WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange,
claims a woman accusing him of sexual assault took a "trophy photo" of him lying naked in her bed.
Assange, 39, who is fighting two allegations of sexual assault, was arrested earlier this month in London and later released on bail pending an extradition hearing.
He admits to Britain’s The Sunday Times he is confused by the allegations, as the woman had invited him to stay in her flat in Stockholm in August. He claims she had also invited him to bed with her.
"We went to bed, and things went on from there," he was reported as saying.
He claimed the night began with the 31-year-old woman, known in legal documents as Miss A, taking the nude photograph. She apparently gave no indication there was a problem between them, even reportedly inviting friends to her flat for dinner "in honour" of Assange.
"Does that sound like someone who was upset by what had happened? And at the dinner were a couple who had offered to have me as their guest. Instead, she insisted I remain with her. I stayed the rest of the week," Assange told The Sunday Times.
The other young woman at the centre of the second allegation says she invited him back to her flat and had consensual sex with him, but woke up the next morning to find him having intercourse with her.
When she asked him if he was using protection, he allegedly said: "I am wearing you."
Assange has denied the allegations in both cases and is fighting extradition to Sweden for further questioning. His British lawyer has said the suspicions stem from a "dispute over consensual, but unprotected sex."
While unprotected sex cannot in itself be interpreted as rape in Sweden, sexual intercourse with a person who is asleep is considered non-consensual.
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8 Dec 2010
... The second woman who accuses Assange is
Sofia Wilen. Both
alleged victims, who went to the police together “to seek
... Also have a look at http://engforum.
pravda.ru/showthread.php?301387-Anna-
Ardin-and-Sofia-
Wilen ...
www.indymedia.org.au/.../assange-prosecutor-“lock-the-men-up-anyway” - Cached
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10 posts - 2 authors - Last post: 2 days ago
Alleged victims ... Anna
Ardin, left, and
Sofia Wilen.
..... the julian assanges head over and above anyone else in that particular
arena.
...
www.w54.biz/showthread.php?949-WikiLeaks-founder...p... - Cached
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30 posts - 19 authors - Last post: 7 Dec
Anna
Ardin and Sofia Wilén approached the Klara police station in
... according to Borgström and Ny - but the
alleged victims don't decide
...
forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=129738483&page... - Cached
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Wikileaks not charged... - Page 5 - Yesfans.com: Founded 4/01
19 Dec 2010
... Alleged victims ... Anna
Ardin, left, and
Sofia Wilen.
..... Italy, November 7th
, Saturday - Jako
Arena, Bamberg, Germany, November 8th,
...
www.yesfans.com/showthread.php?t=62197&page=5 - Cached
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21 Dec 2010
... sofia wilen worked hard to bed assange (typo). Inappropriate?
... release the obnoxious spy jonathan pollard!..anna
ardin worked for a cia front
... of it all and focus on thriving outside that mental
arena.
... As far as the "
Alledged" Rape charges, that is a seperate issue, or at least should be.
...
www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/.../comments-newest.html - Cached
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5 Dec 2010
... At first the two women, Anna
Ardin and Sofia Wilen, tweeted and texted,
... Exactly what you are doing to the
alleged victims right now.
...
portland.indymedia.org/en/2010/12/404194.shtml - Cached
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16 Dec 2010
... Problem: It's been proven that Anna
Ardin and Sofia Wilen fabricated the
.... Circulating the names of possible r@pe
victims; leave it to
...
www.huffingtonpost.com/.../keith-olbermann-suspends-twitter-account_n_797845.html - Cached
-
Google brings back "
Sofia Wilen." Yeh thats the one. Was close :rofl:
.... but you can't really compare a speeding ticket to an
alleged act of sexual
.... Movie Ratings, |---- Wall of Sound, |-- The Sporting
Arena, The Archive
...
www.neowin.net/.../959396-who-is-anna-ardin-one-of-assanges-accusers/ - Cached
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8 Dec 2010
... Indeed after the
alleged rape et al
Ardin arranged a "crayfish party"
..... of taking a rape allegation to court is notoriously hard for the
victim.
... luis posada carriles, rape, remand,
sofia wilen, spying, sweden,
...
www.allvoices.com/.../7565838-who-is-anna-ardin-one-of-assanges-accusers - United States - Cached
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10 posts - 6 authors - Last post: 19 Dec
Funny how this all turned nasty when Anna
Ardin (Miss A) met up with Assange's other girlfriend
Sofia Wilen (Miss W).
...
wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?101543-Julian... - Cached
Assange prosecutor: “Lock the men up anyway”
http://www.indymedia.org.au/2010/12/08/assange-prosecutor-%E2%80%9Clock-the-men-up-anyway%E2%80%9D Wed 08 Dec 2010
By
Diet Simon
The Swedish prosecutor out to get Julian Assange, described as “overzealous” in the prestigious German weekly, Die Zeit, once advocated that men accused of mistreating women be locked up even without a conviction to give the accusing women time and space to think.
There is heated debate in Sweden whether the hard line taken against Assange by the state attorney is right, the paper says.
“Not an international conspiracy of secret services, but an overzealous state attorney is regarded as the main reason for (Assange’s) arrest.
“Even an association of young feminist women within the Social Democratic Party now doubts the seriousness of the accusations and the professionalism of the state attorney.
“That is remarkable inasmuch as Assange’s alleged victim (Anna Ardin) is a member of this group.”
Even within the group, Die Zeit writes, it is assumed that the allegations rest only on Assange allegedly not having used a condom against the will of his sex partner.
