by Sunny Hundal

Acres of trees have been sacrificed to discuss the case regarding Julian Assange and the allegations made by two women.

It has attracted accusations of being politically motivated and being littered with administration errors that point to a conspiracy against the WikiLeaks founder.

Do the accusations stand up? Since the media isn’t doing their job, we’ve decided to take a stab.



We don’t want to get into the merits of the allegations; we look at some of the main accusations made about the due process itself.

But we also want to ‘crowd-source’ some of the claims made. Some have been answered but many others require further investigation. If you can help, post your response below or contact us.

Credit: The responses have mostly been written by Benjamin Gray and Carl Gardner. The idea came fromDr Ben Goldacre and myself.

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ACCUSATIONS REGARDING SWEDEN

1. Julian Assange himself said Swedish prosecutors were withholding evidence, suggesting he had been “set up.” (ABC News, Australia). Are they?

Julian Assange is currently wanted for questioning by police. It is common for authorities not to disclose any more evidence than they absolutely have to. In most cases they don’t reveal detailed evidence to the defence until after charge, according to legal rules on disclosure. This is because if a suspect is given all the information in advance of questioning, it gives him time to concoct a defence. If the suspect has a genuine defence, he or she shouldn’t need to see the evidence against them.

On a Newsnight interview Assange said “no evidence whatsoever needed to be produced”. This is true. He then says, “nothing has been provided to me at all… in English.”

According to Nick Davies in the Guardian (17th Dec), Assange’s Swedish legal team had seen the full allegations against him, though his lawyer maintains that other potentially exculpatory evidence has not been made available to his team.

2. Doesn’t the initial decision not to prosecute indicate conspiracy?

No. Rape is a specialist offence and the decision not to prosecute was taken by lawyers who have no special expertise in sexual offences. The case was re-opened by lawyers who do.

Lawyers legitimately disagree about the interpretation and application of the law a daily basis. It’s the very reason they exist. Prosecutors get things wrong. Indeed, this was a popular suggestion in the Ian Tomlinson case. It is entirely possible for prosecutors to decline to press charges despite there actually being a case. This not a rare occurrence.

3. Hasn’t Assange offered to cooperate with Swedish authorities?

While in the UK Mr Assange has agreed to be questioned. But it seems that this is conditional on seeing the the evidence in advance. That, for the reason just given above, is not something Sweden is prepared to accept. Assange told the BBC yesterday: “I was there for some five weeks after these initial allegations were made.”

His legal team say he stayed in Sweden for more than 40 days to answer the allegations, received permission from the Swedish prosecutor to leave the country and had made numerous attempts to cooperate with investigators since. “All of those have been refused,” one told ABC Television.

4. Why did the Swedish authorities issue an international arrest warrant?

According to the Guardian (Nick Davies, Guardian, 17th Dec), it followed a decision by Assange to leave Sweden in late September and not return for a scheduled meeting when he was due to be interviewed by the prosecutor.

Assange himself told friends in London that he was supposed to return to Stockholm for a police interview during the week beginning 11 October, and that he had decided to stay away. Prosecution documents seen by the Guardian record that he was due to be interviewed on 14 October.

Mr Justice Ouseley, who rejected the appeal against Assange’s bail, said earlier: “There is a debate, which may yet be had elsewhere, over whether the warrant is a warrant for questioning or a warrant for trial.” He was proceeding, he said, on the basis that it was an extradition warrant for trial. (Esther Addley, Guardian, 17th Dec)

5. His lawyer said it was a “CIA honeytrap”.

Mr Assange told the BBC yesterday that he was “misquoted”. He added: “I have never said that this is a honey-trap.”

ACCUSATIONS REGARDING THE UK

6. Why was bail denied at first?

The court was always likely to consider Julian Assange a flight risk. He is a foreign national, who tried to keep his address secret and no strong ties to the UK. He openly stated he was considering claiming asylum in Switzerland. The apparent conditions that were initially offered were insufficient to allay the court’s concerns.

7. Who appealed the Bail decision?

The CPS, independent of the Swedish Prosecuting Authority.

8. Are these holding charges?

The idea here is that the charges are being used to get Julian Assange into Sweden, where it will be easier to extradite him to the United States. This seems unlikely. As a matter of law, the UK has a much lower test for extradition than Sweden (“reasonable suspicion” rather than a “prima facie case”).

There is more detail here. Although it is possible that he could be extradited to Sweden to take advantage of a regime for extraditing him for trial only, this is a convoluted process and doesn’t appear to offer any real advantage to US authorities.

OTHER ACCUSATIONS

9. Doesn’t one complainant have CIA links?

There’s no credible evidence to support this contention. At its highest the suggestion is that she wrote an article sympathetic to US foreign policy. That doesn’t make anyone a CIA operative.

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In a follow-up post I’m going to publish the main unresolved accusations made by Julian Assange himself, or his lawyer. Our focus here is not only the allegations themselves and whether they stand up, and clarifying the issues around due process in the UK and in Sweden.

Lastly, I don’t speak for the other writers but I am personally fully supportive of WikiLeaks and have donated money to the organisation itself.

Update: Ben Goldacre has written more about the reasoning behind this.

Benjamin Gray has set up a Wiki to collect accusations of conspiracy.