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DESCRIPTION:Free Julian Assange NOW! Drop The Charges Against  Assange & Snowden\n\nNow 
 is the time to stand up for the freedom of journalist Julian Assange and 
 whistleblower Edward Snowden. The trial decision will be read at the UK 
 court hearing on January 1, 2020 at 12 noon and we will be rallying in San 
 Francisco at the British consulate to demand that he be immediately freed. 
 \n\nHe is a journalist who is in jail for exposing the crimes of US, 
 British imperialism and the multi-nationals that run the world. WikiLeaks 
 has taken the mask off the real criminals and terrorists running the US 
 government.\n\nWe demand that all charges be dropped against him and Edward 
 Snowden who is also faced with being arrested for being a whistleblower 
 against the crimes of the US war machine.\n\nThis action was initiated by 
 \nThe Bay Action Committee To Free Julian Assange.\nIt is endorsed 
 by\nUnited Front Committee For A Labor Party.\nTo endorse or speak contact 
 \ninfo(at)BayAction2FreeAssange.org\n\nPardons. So Do the Whistleblowers 
 Trump Imprisoned.\nPress freedom advocates must be careful not to indulge 
 Trump’s conspiracy theories while they lobby for whistleblower 
 pardons.\nhttps://theintercept.com/2020/12/23/assange-snowden-whistleblower-pardons-espionage/\nJames 
 Risen\nDecember 23 2020, 1:27 p.m.\n\nIN 2007, the Bush administration’s 
 Justice Department sent me a letter saying it was conducting a criminal 
 investigation into “the unauthorized disclosure of classified 
 information” in my 2006 book, “State of War.”\n\nWhen my lawyers 
 called the Justice Department about the letter, the prosecutors refused to 
 say I was not a “subject” of their leak investigation. That was 
 ominous. If I were considered a “subject,” rather than simply a 
 witness, it meant the government hadn’t ruled out prosecuting me for 
 publishing classified information.\n\nFrom left to right: Julian Assange, 
 Edward Snowden, and Reality Winner. Photo: Getty Images\nEventually — 
 after the Obama administration took over the case — the Justice 
 Department decided to treat me only as a witness and did not try to 
 prosecute me.\n\nBut in the future, the outcome of a similar case for a 
 journalist might be very different if Julian Assange is successfully 
 prosecuted on the charges brought against him by President Donald Trump’s 
 Justice Department.\n\nThe Trump administration has charged Assange under 
 the Espionage Actfor conspiring to leak classified documents. The 
 indictment focuses on his alleged efforts to encourage former Army 
 intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to leak classified documents to him 
 and WikiLeaks. If the Assange prosecution is successful, it will set a 
 dangerous precedent: that journalists can be prosecuted based on their 
 interactions with sources who provide them with government secrets.\n\nSuch 
 a precedent could make it extremely difficult for journalists to cover 
 military, intelligence, and related national security matters, and thus 
 leave the public in the dark about what the government is really doing 
 around the world.\n\nThat is why the U.S. indictment of Julian Assange is 
 so dangerous to liberty in America, and why the case against Assange should 
 be dropped and he should be pardoned.\n\nRelated\nI Sued Blackwater for the 
 Massacre of Iraqi Civilians. Trump Just Pardoned Those Convicted 
 Killers.\nWhile Trump has still not publicly accepted his defeat in the 
 2020 presidential election, he has begun to issue a spate of pardons. On 
 Tuesday, he issued pardons to a group that included two convicted of crimes 
 in connection with the Trump-Russia investigation, and four former 
 Blackwater contractors convicted of killing Iraqi civilians.\n\nDespite the 
 stench surrounding Trump’s latest pardons, supporters of several 
 whistleblowers have launched public campaigns to lobby for pardons; the 
 supporters of Assange and Edward Snowden have been the most vocal.\n\nLike 
 Assange, Snowden clearly deserves a pardon. Snowden’s massive 2013 leak 
 documented the full extent of the National Security Agency’s domestic 
 spying on Americans. But rather than recognize that Snowden has performed a 
 public service, the U.S. government has forced him into exile in Russia. 
 Meanwhile, Assange now sits in prison in Britain, awaiting extradition to 
 face prosecution in the United States.\n\nSupporters of WikiLeaks founder 
 Julian Assange demonstrate outside the Central Criminal Court after Assange 
 appeared in court for a full extradition hearing on the last day of the 
 trials in London on Oct. 01, 2020. Photo: Hasan Esen/Anadolu Agency/Getty 
 Images\nPublic support for the pardon of whistleblower Reality Winner has 
 also begun to build. Winner was arrested in 2017 and accused of anonymously 
 leaking an NSA document disclosing that Russian intelligence was seeking to 
 hack into U.S. election voting systems. That document was allegedly leaked 
 to The Intercept, which had no knowledge of the identity of its source. 
