Some of the complications that have arisen, providing assurances that cannot be given under Swedish law, might well have been foreseen as part of the near futility of the entire attempt to get access to Assange.
Also, we can be fairly sure that Assange has no credible evidence for an extradition to the US being planned, as else he would have shared it as soon as it came in his possession.
What everyone with that point of view means is this: the prosecutor has had 5 years to fix a potential complex setup but waited for the very last minute.
> Pretty outrageous that the prosecutor hasn't questioned him in London by now. This has been a huge police cost and is a great disservice to the alleged victims who would surely want the case to progress quickly.
Which is Assange's fault, as he's fleeing justice at the same time as demanding others face justice.
I can't stand the hypocritical bastard, he's damaged his movement more than anyone else ever could.
But what if he's right about the risk of being extradited from Sweden to the US? If that happens, the US will surely be far more brutal and punish him for Wikileaks things. We've seen them to it to Manning and threaten it to Snowden.
Then perhaps he should become a martyr instead of a pariah. I certainly don't think that he can morally justify some of his Wikileaks actions and the resultant drama around it has completely ruined the cause.
He has done more to harm the movement for greater transparency than anything else. There are people who quote him saying he doesn't mind the death of civilians as they are complicit due to their actions. This is the motivation used by terorrists.
The only exceptional circumstance is Assange's arrogant assertion that he deserves special treatment. No reason why the Swedish justice system should kowtow to his demands.
Although this particular case is highly political and likely fabricated, the tragedy of such a law of limitation applying to rape is sickening. That's not just in Sweden, but many other jurisdictions, including most of the US states. The real question here isn't about Assange--that's an uninteresting political aside.
The real question is why do states have a statute of limitations on a crime that's sometimes a lot worse than murder and in the best cases, only slightly less bad? Yes, a statute of limitations is incredibly useful for petty crimes like stealing and other small things like that. We're talking here about rape and sexual assault though. As far as I can see, this is still a reflection on how poorly our societies treat women, even in the west. Perhaps the fact that the men in charge don't want to acknowledge the horror of rape? Women, however, are not the only ones getting raped. I truly cannot fathom the reason for this horrific limitation on justice, and I think if men being raped was more of a problem (outside prisons and jails where the authorities generally refuse to accept it happens) we would have no such limitations on rape or sexual assault.
As I've understood, the accusation for rape in this case is for Assange starting to have sex with the alleged victim while she was sleeping, without wearing a condom (the "not wearing a condom" is the key part here; otherwise it apparently would have been technically illegal, but "consentual" in practical terms). Are you really saying that that is "only slightly less bad" than murder?
The 5 year limit, btw, only applies to the accusations for "Unlawful coercion" and "Sexual molestation" (times two). The rape accusation will remain open for another five years (unless the prosecutor decides to drop it).
Yes, having sex with someone while she/he is sleeping is rape and yes, as far as statute of limitations, it should be treated like murder. The only reason to not make the punishment the same is that it would entice rapists to kill their victims. I think if you ask someone who has been raped how they'd compare that to murder, it'll be pretty damn close.
Even ten years is ridiculous for such a crime in a society that condemns this. What you're saying is that our societies don't really condemn this crime and it's not a big deal to ruin someone else's life by forcibly having sex with them. That's horrific, IMO, but seems to be the majority opinion.
"sometimes a lot worse than murder and in the best cases"
Statements like this has tinge of judgement that a woman is less "pure" after being raped. This of course is ridiculous. Rape is a horrible crime. I doubt most rape survivors would rather have been murdered.
>We're talking here about rape and sexual assault though.
No we're not we're talking about “sex by surprise”.
One accuser, Anna Ardin, may have “ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups,” according to Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett, writing for CounterPunch.
Believe it or not, sex by surprise is actually not an euphemism for rape. It is sex without a condom after a woman requests it — even if the sex is consensual — and it's fine-able in Sweden by 5,000 kronor (about $715).
You just proved yourself wrong with your own link:
"The allegations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are pretty straightforward in terms of Swedish law: he's been accused of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.
Well waiting 5 years and then switching to strategy B (interview in London) 1-2 months before the last possible moment was obviously not the best strategy for the (potential) victims.
If I went to my professor at university complaining that I waited 5 years and then could not solve the challenges b/c of not enough time left, he would just laugh at my assumption that I'm not responsible for the fu
Agreed and very much a case of using the letter of the law to abuse the spirit of the law and in this case, avoid it.
He has argued all along that if he left he would be whisked away for nefarious trials by America and if that was the case then this 5 year date of his hiding will make no difference. Unless he just wanted to avoid the trial for whatever reason.
Still for a trial you need a victim and in this case, that victim was not Assange and we have a trial and victim who will not see justice or any form of trial - fair or not. So can imagine how they feel about this.
Is five years evading law enforcement really that much better than ~1 year in prison? (One year based on the fact that the five year limit only applies if the maximum penalty is at most 2 years[1], and presumably a first timer would not spend the whole 2 years in prison (and the actual sentence in this case might be below 2 years anyway))
The general principle, as far as I know, is based on the idea that the need for punishment is lessened by time.
> Is five years evading law enforcement really that much better than ~1 year in prison?
No, clearly not, especially considering the circumstances of the evasion is similar to a Swedish prison. He probably doesn't have a playstation in the Embassy, but he could have had one in his prison cell.
The only reason Assange submitted himself to being locked up into the embassy for 5 years is because he truly fears extradition to the US. In my opinion, rightly so. Remember Sweden allowed secret CIA extraordinary rendition, aka torture flights only a few years before the Assange event[1].
You don't truly believe that the UK, being "cousins" and with all the "special relationship", would be a less probable actor to allow this dreaded extraordinary rendition, do you?
Disappointing, but at least they might still be able to nail him for the remaining rape charge.
Hopefully his victims will eventually be able to see justice, despite his cowering behind the walls of the Ecuadorian embassy with spurious claims of political asylum.
If the choice had been between the possibility of incompetent police and prosecutor that might cause a criminal go free, or the political mess above, I rather go with the first option. The accused, the potential victims, and the tax payers has all been suffering from this case and the only beneficiary aspect has been the diplomatic relation between Sweden and US. That outcome should be a clear sign that justice and politics do not belong together.