As UN rules Wikileaks founder was ‘arbitrarily detained, ‘ he stands accused by two Swedish women—is the whole thing just Nordic neurosis?
Note: The regrettable invasion of privacy that follows is strictly for the purpose of clarification about the events that took place in Stockholm in 2010, which has led to a five-year legal quagmire between Sweden, the United Kingdom and Ecuador. The matter has kept Julian Assange in various degrees of custody since December of 2010, and has cost U.K. taxpayers over 13 million pounds to date.
“It is simply amazing how much work this case is generating. It sometimes seems like an industry. It is certainly non stop. Please do not think that the case is being dealt with as just another extradition request.”
Paul Close, Crown Prosecution Service
Two Swedish women—Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilen—had sex with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in Stockholm, in their respective apartments, in the month of August, 2010.
He stands accused of three counts of sexual molestation and “unpeace” and one count of rape, by Swedish prosecutors, who initially dropped all charges against him, then revived them—just one of many inexplicable twists and turns in the gluey saga.
Was it rape? Was it somewhere in the “grey zone”?
“‘Sweden’ does not refer to the land mass east of Norway, so much as to a constructed society obsessed with the elimination of risk.”
The answers lie embedded in a 98-page crime report signed by Swedish authorities on August 26, 2010, the contents of which have been touched upon in various press reports—but never fully clarified. First, one must be familiar not only with the Swedish language, but also “Sweden,” which does not refer to the land mass east of Norway, and north of Denmark, so much as to a constructed society obsessed with the elimination of risk. Sweden has both the most expansive rape laws (which extend all the way to marital bed nagging), as well as the highest number of reported rapes in the world.
By Celia Farber, New York