 (The Intercept’s parent company supported Winner’s legal defense 
 through the First Look Media’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, which I 
 direct.) She pleaded guilty in the case in 2018 and was sentenced to more 
 than five years in prison, the longest sentence ever imposed in a case 
 involving a leak to the press.\n\nEarlier this month, a federal appeals 
 court denied Winner’s request for compassionate early release after she 
 contracted Covid-19 in prison. She remains in federal prison 
 today.\n\nFormer Pentagon official J. William Leonard wrote an op-ed in the 
 Washington Post earlier this week calling for Winner’s pardon, arguing in 
 part that her “prosecution constituted overreach by the 
 government.”\n\nBut there are other whistleblowers who deserve pardons as 
 well.\n\nDuring Trump’s four years in office, his administration has 
 arrested and charged eight government officials in leak cases. That is 
 almost equal to the record nine (or 10, depending on how you count) leak 
 prosecutions conducted by the Obama administration over eight 
 years.\n\nFour of the leak cases during the Trump administration were 
 connected to disclosures related to Trump, the circle of people around him, 
 and the Trump-Russia inquiry. The Justice Department was clearly under 
 intense pressure from Trump to go after people who leaked stories that 
 Trump didn’t like.\n\nWinner’s case was the first of those four. In 
 addition, James Wolfe, the director of security for the Senate Select 
 Committee on Intelligence, was charged in 2018 with making false statements 
 to the FBI in connection with a leak investigation into a Washington Post 
 story revealing that the government had obtained a Foreign Intelligence 
 Surveillance Act warrant to monitor Carter Page, a former foreign policy 
 adviser to the Trump campaign.\n\nWolfe pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to 
 federal investigators about his contacts with reporters and was sentenced 
 to two months in prison.\n\nAlso in 2018, Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, 
 who was a senior adviser at the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement 
 Network, was charged with disclosing reports about financial transactions 
 related to people under scrutiny in the Trump-Russia inquiry, including 
 former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. She allegedly leaked the 
 information to BuzzFeed News. In 2020, she pleaded guilty, and her 
 sentencing is now scheduled for January 2021.\n\nIn 2019, John Fry, an IRS 
 employee, was charged with leaking suspicious activity reports involving 
 the financial transactions of Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, 
 including information about how a company owned by Cohen received $500,000 
 from a company with ties to a Russian oligarch. The Trump Justice 
 Department recommended prison time for Fry, but in 2020, a federal judge 
 instead gave Fry probation and ordered him to pay a $5,000 fine.\n\nOther 
 whistleblowers have also been caught up in Trump’s crackdown, including 
 FBI agent Terry Albury, who was arrested in 2018 and charged with leaking 
 information about the systemic racial biases at the bureau, which were 
 reported by The Intercept. And former intelligence analyst Daniel Hale was 
 also arrested in 2019, charged with leaking information about the U.S. 
 military’s use of drones to conduct targeted assassinations, also 
 allegedly to The Intercept.\n\nFormer Minneapolis FBI agent Terry Albury, 
 front, followed by his attorney, walks out of the federal courthouse in St. 
