Julian Assange case: Sweden offers to question him in UK

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31867829

by joosters • 11 years ago

217 177 11 years ago

bbc.co.uk

"Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies in the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward."

Or maybe his lawyer should drop the offer and just let the statute run out now, since the prosecutor couldn't be bothered when it wasn't to her advantage.

tomp2• 11 years ago

He's also charged with rape, which has a longer statute of limitations (10 years, until 2020).

Edit: wukerplank is right, he wasn't charged, but (a kind of) rape is one of the crimes he allegedly committed and is wanted for questioning for (according to Wikipedia[1], it's "one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation, and one count of lesser-degree rape"), and this article and the Wikipedia[2] suggest that the statute of limitations for rape is 10 years.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Swedish_legal_po...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_A...

wukerplank• 11 years ago

I don't think he was charged. They want him for questioning about allegations.

SloopJon• 11 years ago

Or maybe his lawyer should drop the offer and just let the statute run out now

Would the statute of limitations be tolled for the duration of Assange's stay at the embassy?

drzaiusapelord• 11 years ago

This is an interesting question. If someone purposely hid out somewhere with no extradition treaty and the whole time was saying, "Nah, nah you can't catch me," to the authorities, should statutes be respected by the courts? I would think not.

sangnoir• 11 years ago

Would the statute of limitations be tolled for the duration of Assange's stay at the embassy?

IANAL, but that sounds unreasonable: his presence isn't required in order for him to be charged. The statute limits the time in which he can be charged (regardless of his geographic location).

I know for certain under Roman-Dutch law, one can be charged (tried, and sentenced) in absentia. I suspect other justice systems have similar allowances

NhanH• 11 years ago

Now it would be interesting if he agree to answer. But can Assange leave the ambassador now? I thought that he would be arrested the moment he left because he broke the house arrest thing a few years ago.

nailer3• 11 years ago

He's consistently asked to be interviewed by the prosecutor, so I imagine he'll agree.

draugadrotten• 11 years ago

His Swedish lawyer, Thomas Olsson , has stated that Assange will cooperate fully.

Now what Ecuador will reply is another matter...

Edit: Timeline of case. http://www.thelocal.se/20141028/timeline-julian-assange

gsnedders2• 11 years ago

Note that if he leaves the embassy he can be arrested by the British police and tried in English courts for failure to comply with conditions of bail. And I'm not sure anyone can reasonably argue that he didn't do that. He was bailed, and didn't show up to court upon summons — it's the textbook case.

kzrdude3• 11 years ago

Not mentioned, the supreme court is right now starting their review of the case, and mentions the principle of proportionality (size of investigation in relation to size of the crime). Link: http://www.hogstadomstolen.se/Mer-om-Hogsta-domstolen/Nyhete...

peteretep2• 11 years ago

    > the principle of proportionality

Sets a pretty bad precedent to not pursue someone because they've managed to evade the law...

netrus• 11 years ago

Not if the cost of evasion is similar to the expected punishment.

kzrdude3• 11 years ago

It is a precedent, and it hasn't been followed in this case. 2010 case, linked article is in Swedish: Irish musician batters swedish citizen; prosecutor doesn't want to do anything. "Extradition can only be used in serious cases, like murder", http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article12621641.ab

netcan3• 11 years ago

I disagree. Proportionality is a very important principle. Precedents and laws are appropriate. I'm not sure how important precedents are in Swedish law though.

First, we need limits against abuse of the law and legal system. I imagine Assange's representatives will be arguing that this is what is going on here. Being free of all proportionality restrictions allows bodies and individuals within the legal system the ability to pursue other agendas (say, strategic or diplomatic relations with the US) by abusing the legal system. If you put enough resources into investigation you can probably put anyone in jail. At the very least, you can disrupt their life dramatically with lengthy processes.

Second, there's the practical issue of resources. Indictments are abandoned regularly because court systems are backlogged, expensive and limited in resources. Prosecuting 100 minor indictments per year needs to be weighed against timely prosecution of more serious crimes. This is triage, prioritizing resources (court days) in the face of limited resources.

This is a strange case. Assange is accused of "non-consensual behaviour within consensual sexual encounters." This crime/law unique to Sweden. Very few people have been prosecuted under for it. Swedish authorities did not treat the case very seriously when they first investigated it and didn't make much effort to keep him in the country, apparently happy to let him leave the country.

That aside, resources are always limited. Say you have a serious sexual harassment case. It takes place in a University. Prosecuting it require, extradition and millions in resources. Is the public better served by prosecuting the crime or staffing an entire police unit dealing specifically with sexual harassment cases in Universities? The costs are comparable, and the latter will result in tens or hundreds of convictions, far more deterrence and far more justice. I think it's entirely appropriate to refer to proportionality in cases like this.

For certain crimes like large scale racketeering, corruption, murder, rape, and others proportionality is irrelevant. There are few limits that make sense for prosecuting a serial killer or a corrupt government minister.

madaxe_again• 11 years ago

This seems like a remarkably sane resolution to the current situation, and I'm surprised it hasn't previously been proffered.

onli• 11 years ago

It is only not surprising if one believes that all of this is a plot to get him extradited to the US. Which always seems far fetched, till the behaviour of the prosecution made it clear that is the only sane explication - apart from complete incompetence combined with arrogance, a "he has to come crawling to us if we say so" attitude.

notahacker3• 11 years ago

An alternate hypothesis involving a legal system being a bit legalistic (maybe throw in a hardline "we're definitely not making an exception to our usual procedure for you because you're a public figure who fled the country and then claimed it was a conspiracy" stance, if that counts as arrogant) has a lot to recommend it over a null hypothesis involving a conspiracy to use the most difficult, legally complex and embarrassing procedures imaginable to try to get a target to a third party country (a third party country which often takes a very direct and efficient approach to extraordinary rendition)

rmc8• 11 years ago

I've never understood the "US extradition" theory. He went to the UK, which is a co-founder of NATO (which Sweden isn't even in), and has a "special relationship" with the USA. Why go to a country that's more friendly to the USA if you're actually worried about being sent to the USA?

crdoconnor3• 11 years ago

Which always seems far fetched

I'm honestly surprised anybody still thinks this. Particularly after the GCHQ emails confirming it as a 'fit up'.

SideburnsOfDoom2• 11 years ago

If one of the goals was to hinder Julian Assange greatly, then that would explain it.

I'm not saying that Mr Assange is definitely blameless, I wouldn't know. But it does seem that if you go up against the very powerful, any shortcomings will be ruthlessly exploited.

weinzierl2• 11 years ago

According to SPON it's because under Swedish law, the criminal investigation into Assange will lapse in August 2015.

  Die schwedische Staatsanwaltschaft änderte nun ihre 
  Meinung, weil einige der Vorwürfe gegen Assange im August 
  verjähren.[1]

My own translation:

   The Swedish prosecutor recently changed his mind because 
   some of the allegations against Assange will lapse in 
   August.

Sorry, I couldn't find a source in English. Google has snipped [2] for a Wired article [3] that says "in Sweden means that the charges would expire in August 2015.", but the article is gone.

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/julian-assange-sc...

[2] https://www.google.de/?q=+into+Assange+will+lapse+in+August.....

[3] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-03/13/assange

JoachimS• 11 years ago

Minor nit "her mind", not "his mind". The prosecutor is Marianne Ny.

belorn6• 11 years ago

According to the press release(http://www.aklagare.se/Media/Nyheter/Aklagaren-begar-att-fa-...), the reasons to do it now is because the statue of limitation will run out in august, and that the court document from last time criticized the investigator for failing their responsibility in progressing with the case.

This decision serves thus two purposes. It abides the decision of the court which makes the prosecutor look good, and it serves the case.

agd• 11 years ago

What is more remarkable is that it's taken this long and cost so much money to get here. Assange's lawyers and the Ecuadorians have been asking for this for years.

celticninja2• 11 years ago

it was, numerous times, by the defense.

peter303• 11 years ago

Statute of Limitations deadline probably. The Swedish government would like answers rather than wait it out.

Svip• 11 years ago

I guess it's easier to wait it out when it's not your tax payers footing the bill.

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

He doesn't have to actually leave the embassy, though, does he?

onion2k• 11 years ago

Technically I think he would as the inside of the embassy isn't considered part of the UK.

Tomte5• 11 years ago

Of course it's part of the UK. Will the old urban legend about extraterritoriality never die?

chinathrow• 11 years ago

Nope.

"My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorean embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview, and that he would need to be present in Sweden in any case should there be a trial in the future," lead prosecutor Marianne Ny said in a statement.

"Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies in the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward."

Kiro3• 11 years ago

So I haven't been following this case for a very long time. What are the current theories regarding whether he did it or not?

belorn6• 11 years ago

There are a few different things he is accused of doing so Im not 100% what you are referring to with "it".

He is accused of initiating sex with a woman later an evening after consensual sex had finished and she became "half-asleep". The legal questions to be answered is: was she half-asleep, ie, does he contest that statement and if so, what conclusion can be reached by a court.

Furthermore, there is an accusations that consensual sex was agreed under a condition, and that Assange broke that verbal agreement by ejaculating inside her. Its a rather odd situation for a sexual molestation case, but I guess that the court would first have to establish if both parties had reached the same understanding, and if the above mentioned act then broke it.

On either of the two cases, my best guess is that we will never know.

rbobby4• 11 years ago

Where are you getting "half-asleep" from? From gillianseed's translation of the actual case file "They went to sleep and she awoke with the sensation of him entering her." (see his comment in reply to yours).

In many jurisdiction initiating sex with an unconscious person is consider the same as non-consensual sex (one can't consent if one is unconscious). Some jurisdictions, like England and Wales, explicitly include sleep in the legislation around consent (i.e. a sleeping person cannot consent to sex, a reasonable person could not believe sex was consensual when the other party is asleep).

This is much more serious than "half-asleep" makes it appear.

gillianseed• 11 years ago

I made a swedish to english translation of the actual allegation (as in the actual case file), the original can be found here, naturally it's in swedish: http://www.magasinetparagraf.se/bilden/forundersokningen-avs...

Anyway, here's my translation of the accusation (to the best of my ability):

Sexual Assault

They were sitting in bed talking and he took off her clothes. They had sex again and she realised that he had only put the condom over the tip of his penis, but she let it pass.

They went to sleep and she awoke with the sensation of him entering her. She immediately asked 'Are you wearing anything?' and he replied 'You'.

She told him 'You better not have HIV' and he replied 'Of course not'. She felt it was too late, he was already in her so she let him continue, she was too tired to tell him once more, she had been nagging him about using a condom all night.

She never had unprotected sex before. He said he wanted to come inside her, he did not say when he would but he did. A lot leaked out of her afterwards.

She told him 'What if I get pregnant?'. He answered that Sweden is a good place to have kids. She jokingly told him that if she became pregnant he would have to pay her student loans.

On the train to Enköping he had told her that he had slept in Anna Ardins bed after a party. She asked if he had sex with Anna but he said Anna liked girls, that she was a lesbian.

Now she knows that he did the same thing with Anna. She asked him about how many he has had sex with, he responded that he didn't keep count. He said that he had HIV tested himself 3 months earlier and that he had sex with a woman after that and that she was tested and not positive.

She said sarcastic things to him in a joking tone, she believes that she was trying to de-dramatize what had happened, he in turn did not seem to care. When he was told the size of her student loans he said that if he was to pay her loans then she would have to give birth to a baby.

They joked that the child would be named Afghanistan. He also said that he ought to keep abortion-pills with him that would in reality be sugar-pills.

His phone rang and he had a meeting with Aftonbladet (swedish newspaper) on tuesday at 12. She explained that he would not make it to that meeting, so he pushed his whole schedule ahead by one hour.

After that he rode a bicycle with her on the back down to the train station. She paid his ticket to Stockholm. Before they separated he told her to keep her phone on. She asked if he was going to call and he said he would.

She took the bike home, showered and changed sheets. Since she didn't make it in time for work she called in sick and stayed home. She wanted to clean up and wash everything. There was semen on the sheets and she thought it was disgusting. She also went by the drugstore and bought 'dagenefterpiller' (abortion pills).

After she had discussed with her friends she realized that she had been the victim of a crime. She went to Danderyd hospital and from there to Södersjukhuset (another hospital). There she was examined and also tested using a so called 'rape-kit'.

jeltz• 11 years ago

If leaked info on flashback.org about the victims is to be trusted, then it seems unlikely that he did it. Much there pointed towards false accusations for personal revenge. But it has been a long time since I read it and everything on Flashback should be taken with more than a grain of salt.

raldi• 11 years ago

Interesting that under Swedish law, the statute of limitations keeps ticking even while the suspect is a fugitive. That's not the way it works in the US:

"If the criminal is a fugitive, out of the state in which the crime was committed or otherwise living in hiding, this tolls, or suspends, the statute. (Once the criminal reenters the state the statute resumes running.)"

http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/time-limits-...

ddingus• 11 years ago

Finally!

