Summary: Nine years ago Sweden accused Julian Assange of various sexual crimes, but never filed charges. These immobilized him and smeared his reputation. Craig Murray asks where is the arrest warrant? Also, see how “believe the victim” becomes a powerful tool for the security services.
“Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray asks:
Where is the Swedish Arrest Warrant on Assange?“
By Craig Murray at his website, 27 April 2019.
Posted with his generous permission.
There is none because it was a frame-up to hold him for US authorities.
If the Swedish allegations against Julian Assange were genuine and not simply a ruse to arrest him for extradition to the United States, where is the arrest warrant now from Sweden and what are the charges?
Only the more minor allegation has passed the statute of limitations deadline. The major allegation, equivalent to rape, is still well within limits. Sweden has had seven years to complete the investigation and prepare the case. It is over two years since they interviewed Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. They have had years and years to collect all the evidence and prepare the charges.
So where, Swedish prosecutors, are your charges? Where is your arrest warrant?
Julian Assange has never been charged with anything in Sweden. He was merely “wanted for questioning”, a fact the MSM repeatedly failed to make clear. It is now undeniably plain that there was never the slightest intention of charging him with anything in Sweden. All those Blairite MPs who seek to dodge the glaring issue of freedom of the media to publish whistleblower material revealing government crimes, by hiding behind trumped-up sexual allegations, are left looking pretty stupid.
Why demand that Assange be extradited to Sweden when there is no extradition request from Sweden? What is the point in demanding he face justice in Sweden when there are no charges? Where are the charges from Sweden? The answer to that is silence.
Sweden was always a fit-up designed to get Assange to the USA. And now they don’t need it, so Sweden has quietly gone away. All the false left who were taken in by the security services playing upon a feminist mantra should take a very hard look at themselves. They should also consider this.
If you seriously put forward that in allegations of sexual assault, the accuser must always be believed and the accused must automatically be presumed guilty, you are handing an awesome power to the state to lock people up without proper defence. The state will abuse that awesome power and fit people up. The Assange case shows us just that. And it is not the only case, currently, as everyone in Scotland should realise.
But there is more. If you believe that any sexual accusation against a person should be believed and automatically and immediately end their societal respectability, you are giving power to state and society to exclude dissidents and critics from political discourse by a simple act of accusation. That power will be used and abused by the security services.
In the case of the allegation in Sweden that did fall through the statute of limitation, the accusation was that during the act of consensual sex Julian Assange deliberately split the condom with his fingers, without consent. I quite agree that if true, it would amount to sexual assault. But the split condom given to Swedish police as evidence had none of Assange’s DNA on it – a physical impossibility if he had worn it during sex.
Editor’s note: The Daily Mail first broke this story about the lack of DNA. It was widely covered in the news media, except in the US. There was a news blackout in the Home of the Free.
And the person making the accusation had previously been expelled from Cuba as working for the CIA. So tell me again – we must always believe the accuser?
Ed’s note – This refers to Anna Ardin. Counterpunch investigated, like US journalists used to do before becoming House Stenographers for the Deep State, and found many odd things, such as those documented in these two articles.
“Ardin has written and published on her blog a ‘revenge instruction‘, describing how to commit a complete character assassination to legally destroy a person who ‘should be punished for what he did.’ If the offence was of a sexual nature, the revenge also must also be sex-related, she wrote. Ardin was involved in Gender Studies in Uppsala University, in charge of gender equality in the Students’ Union, a junior inquisitor of sorts.” (27 August 2010.)
“{She had} ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba …Note that Ardin was deported from Cuba for subversive activities.” {3 December 2010.}
McCalatchy’s Miami Herald played down this information. Journalist Guy Rundle has documented the many inconsistencies and oddities in the Swedish story (e.g., start with this article). He is a major source of information about this weird tale.
For once, I agree with the Blairites. Should a warrant arrive from Sweden, that Swedish request should be prioritised for extradition over the US request – not least because rape is much the more serious crime. As the only reason Julian Assange ever claimed asylum was that he saw the Swedish allegations as a ruse to get him into custody for extradition to the US, I would also say that should a warrant from Sweden arrive, he should now voluntarily go without further legal resistance – the US extradition point being overtaken.
But do not hold your breath. No warrant is going to come. The states that coordinated so carefully his arrest and detention, timed with the Muellergate release and the demented Ecuadorean government lies about faeces on walls, don’t need the Swedish angle now. {Ed’s note: even the WaPo sees the link between the IMF’s $4.2 billion loan to Ecuador and their expulsion of Assange.}
I ask again. Where is the warrant from Sweden? Are there still people who cannot see the Swedish allegations for the CIA ruse that they always were?
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About the author
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He joined the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1984. His career culminated as British Ambassador to Uzbekistan 2002 to 2004. It ended when he criticized regime as repressive and using torture (both the American and British governments freaked out). Afterwards he was Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. In 2016 the US government refused to allow him entry to the US.
See his articles at his website. See his bio. See his Wikipedia entry – he has led an extraordinary life.
One of Murray’s book is Sikunder Burnes: Master of the Great Game
“This is an astonishing true tale of espionage, journeys in disguise, secret messages, double agents, assassinations and sexual intrigue. Alexander Burnes was one of the most accomplished spies Britain ever produced and the main antagonist of the Great Game as Britain strove with Russia for control of Central Asia and the routes to the Raj.”