 Paul after Albury was sentenced to four years in prison for leaking 
 classified defense documents to a reporter on Oct. 18, 2018. Photo: Shari 
 L. Gross/Star Tribune/AP\nWhile most of the public lobbying for pardons for 
 whistleblowers has focused on Assange and Snowden, and to a lesser extent 
 Winner, the other whistleblowers prosecuted by Trump have largely been 
 forgotten.\n\nFor the most part, the small press freedom community has made 
 the case for Assange and Snowden on the grounds of the First Amendment, 
 press freedom, and government transparency. Yet the campaign to convince 
 Trump to pardon Snowden and Assange has also attracted a strange group of 
 extreme Trump supporters. They argue that pardoning the two men offers 
 Trump the opportunity to stick it to the so-called deep state.\n\nThe 
 “deep state” is, of course, the mythical beast at the heart of so many 
 of Trump’s conspiracy theories. Trump believes that a secret cabal of 
 intelligence and national security officials has been trying to destroy him 
 personally since at least the 2016 campaign.\n\nIt is important for press 
 freedom advocates to steer clear of these deep state conspiracy theories 
 and instead continue to argue for the pardons on the merits of press 
 freedom. Indulging in Trump’s fantasies in order to win the pardons will 
 only taint the cause of press freedom in the future.\n\nIt’s important 
 for press freedom advocates to steer clear of deep state conspiracy 
 theories and instead continue to argue for the pardons on the merits of 
 press freedom.\nAs a journalist, I have spent much of my career covering, 
 exposing, and criticizing the American national security establishment. Let 
 there be no mistake: There is, in fact, a massive U.S. military-industrial 
 complex, and a newer post-9/11 homeland security-industrial complex. Those 
 two complexes overlap, comprising career military, intelligence, and 
 federal law enforcement officials, executives at giant defense companies, 
 and legions of smaller defense and intelligence contractors, as well as 
 career political figures who take top positions in the defense and 
 intelligence agencies when their party is in power, and become consultants 
 or think-tank pundits when their party is out of power.\n\nThe 
 military-industrial complex and the newer homeland security-industrial 
 complex tend to support expansionist American national security and foreign 
 policies, and since 9/11 have pushed for a continuation of American 
 military involvement in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and 
 Afghanistan.\n\nThey are driven by greed and power, and they believe that 
 endless war is good for business. As I wrote in “Pay Any Price,” my 
 2014 book, “America has become accustomed to a permanent state of war. 
 Only a small slice of society — including many poor and rural teenagers 
 — fight and die, while a permanent national security elite rotates among 
 senior government posts, contracting companies, think tanks and television 
 commentary, opportunities that would disappear if America was suddenly at 
 peace. To most of America, war has become not only tolerable but 
 profitable, and so there is no longer any great incentive to end 
 it.”\n\nWhat’s more, the national security establishment’s power 
 stems in part from its ability to suppress the truth about its activities 
 at home and abroad, and thus it seeks to punish whistleblowers and 
 journalists who try to disclose the truth. The CIA, the NSA, and other 
 elements of the national security apparatus frequently apply pressure on 
 the Justice Department and the White House to prosecute whistleblowers who 
 disclose their abuses.\n\nI have had firsthand experience with this ugly 
 phenomenon.\n\nBut acknowledging the gravitational pull of a militaristic 
 national security establishment toward war and imperialism doesn’t mean 
 that you believe in the existence of a deep state, as imagined by Trump and 
 his allies.\n\nDemagogues like Trump are dangerously effective at taking 
 bits of truth and weaving conspiracy theories out of them. Trump has taken 
 the truth about the existence of a military-industrial complex and twisted 
 it into a conspiracy theory that claims that the military-industrial 
 complex is actually a deep state out to destroy him personally. It is 
 conspiracy theory victimology taken to its most extreme.\n\nRudy Giuliani 
 appears before the Michigan House Oversight Committee for suspicion of 
 voter fraud in Lansing, Mich., on Dec. 2, 2020. Photo: Jeff 
 Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images\nAmong Trump’s ardent supporters, talk of a 
 deep state often quickly descends into the madness of vile, rambling QAnon 
 conspiracy theories.\n\nRight-wing pundits and pro-Trump political figures, 
 many of whom were longtime supporters of the government’s draconian 
 counterterrorism measures instituted after 9/11, including the NSA’s 
 illegal domestic spying program, suddenly became skeptics of the national 
 security establishment when Trump began to complain about the 
 investigation, conducted first by the FBI and later by special counsel 
 Robert Mueller, into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and 
 possible collaboration by the Trump campaign. Trump’s claims that he has 
 been the victim of a “witch hunt,” a “hoax” investigation 
 perpetrated against him by the deep state, have been the central theme of 
 his conspiracy theory-laden presidency. And so ardent Trump supporters who 
 accepted Trump’s deep state conspiracy theories now view pardons for 
 Assange and Snowden through the “Russia hoax” narrative.\n\nNewsmax, 
 the pro-Trump website, recently published a column calling for pardons for 
 Assange and Snowden. “If there is any way to thoroughly get back at the 
 left over the next month, President Trump should make it a priority to 
 pardon those individuals whose clemency would get the attention of the deep 
 state,” wrote Kenny Cody at Newsmax. “For the deep state has worked 
 against this president and his administration unlike any other 
 previously.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a newly elected Republican 
 representative from Georgia who has been criticized for being a QAnon 
 supporter, also tweeted her support for pardons for Assange and 
 Snowden.\n\n\nA smattering of Assange supporters are echoing the line of 
 these pro-Trump pundits and right-wing politicians.\n\nFor example, 
 Assange’s partner, Stella Morris, said on Fox News recently that she 
 wants Trump to pardon Assange to protect him from the deep state. George 
 Christensen, a member of Australia’s parliament, sent a message to Trump 
 on a website devoted to a pardon for Assange, who is also an Australian. 
 Christensen wrote, “The same people who are trying to take the election 
 from you are the ones trying to prosecute Julian Assange.”\n\nRep. Tulsi 
 Gabbard, a Hawaii Democrat and one-time Democratic presidential candidate, 
 tweeted that Trump should pardon Snowden and Assange because they 
 “exposed the deception and criminality of those in the deep 
 state.”\n\nWhat makes any endorsement of the deep state trope by 
 advocates of Assange and Snowden particularly dangerous now is that it 
 comes at the same time that Trump is employing his persecution fantasies to 
 claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him by a pro-Biden deep 
 state.\n\nThe danger of enabling Trump’s deep state rhetoric was 
 highlighted by a frightening story on Saturday, when the New York Times 
 reported that Trump met on Friday with conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell 
 and discussed making her some sort of “special counsel” to investigate 
 baseless claims of voter fraud that Trump believes cost him the election. 
 The same story revealed that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has talked about 
 trying to seize voting machines from around the country to try to prove the 
 fiction that they were rigged against Trump.\n\nAs the pro-Trump supporters 
 pushing for pardons for Assange and Snowden remain silent on so many of the 
 other leak cases brought during the Trump administration, they have also 
 said nothing to counter Trump’s dangerous and hateful anti-press 
 rhetoric, which has created a toxic climate for reporters working in the 
 United States. Trump’s constant attacks on the press have convinced his 
 supporters — as well as local, conservative politicians and law 
 enforcement officials — to intensify their rhetorical, legal, and 
 physical attacks on journalists around the nation.\n\nThe U.S. Press 
 Freedom Tracker, managed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, shows that 
 there have been 120 cases of a journalist arrested or detained on the job 
 in the United States in 2020. The tracker found that during one week at the 
 height of the racial justice protests in late May and early June, “more 
 reporters were arrested in the U.S. than in the previous three years 
 combined.” The tracker also found that more than a third of those 
 journalists arrested were also beaten, hit with rubber bullets, or chemical 
 agents.\n\nThe bottom line: Advocates of press freedom must remain 
 disciplined as they campaign for the pardons for whistleblowers and make 
 their arguments on the merits of press freedom. They must be careful not to 
 indulge Trump’s conspiracy theories while they lobby for the 
 pardons.\n\nAccepting Trump’s insane conspiracy theories in order to get 
 him to do the right thing has been the downfall of many prominent figures 
 during Trump’s presidency. Enabling Trump’s worst instincts never works 
 and only shreds the reputations of those who have sought to appease 
 him.\n\n\n\nLondon African Gospel Choir perform outside Belmarsh prison in 
 support of Julian Assange\nDec 23, 
 2020\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTGVauuSn4s&feature=youtu.be\n\n\nThe 
 US should never have brought the case against the WikiLeaks founder. This 
 attack on press freedom must be 
 rejected\n\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/18/the-guardian-view-on-julian-assange-do-not-extradite-him\nJulian 
 Assange\n‘Previous cases relating to Mr Assange should not be used to 
 confuse the issue.’ Photograph: AP\nFri 18 Dec 2020 13.25 EST\n\nOn 4 
 January, a British judge is set to rule on whether Julian Assange should be 
 extradited to the United States, where he could face a 175-year sentence in 
 a high-security “supermax” prison. He should not. The charges against 
 him in the US undermine the foundations of democracy and press freedom in 
 both countries.\n\nThe secret military and diplomatic files provided by 
 Chelsea Manning, and made public by WikiLeaks working with the Guardian and 
 other media organisations, revealed horrifying abuses by the US and other 
 governments. Giving evidence in Mr Assange’s defence, Daniel Ellsberg, 
 the lauded whistleblower whose leak of the Pentagon Papers shed grim light 
 on the US government’s actions in the Vietnam war, observed: “The 
 American public needed urgently to know what was being done routinely in 
 their name, and there was no other way for them to learn it than by 
 unauthorized disclosure.”\n\nNo one has been brought to book for the 
 crimes exposed by WikiLeaks. Instead, the Trump administration has launched 
 a full-scale assault on the international criminal court for daring to 
 investigate these and other offences, and is pursuing the man who brought 
 them to light. It has taken the unprecedented step of prosecuting him under 
 the Espionage Act for publishing confidential information. (Mike Pompeo, 
 secretary of state and former CIA director, has previously described 
 Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence agency”). In doing so, 
 it chose to attack one of the very bases of journalism: its ability to 
 share vital information that the government would rather suppress.\n\nNo 
 public interest defence is permissible under the act. No publisher covering 
 national security in any serious way could consider itself safe were this 
 extradition attempt to succeed – wherever it was based; the acts of which 
 Mr Assange is accused (which also include one count of conspiring to hack 
 into a Pentagon computer network) took place when he was outside the US. 