Isn't this what he put on the table years ago?

ChikkaChiChi• 11 years ago

  "My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorean embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview," Marianne Ny said in a statement.

Can anyone explain to me why they couldn't simply question him over a teleconferencing connection? Are they seriously claiming that this has gone on as long as it has simply because they couldn't figure out a way to talk to him?

This seems ludicrous.

netcan3• 11 years ago

It's even worse than that.

I believe before he was living in the Ecuadorian embassy, he offered to cooperate with the investigation in the UK. Swede could have sent investigators to interview him in person. The UK police would have assisted. They could have gone further with their investigation, without extradition.

The worst part of this is Australia's role. Where are they in protecting their citizen? Can you imagine an American journalist (wikileaks is journalism) pissing off the German Government, then being subjected to these insane attempts at extradition without the US stepping in?

Australia need to arrange safe passage for Assange to Australia and guarantee him his legal rights.

koenigdavidmj2• 11 years ago

Where are they in protecting their citizen?

Australia fails to do anything when their citizens are killed for a bit of cannabis, about as blatantly disproportionate as a government could possibly get. They're in a perfect position to economically encourage Indonesia to be reasonable, and they would have the backing of a fair bit of the western world. And yet they don't do anything.

Why would you think they would do anything when it's less politically expedient?

xorcist3• 11 years ago

Because it is during this interview that the prosecutor makes it official what you are or are not accused of. If this was made over telephone to a foreign country, odds are that what is now a suspect would not come to the questioning. That's why you are required to be present in person.

A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?

The anwer to that is probably that the justice system can be inflexible and slow moving at times. (I hesitate to take stronger words in my mouth, but those may be true as well.)

Ludicrous or not, all justice systems have their reasons why they work in a certain way.

lepidoptera• 11 years ago

A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?

He was interviewed during this period, and the transcript of the police interview was leaked onto the internet: http://pastebin.com/HAc6HjVn

After the interview the allegations were dropped, but then the prosecutor reopened them. And he didn't stay there just for a week after that. He stayed there over a month, and only left after having been given permission to leave by the prosecutor.

It's all in this court document: http://www.scribd.com/doc/80912442/Agreed-Facts-Assange-Case

im3w1l• 11 years ago

For those without showdead, lepidoptera[noobtor] wrote:

A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?

He was interviewed during this period, and the transcript of the police interview was leaked onto the internet: http://pastebin.com/HAc6HjVn

It's all in this court document: http://www.scribd.com/doc/80912442/Agreed-Facts-Assange-Case

mike_hearn• 11 years ago

A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?

Different prosecutor, one less high up in the system there.

The original prosecutor made the right decision. The chance of a conviction is zero. No sane jury in a civilised country will find a man guilty of raping a woman who made him breakfast and went out with him the next day, tweeted about the incident positively and generally acted as happy as can be until she decided ... much later ... that actually she had been raped. (then she started trying to delete the evidence that she was lying). The case just has no merit at all, which is why Assange thinks it's a set up - the new prosecutor is either a tool of the USA or some kind of bizarre ultra feminist who thinks women never ever lie about rape. Whatever the cause, Assange doesn't want to go there for obvious reasons.

downandout• 11 years ago

It's pretty clear, given the resources being put into serving this warrant, that Sweden is going to charge him with at least some of these crimes regardless of what he says (or doesn't say) during the interview. That's probably why they are conceding here. After all, even if he were successfully arrested and brought to Sweden, he could refuse to answer any questions during the interview.

Once charges are filed, Ecuador will have to face the question of whether or not they want to be viewed by the world as shielding an accused rapist from justice. I'm just guessing here, but I see no scenario in which he doesn't eventually wind up in Sweden to face these charges (and if he did it, then he should IMO).

spiralpolitik3• 11 years ago

The purpose of the European Arrest Warrant is to "arrest and transfer" a suspect for criminal prosecution. It shouldn't be issued just for "an investigation".

So yes unless the Swedish prosecutor wants to open herself up to charges of abuse of power then at this point she will have to prosecute Assange.

coldtea• 11 years ago

Julian Assange case: BS allegations that hide their true political motivations...

Julian Assange case: Sweden offers to question him in UK

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