Sweden’s Deputy Director of Public Prosecution, Eva-Marie Persson, telling a May 13 press conference Sweden is to seek extradition
Confused about Assange? You’re meant to be. That’s how dirty tricks work: witness the tobacco lobby’s sowing of doubt on the health risks from smoking. From an establishment perspective you needn’t declare the man guilty. It suffices that the issues become sufficiently complex, the waters sufficiently muddied, for you to forget how convenient those rape claims are, given what Wikileaks told us: all of it falsifiable; none of it falsified.
Better still if we find it all too confusing to be bothered with.
Craig Murray was the Ambassador to Uzbekistan sacked by Tony Blair for telling the world that its leader, Islam Karimov, alternated between making his own family obscenely rich in a land of grinding poverty, and boiling political opponents in oil. This embarrassed Tony, just as Karimov was allowing Coalition strikes – to rid Iraq of a tyrant, you understand, and nothing whatsoever to do with oil – from his fiefdom’s ex Soviet airbases.
Murray continues to tell truths unpalatable to our rulers. Here he is on Julian Assange, following yesterday’s news that Sweden intends to revisit the 2012 rape allegations.
Murray begins:
That the Swedish investigation into the rape allegation against Julian Assange is being re-opened is something that ought to be welcomed. The alternative would be for this accusation to hang unresolved over Julian’s head forever. The Swedish prosecutors now need finally, as my father used to say, either to piss or get off the pot. They need to decide whether there is sufficient evidence to charge or not.
There is no reason for delay. The Swedish police have had seven years to investigate this case and all the evidence has been gathered and all statements taken – the last being the interview of Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy in 2017. Hopefully to review the evidence and decide whether to charge will not now be a lengthy procedure. It is worth noting, contrary to much misreporting, Julian Assange has never been charged with anything in Sweden.
In the event that Sweden does wish to try to extradite, that should take precedence over the US request. There are three good reasons for this. Firstly, rape is by far the more serious alleged offence. Secondly, the Swedes entered the process many years before the Americans. Thirdly, the European Arrest Warrant is a major multilateral arrangement that is much more important than the discredited bilateral extradition treaty with the USA.
Julian only entered Ecuadorean political asylum because he feared onward extradition to the USA, not extradition to Sweden.
None of the above detracts from the many problems with the Swedish prosecution …
Read the rest on Craig Murray’s site.
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Also, see Caitlin Johnstone (my favourite Ozzie, alongside Assange and Pilger) writing six days ago, i.e. before the news from Stockholm, under the heading, People Who Publicly Fret About Assange Rape Allegations Are Lying …
Vintage Caity.
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And for those who’ve miraculously resisted the brainwashing, that only the brainwashed would read Russia Today, here’s a piece from yesterday’s RT: Crushing a Whistleblower on a Wheel: The unrelenting witch-hunt of Julian Assange.
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Last but not least, here’s a five minute video with Man Booker winner and activist, Arundhati Roy on Why She Admires WikiLeaks & Opposes Assange’s Extradition to the U.S.
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