 The decision to belatedly broaden the indictment looks more like an attempt 
 to dilute criticisms from the media than to address the concerns. The real 
 motivation for this case is clear. His lawyers argue not only that the 
 prosecution misrepresents the facts, but that he is being pursued for a 
 political offence, for which extradition is expressly barred in the US-UK 
 treaty.\n\nPrevious cases relating to Mr Assange should not be used to 
 confuse the issue. Sweden has dropped the investigation into an accusation 
 of rape, which he denied. He has served his 50-week sentence for skipping 
 bail in relation to those allegations, imposed after British police dragged 
 him from the Ecuadorian embassy. Yet while the extradition process 
 continues, he remains in Belmarsh prison, where a Covid-19 outbreak has led 
 to his solitary confinement. Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on 
 torture, has arguedthat his treatment is “neither necessary nor 
 proportionate and clearly lacks any legal basis”. He previously warned 
 that Mr Assange is showing all the symptoms associated with prolonged 
 exposure to psychological torture and should not be extradited to the US. 
 His lawyers say he would be at high risk of suicide.\n\nSuch considerations 
 have played a part in halting previous extraditions, such as that of Lauri 
 Love, who denied US allegations that he had hacked into government 
 websites. But whatever the outcome in January, the losing side is likely to 
 appeal; legal proceedings will probably drag on for years.\n\nA political 
 solution is required. Stella Moris, Mr Assange’s partner and mother of 
 his two young children, is among those who have urged Donald Trump to 
 pardon him. But Joe Biden may be more willing to listen. The incoming 
 president could let Mr Assange walk free. He should do so.\n\n\nA murderous 
 system is being created before our very 
 eyes\nhttps://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange\n\nA 
 made-up rape allegation and fabricated evidence in Sweden, pressure from 
 the UK not to drop the case, a biased judge, detention in a maximum 
 security prison, psychological torture – and soon extradition to the 
 U.S., where he could face up to 175 years in prison for exposing war 
 crimes. For the first time, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils 
 Melzer, speaks in detail about the explosive findings of his investigation 
 into the case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.\nAn interview by Daniel 
 Ryser, Yves Bachmann (Photos) and Charles Hawley (Translation), 
 31.01.2020Teilen\nWe are Republik. We are reclaiming journalism as 
 profession and are creating a new business model for media companies that 
 want to place their readers at the center.\nLearn more\n«Vor unseren Augen 
 kreiert sich ein mörderisches System»\nHier finden Sie das Interview in 
 der deutschsprachigen Originalversion.\n1. The Swedish Police constructed a 
 story of rape\nNils Melzer, why is the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture 
 interested in Julian Assange?\nThat is something that the German Foreign 
 Ministry recently asked me as well: Is that really your core mandate? Is 
 Assange the victim of torture?\nWhat was your response?\nThe case falls 
 into my mandate in three different ways: First, Assange published proof of 
 systematic torture. But instead of those responsible for the torture, it is 
 Assange who is being persecuted. Second, he himself has been ill-treated to 
 the point that he is now exhibiting symptoms of psychological torture. And 
 third, he is to be extradited to a country that holds people like him in 
 prison conditions that Amnesty International has described as torture. In 
 summary: Julian Assange uncovered torture, has been tortured himself and 
 could be tortured to death in the United States. And a case like that 
 isn’t supposed to be part of my area of responsibility? Beyond that, the 
 case is of symbolic importance and affects every citizen of a democratic 
 country.\nWhy didn’t you take up the case much earlier?\nImagine a dark 
 room. Suddenly, someone shines a light on the elephant in the room – on 
 war criminals, on corruption. Assange is the man with the spotlight. The 
 governments are briefly in shock, but then they turn the spotlight around 
 with accusations of rape. It is a classic maneuver when it comes to 
 manipulating public opinion. The elephant once again disappears into the 
 darkness, behind the spotlight. And Assange becomes the focus of attention 
 instead, and we start talking about whether Assange is skateboarding in the 
 embassy or whether he is feeding his cat correctly. Suddenly, we all know 
 that he is a rapist, a hacker, a spy and a narcissist. But the abuses and 
