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What Really Happened When Wikileak’s Founder Julian Assange Was ‘Raped’

by | 22nd, August 2010

JULIAN Assange, leading light of the Wikileaks website is not a rapist. He is also not a bank robber, paedophile, jihadi, junkie  – and he is not wanted in his native Townsville for the late return of a library book. But he does look like David Gower, the former England cricketer.

What Julian Assange is and is not is the topic of much debate ever since he was accused of rape. The allegation has been dismissed. For a short while Julian Assange was famous for something other than unleashing thousands of secret US military documents on the war in Afghanistan online and having fairy hair (although he has cut it). For a short while Julian Assange was an alleged rapist.

Wikileaks Gives Lazy Journalists Biased History Of War In Afghanistan: Pictures

But he is a good guy. Assange is working for the good of mankind:

* Daniel Schmitt, a co-founder of Wikileaks, says Mr Assange is “one of the few people who really care about positive reform in this world to a level where you’re willing to do something radical to risk making a mistake, just for the sake of working on something they believe in”.

But get a load of that non-rape. Wanted by the US government to help with their enquiries (no arrest warrant has been issued – it’s not as if he did anything serious like sell marijuana seeds in Canada), Assange was alleged to have been out and about in Sweden. And he was horny:

* Police said he was wanted for raping a woman in Stockholm last weekend and then sexually assaulting another woman in the town of Enkoping, 40 miles from the capital, three days later.

Assange says the claims are baseless. But good of the Swedish police to tell everyone that he was wanted. Assange duly has his named linked to the word “rape”. His accusers remain unnamed.

Maybe, Mr Assange and his Wikileaks colleagues can reveal the accusers’ identities and save other men from attack?

The allegation was first brought to our attention by Swedish tabloid The Expressen. It’s owned by the Bonnier family, who have considerable business interests in Europe and the US. The paper has:

A commitment to protect the editorial voice from commercial and political interests and the courage to publish controversial media content

What of the source? Kristinn Hrafnsson works with Assange. Says he:

“He didn’t know of the charges until he read them in the right wing tabloid Expressen this morning. There are powerful organisations who want to do harm to WikiLeaks.”

But this is not to say that the paper’s report was based on anything other than the relay of information.

The report went thus – and this is a rough English translation:

Women must be received by the City police in Stockholm yesterday to ask about their experiences with Julian Assange. They reportedly did not notify. Women are terrified and dare not participate. The police believe that in this case, the offender’s position of power that women are afraid of. This raises for police and prosecutor, says a source.

The women report the ‘rape’ and then back down from fear? The alleged rape and their fear is reported on? It’s what police “believe”. Such are the facts, readers. And Assange remains innocent:

Julian Assange remained under suspicion of a lesser crime of molestation in a separate case, prosecutors said.

He remains innocent of fomenting war, failure to drive without insurance, oral sex with an adult male badger in a central London cinema and all manner of other crimes.

And that allegation that Assange urinated on the graves at Arlington cemetery remain unproven…



Posted: 22nd, August 2010 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink