Breaking News on Julian Assange

I can’t see it being long now before Julian Assange is walking free. Today a Swedish newspaper, Expressen, has published an article which claims that Anna Ardin (though she is not mentioned by name) was friends with a police interrogator on the Assange case. Expressen was the newspaper that first broke the story of Assange’s arrest, so it can hardly be considered pro-Assange.

This is a big turning point in my opinion. Especially since the two women who went to the police station together, appear to have gone at the beginning of this interrogator’s shift. You can almost smell the sweet aromas of a woman to woman phone call before the Anna and Sofia arrived at the police station to be interviewed by a friend of one of them. Only somebody with a passing interest in this case, someone who has been catching all the endless snippets of the words ‘rape’ and ‘Assange’ in the same sentence, can be naive enough to believe there is any credibility to this concocted sex scandal. They are all in the same Social Democratic Party, and this brings us to what chance of a fair trial would Assange have in Sweden? I quote from one of the best accounts of the Assange case regarding secret trials in Sweden.

 “Even in this relatively enlightened country, human sexuality is a subject fraught with deep and often subconscious feelings of guilt and shame. “Prosecution witnesses need not worry about other witnesses coming forward to refute their evidence, because their evidence will not be heard in public.” Most of those stories involve the treatment of men accused of sex crimes. It is one of the dark corners of Swedish society that seldom sees the light — most likely because, even in this relatively enlightened country, human sexuality is a subject fraught with deep and often subconscious feelings of guilt and shame.

 But jurists and other interested parties with direct experience of sex-related cases have become increasingly alarmed by what appears to be a systematic bias that often leads to bizarre and tragic judgements. There are several reasons for this, one being that trials for sex crimes are almost invariably held behind closed doors. “This tradition grew up a long time ago, before the [Second World] war, to prevent the press reporting ‘immoral’ evidence, and was later advanced to protect the privacy of complainants and defendants,” notes one of Assange’s Swedish lawyers, who further explains that his client, “… notwithstanding the avalanche of publicity damaging to him about the prosecution case, will be tried in secret and the public will not be aware of any exposure in the courtroom of the weakness of that case.

Prosecution witnesses need not worry about other witnesses coming forward to refute their evidence, because their evidence will not be heard in public.” Further, “The trial will be heard by a judge and three laypersons who sit with him or her. The three laypersons, appointed by political parties, are often members of the parties that appoint them.… I should add that the danger caused by media prejudice is also present at the court of appeal level, where the hearings will again be in secret.”

 Last night Newsnight presenter Gavin Esler and Independent on Sunday columnist Joan Smith almost jumped down Craig Murray’s throat for mentioning Anna Ardin, one of the two women who sought to expose Julian Assange as a sexual deviant. But the truth is her name, and that of her co-conspirator, Sofia Wilén, have been in the public domain for two years. What the media do not want is people searching the internet to find out the truth. The truth is becoming something alien to the media. That is why they want to gag Julian Assange. It is why they want to gag Craig Murray. Ironically it is two years today since Assange was set free on the same charges of which they say he needs to answer questions now.