 war crimes he uncovered fade into the darkness. I also lost my focus, 
 despite my professional experience, which should have led me to be more 
 vigilant.\nFifty weeks in prison for violating his bail: Julian Assange in 
 January 2020 in a police van on the way to London’s maximum security 
 Belmarsh prison. Dominic Lipinski/Press Association Images/Keystone 
 \nLet’s start at the beginning: What led you to take up the case?\nIn 
 December 2018, I was asked by his lawyers to intervene. I initially 
 declined. I was overloaded with other petitions and wasn’t really 
 familiar with the case. My impression, largely influenced by the media, was 
 also colored by the prejudice that Julian Assange was somehow guilty and 
 that he wanted to manipulate me. In March 2019, his lawyers approached me 
 for a second time because indications were mounting that Assange would soon 
 be expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy. They sent me a few key documents 
 and a summary of the case and I figured that my professional integrity 
 demanded that I at least take a look at the material.\nAnd then?\nIt 
 quickly became clear to me that something was wrong. That there was a 
 contradiction that made no sense to me with my extensive legal experience: 
 Why would a person be subject to nine years of a preliminary investigation 
 for rape without charges ever having been filed?\nIs that unusual?\nI have 
 never seen a comparable case. Anyone can trigger a preliminary 
 investigation against anyone else by simply going to the police and 
 accusing the other person of a crime. The Swedish authorities, though, were 
 never interested in testimony from Assange. They intentionally left him in 
 limbo. Just imagine being accused of rape for nine-and-a-half years by an 
 entire state apparatus and by the media without ever being given the chance 
 to defend yourself because no charges had ever been filed.\nYou say that 
 the Swedish authorities were never interested in testimony from Assange. 
 But the media and government agencies have painted a completely different 
 picture over the years: Julian Assange, they say, fled the Swedish 
 judiciary in order to avoid being held accountable.\nThat’s what I always 
 thought, until I started investigating. The opposite is true. Assange 
 reported to the Swedish authorities on several occasions because he wanted 
 to respond to the accusations. But the authorities stonewalled.\nWhat do 
 you mean by that: «The authorities stonewalled?»\nAllow me to start at 
 the beginning. I speak fluent Swedish and was thus able to read all of the 
 original documents. I could hardly believe my eyes: According to the 
 testimony of the woman in question, a rape had never even taken place at 
 all. And not only that: The woman’s testimony was later changed by the 
 Stockholm police without her involvement in order to somehow make it sound 
 like a possible rape. I have all the documents in my possession, the 
 emails, the text messages.\n«The woman’s testimony was later changed by 
 the police» – how exactly?\nOn Aug. 20, 2010, a woman named S. W. 
 entered a Stockholm police station together with a second woman named A. A. 
 The first woman, S. W. said she had had consensual sex with Julian Assange, 
 but he had not been wearing a condom. She said she was now concerned that 
 she could be infected with HIV and wanted to know if she could force 
 Assange to take an HIV test. She said she was really worried. The police 
 wrote down her statement and immediately informed public prosecutors. Even 
 before questioning could be completed, S. W. was informed that Assange 
 would be arrested on suspicion of rape. S. W. was shocked and refused to 
 continue with questioning. While still in the police station, she wrote a 
 text message to a friend saying that she didn’t want to incriminate 
 Assange, that she just wanted him to take an HIV test, but the police were 
 apparently interested in «getting their hands on him.»\nWhat does that 
 mean?\n\nS.W. never accused Julian Assange of rape. She declined to 
 participate in further questioning and went home. Nevertheless, two hours 
 later, a headline appeared on the front page of Expressen, a Swedish 
 tabloid, saying that Julian Assange was suspected of having committed two 
 rapes.\nTwo rapes?\n\nYes, because there was the second woman, A. A. She 
 didn’t want to press charges either; she had merely accompanied S. W. to 
 the police station. She wasn’t even questioned that day. She later said 
 that Assange had sexually harassed her. I can’t say, of course, whether 
 that is true or not. I can only point to the order of events: A woman walks 
 into a police station. She doesn’t want to file a complaint but wants to 
 demand an HIV test. \n\nThe police then decide that this could be a case of 