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about Julian Assange, and especially these…
- America’s courtiers rush to defend the government – from us. About the mockery and smears of Snowden and Assange.
- The full story of the rape charges against Julian Assange of Wikileaks, a possible covert op.
- New and strange developments in the prosecution of Julian Assange (Wikileaks) – New but not more enlightening.
- Julian Assange trapped & smeared. Wikileaks weakened. Mission accomplished for CIA?
- Important: The Affair Assange shows us what’s behind the curtain – Analysis by journalist Chris Hedges and the Strategic Culture Foundation.
- The “Resistance” is Silent on Julian Assange – by Margaret Kimberley at the Black Agenda Report.
- James Howard Kunstler looks at the news about Assange & sees useful idiots on parade.
A great book blowing the cover off the CIA’s reputation
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
by Tim Weiner (2007).
The big lesson from Weiner’s vast research: the CIA has great power and almost no accountability. From the publisher …
“For the last sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives. Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, “a legacy of ashes.”
“Now Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIA—and everything is on the record. Legacy of Ashes is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after 9/ll.
“Tim Weiner’s past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as “impressively reported” and “immensely entertaining” in The New York Times.
“The Wall Street Journal called it ‘truly extraordinary …the best book ever written on a case of espionage.’ Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.”
Simple
he was only wanted for questioning. No warrant.
Had he showed up, the charges would have been dropped, since there is no evidence, it is word against word.
No need for DNA, since both agreed they had sex.
He would not have been extradited from Sweden. From UK? Dunno.
Paranoia got in the way.
Assange is nuts.
End of story.
prifffe,
That’s impressive. Zero for three! Propaganda works!
The Swedish authorities could have questioned him in Sweden. Extraditing someone for a hour or two of questioning is odd. From memory, I believe they eventually did so.
The DNA was important because he was accused of opening the condom. A week after the incident, one of the accusers brought in the condom. A DNA test found none of his DNA. This is described in the post, which you apparently did not read.
Your confidence that Assange would not have been extradited from Sweden to the US is weird.
I did read it. And I have followed it from the start, being in Sweden. And came to the conclusion that it would not even go to trial. Their word against his. No need for DNA, since he admitted having sex, the consensual kind. A torn condom is not proof of anything. He was questioned but then left, and refused to come back.
Eventually they went to London to question him. Amateurish handling by the prosecutor (understatement).
Assange may have behaved like a pig, but that is not illegal.
And you have to be verry conspiratorial to believe he was set up. A torn condom? Really.
priffe,
Odd if you are so knowledgeable, that two of three statements you made were false – and the third was silly (i.e., there is a long history of abductions, renditions, and borderline illegal tricks to move people to other areas for trial or punishment).
“A torn condom? Really.”
Wow. You really do know nothing. It is evidence that the case against Assange was weak, that the Swedish authorities knew that it was weak, and still pursued it for many years. You call it “amateurish”, assuming that you are so super-duper knowledgeable. Try imagining that you are not smarter than the Swedish authorities (or even less smart), and think of a rational explanation for their actions.
Keep those eyes tightly closed!
priffe,
In ~1981 I was wanted by Scotland Yard for questioning as a suspect in a major oil scam done in London. They didn’t “extradite” me to London. Someone from the Yard traveled from their Boston consulate to the financial district (a brief cab ride), questioned me, and went home. (I was not guilty; it was identity theft.)
Which is exactly what Swedish authorities did in November 2016, although they could have done so years earlier.
That the US wants Assange is beyond dispute, and that probably had more to do with him being dragged out of that embassy than anything that ever happened in Sweden. . I have to agree with priffe that the Swedish warrant, or lack thereof, is evidence of nothing. The Julian Assange Fan Club is going to be seeing CIA in their coffee, but it’s entirely possible that he did something swinish or even illegal in Sweden, or that a woman he was involved with brought a false rape accusation against him without there being any connection back to Langley. False rape accusations happen all the time. Maybe the CIA cleverly planted that condom, or maybe the Swedes just lost interest because they’ve concluded that there’s no there there.
The Man,
“Maybe the CIA cleverly planted that condom”
Can you point to someone who says that? You’re just making stuff up.
“I have to agree with priffe”
I’m always baffled that people so often believe themselves to be smarter than professionals. It’s understandable when fans have fun believing that they can determine if it was a strike from far away in the stands better than the umpire. Is is less so in the comments here. Just this week one commenter says climate scientists don’t understand greenhouse gases. Another said that economists don’t understand Econ 101-level monetary theory. And Priffe says that the senior justice dept officials of Sweden were “amateurish.”
“False rape accusations happen all the time. ”
Not like this. They are not pursued at such fantastic cost for so many years, long after the evidence clearly showed the claims to be false.
Believing that this just happened, immobilizing and discrediting Assange, is pretty weird. Believing that the the US government’s long interest in the case didn’t influence the Swedish and British governments, is beyond amazing. But that’s America today! Despite the long history of lies by our officials about vital matters, we always believe them the next time (some examples here). Each time people question a bogus-looking story, they are denounced as “conspiratorial.”
Our guilability is our leaders’ greatest asset. There is nothing more to say here. Even for these comment strings, this one is strange. I’m done here, too depressing for one day.