 rape and a matter for public prosecutors. The woman refuses to go along 
 with that version of events and then goes home and writes a friend that it 
 wasn’t her intention, but the police want to «get their hands on» 
 Assange. Two hours later, the case is in the newspaper. As we know today, 
 public prosecutors leaked it to the press – and they did so without even 
 inviting Assange to make a statement. And the second woman, who had 
 allegedly been raped according to the Aug. 20 headline, was only questioned 
 on Aug. 21.\n\nWhat did the second woman say when she was questioned?\nShe 
 said that she had made her apartment available to Assange, who was in 
 Sweden for a conference. A small, one-room apartment. When Assange was in 
 the apartment, she came home earlier than planned, but told him it was no 
 problem and that the two of them could sleep in the same bed. That night, 
 they had consensual sex, with a condom. \n\nBut she said that during sex, 
 Assange had intentionally broken the condom. If that is true, then it is, 
 of course, a sexual offense – so-called «stealthing». But the woman 
 also said that she only later noticed that the condom was broken. That is a 
 contradiction that should absolutely have been clarified. If I don’t 
 notice it, then I cannot know if the other intentionally broke it. Not a 
 single trace of DNA from Assange or A. A. could be detected in the condom 
 that was submitted as evidence.\n\nHow did the two women know each 
 other?\nThey didn’t really know each other. A. A., who was hosting 
 Assange and was serving as his press secretary, had met S. W. at an event 
 where S. W. was wearing a pink cashmere sweater. She apparently knew from 
 Assange that he was interested in a sexual encounter with S. W., because 
 one evening, she received a text message from an acquaintance saying that 
 he knew Assange was staying with her and that he, the acquaintance, would 
 like to contact Assange. A. A. answered: \n\nAssange is apparently sleeping 
 at the moment with the “cashmere girl.” The next morning, S. W. spoke 
 with A. A. on the phone and said that she, too, had slept with Assange and 
 was now concerned about having become infected with HIV. This concern was 
 apparently a real one, because S.W. even went to a clinic for consultation. 
 A. A. then suggested: Let’s go to the police – they can force Assange 
 to get an HIV test. The two women, though, didn’t go to the closest 
 police station, but to one quite far away where a friend of A. A.’s works 
 as a policewoman – who then questioned S. W., initially in the presence 
 of A. A., which isn’t proper practice. Up to this point, though, the only 
 problem was at most a lack of professionalism. The willful malevolence of 
 the authorities only became apparent when they immediately disseminated the 
 suspicion of rape via the tabloid press, and did so without questioning A. 
 A. and in contradiction to the statement given by S. W. It also violated a 
 clear ban in Swedish law against releasing the names of alleged victims or 
 perpetrators in sexual offense cases.\n\n The case now came to the 
 attention of the chief public prosecutor in the capital city and she 
 suspended the rape investigation some days later with the assessment that 
 while the statements from S. W. were credible, there was no evidence that a 
 crime had been committed.\nBut then the case really took off. Why?\nNow the 
 supervisor of the policewoman who had conducted the questioning wrote her 
 an email telling her to rewrite the statement from S. W.\nThe original 
 copies of the mail exchanges between the Swedish police. \nWhat did the 
 policewoman change?\nWe don’t know, because the first statement was 
 directly written over in the computer program and no longer exists. We only 
 know that the original statement, according to the chief public prosecutor, 
 apparently did not contain any indication that a crime had been committed. 
 In the edited form it says that the two had had sex several times – 
 consensual and with a condom. But in the morning, according to the revised 
 statement, the woman woke up because he tried to penetrate her without a 
 condom. She asks: «Are you wearing a condom?» He says: «No.» Then she 
 says: «You better not have HIV» and allows him to continue.\n\n The 
 statement was edited without the involvement of the woman in question and 
 it wasn’t signed by her. It is a manipulated piece of evidence out of 
 which the Swedish authorities then constructed a story of rape.\n\nWhy 
 would the Swedish authorities do something like that?\nThe timing is 
 decisive: In late July, Wikileaks – in cooperation with the «New York 
 Times», the «Guardian» and «Der Spiegel» – published the «Afghan 
 War Diary». It was one of the largest leaks in the history of the U.S. 
 military. The U.S. immediately demanded that its allies inundate Assange 
 with criminal cases. We aren’t familiar with all of the correspondence, 
 but Stratfor, a security consultancy that works for the U.S. government, 
 advised American officials apparently to deluge Assange with all kinds of 
 criminal cases for the next 25 years.\n2. Assange contacts the Swedish 
 judiciary several times to make a statement – but he is turned down\nWhy 
 didn’t Assange turn himself into the police at the time?\nHe did. I 
 mentioned that earlier.\nThen please elaborate.\nAssange learned about the 
 rape allegations from the press. He established contact with the police so 
 he could make a statement. Despite the scandal having reached the public, 
 he was only allowed to do so nine days later, after the accusation that he 
 had raped S. W. was no longer being pursued. But proceedings related to the 
 sexual harassment of A. A. were ongoing. On Aug. 30, 2010, Assange appeared 
 at the police station to make a statement. He was questioned by the same 
 policeman who had since ordered that revision of the statement had been 
 given by S. W. At the beginning of the conversation, Assange said he was 
 ready to make a statement, but added that he didn’t want to read about 
 his statement again in the press. That is his right, and he was given 
 assurances it would be granted. But that same evening, everything was in 
 the newspapers again. It could only have come from the authorities because 
 nobody else was present during his questioning. The intention was very 
 clearly that of besmirching his name.\n\nThe Swiss Professor of 
 International Law, Nils Melzer, is pictured near Biel, Switzerland.\nWhere 
 did the story come from that Assange was seeking to avoid Swedish justice 
 officials?\n\nThis version was manufactured, but it is not consistent with 
 the facts. Had he been trying to hide, he would not have appeared at the 
 police station of his own free will. On the basis of the revised statement 
 from S.W., an appeal was filed against the public prosecutor’s attempt to 
 suspend the investigation, and on Sept. 2, 2010, the rape proceedings were 
 resumed. \n\nA legal representative by the name of Claes Borgström was 
 appointed to the two women at public cost. The man was a law firm partner 
 to the previous justice minister, Thomas Bodström, under whose supervision 
 Swedish security personnel had seized two men who the U.S. found suspicious 
 in the middle of Stockholm. The men were seized without any kind of legal 
 proceedings and then handed over to the CIA, who proceeded to torture them. 
 That shows the trans-Atlantic backdrop to this affair more clearly. After 
 the resumption of the rape investigation, Assange repeatedly indicated 
 through his lawyer that he wished to respond to the accusations. The public 
 prosecutor responsible kept delaying. On one occasion, it didn’t fit with 
 the public prosecutor’s schedule, on another, the police official 
 responsible was sick. Three weeks later, his lawyer finally wrote that 
 Assange really had to go to Berlin for a conference and asked if he was 
 allowed to leave the country. The public prosecutor’s office gave him 
 written permission to leave Sweden for short periods of time.\nAnd 
 then?\n\nThe point is: On the day that Julian Assange left Sweden, at a 
 point in time when it wasn’t clear if he was leaving for a short time or 
 a long time, a warrant was issued for his arrest. He flew with Scandinavian 
 Airlines from Stockholm to Berlin. During the flight, his laptops 
 disappeared from his checked baggage. When he arrived in Berlin, Lufthansa 
 requested an investigation from SAS, but the airline apparently declined to 
 provide any information at all.\nWhy?\n\nThat is exactly the problem. In 
 this case, things are constantly happening that shouldn’t actually be 
 possible unless you look at them from a different angle. Assange, in any 
 case, continued onward to London, but did not seek to hide from the 
 judiciary. Via his Swedish lawyer, he offered public prosecutors several 
 possible dates for questioning in Sweden – this correspondence exists. 
 \n\nThen, the following happened: Assange caught wind of the fact that a 
 secret criminal case had been opened against him in the U.S. At the time, 
 it was not confirmed by the U.S., but today we know that it was true. As of 
 that moment, Assange’s lawyer began saying that his client was prepared 
 to testify in Sweden, but he demanded diplomatic assurance that Sweden 
 would not extradite him to the U.S.\n\nWas that even a realistic 
 scenario?\nAbsolutely. Some years previously, as I already mentioned, 
 Swedish security personnel had handed over two asylum applicants, both of 
 whom were registered in Sweden, to the CIA without any legal proceedings. 
 \n\nThe abuse already started at the Stockholm airport, where they were 
 mistreated, drugged and flown to Egypt, where they were tortured. We 
 don’t know if they were the only such cases. But we are aware of these 
 cases because the men survived. Both later filed complaints with UN human 
 rights agencies and won their case. Sweden was forced to pay each of them 
 half a million dollars in damages.\n\n\nDid Sweden agree to the demands 
 submitted by Assange?\nThe lawyers say that during the nearly seven years 
 in which Assange lived in the Ecuadorian Embassy, they made over 30 offers 
 to arrange for Assange to visit Sweden – in exchange for a guarantee that 
 he would not be extradited to the U.S. The Swedes declined to provide such 
 a guarantee by arguing that the U.S. had not made a formal request for 
 extradition. \n\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2020/12/27/18839101.php
SUMMARY:Drop The Charges Against Assange & Snowden: Free Them NOW!
LOCATION:British Consulate\n1 Sansome St.\nSan Francisco
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2020/12/27/18839101.php
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DTEND:20210104T210000Z
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