“These claims are not officially confirmed, however. But they would fit with the behaviour of the Swedish judiciary in the Assange case.”
When the accusations were first voiced to the Swedish police in August, the prosecutors did not lay charges.
Then personnel changed.
A new prosecutor, Marianne Ny, took over the case, distanced herself from the previous decision and laid a rape charge.
Marianne Ny is regarded as a prosecutor who goes especially far. “In one case of a woman being mistreated she voiced the opinion that men accused by women but not convicted should in any case be preventively locked up – to give the women “space to think things over”.
"Only when the man is in captivity and the woman in quietude gets time to look at her existence with some distance, does she get the opportunity to discover how she was treated,” she is quoted as saying at the time.
To Swedish media Assange’s British lawyer has likened Marianne Ny to an "unsecured firearm on the tossing deck of a ship in stormy sea”.
The second woman who accuses Assange is Sofia Wilen. Both alleged victims, who went to the police together “to seek advice”, are described as frauds at this site: http://www.inmalafide.com/2010/12/04/the-name-of-julian-assanges-other-f...
Also have a look at http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?301387-Anna-Ardin-and-Sofia-Wilen
http://www.w54.biz/showthread.php?949-WikiLeaks-founder-blasts-Pentagon-amid-Afghan-files-row&p=12144
WikiLeaks: Julian Assange fears he is subject of an 'illegal investigation'
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has claimed that there could be an "illegal investigation" being carried out into him.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange celebrates as he prepares to address the media outside the High Court in central London yesterday. Photo: AFP/GETTY
1:26PM GMT 17 Dec 2010
Speaking on his first day under house arrest, the 39-year-old Australian said he had not been provided with any evidence relating to claims he sexually assaulted two women.
He was let out of prison on Thursday after a judge ruled he should be released ahead of Swedish extradition proceedings in the new year.
Bail conditions require Mr Assange to remain in the country until the extradition hearing next year and he is now staying at Ellingham Hall, a country retreat on the Norfolk/Suffolk border owned by Vaughan Smith, the founder of London's Frontline club.
Speaking from the grounds of the mansion, he claimed certain institutions were "engaged in what appears to be, certainly a secret investigation, but appears also to be an illegal investigation.
"We can see that by how certain people who are allegedly affiliated with us were contained at the US border and had their computers seized, and so on."
Asked if he was facing a US conspiracy, Mr Assange said: "I would say that there is a very aggressive investigation, that a lot of face has been lost by some people, and some people have careers to make by pursuing famous cases, but that is actually something that needs monitoring.
"We've seen the Swedish government, let's not say the government, a Swedish prosecutor in these representations to the British Government and British courts said he needed not to provide a single shred of evidence."
Mr Assange reiterated that he had spent 10 days in solitary confinement at Wandsworth Prison, south west London, and had still not been presented with "a single piece of evidence".
He claimed his organisation had been attacked primarily not by governments, but by banks in Dubai, Switzerland, the US and the UK and added that WikiLeaks is continuing to release information about the banks.
He added: "Over 85 per cent of our economic resources are spent dealing with attacks, dealing with technical attacks, dealing with political attacks, dealing with legal attacks, not doing our journalism. And that, if you like, is a tax upon quality investigative journalism.
"An 85 per cent tax rate on that kind of economic activity. Whereas people who are producing celebrity pieces for Vanity Fair have much lower tax rates."
Mr Assange said that he had support from a "large Washington law firm" and from "colleagues in California" but called for more help.
He said: "We need more, and not just at a reactive level."
After emerging from the High Court in London, Mr Assange vowed to "continue his work and protest his innocence".
Assange believes further leaked information relating to the sexual assault claims are to be made public later today. He has also indicated that the US is preparing to indict him on espionage charges.
A spokeswoman for the US Department of Justice would confirm only that there is "an ongoing investigation into the WikiLeaks matter".
Assange is wanted in Sweden for alleged sex offences, which he denies. His lawyers have accused the Swedish authorities of waging a "vendetta" against him.
Earlier this week at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court he was granted bail pending the bid to extradite him.
But the whistleblower remained in prison while the authorities challenged his release at the High Court in London, arguing that there was "a real risk" he would abscond.
However, on Thursday Mr Justice Ouseley released Assange after rejecting submissions that the risk he posed made it impossible to set him free.
The judge said his cooperation with police suggested he was not "a person who is seeking to evade justice" and accepted offers by Assange's supporters to stump up £200,000 as a cash deposit and a number of other sureties.
Rape accusers in a 'tizzy' after cops 'bamboozled' them: Assange
December 22, 2010 - 10:17AM
Julian Assange feels he has been unjustly persecuted.
"They know not what they do 'cos they are only women"........................you sexist pig! Bamboozled by Police my arse...........the prick still doesn't understand or accept that he has done anything wrong........
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the Swedish women who have accused him of sexual assault had got into a "tizzy" about the possibility they had caught a sexually transmitted disease from him.
Assange told the BBC that one account of what happened in August - the month at the centre of allegations against him - was that the two women had panicked when they found out they had both slept with him and went to police who "bamboozled" them.
He insisted he was fighting a Swedish extradition warrant because he believes "no natural justice" would occur in Sweden.
Alleged victims ... Anna Ardin, left, and Sofia Wilen.
"There are some serious problems with the Swedish prosecution," he said in an interview from the mansion of a wealthy supporter in eastern England where he must stay as part of his bail conditions.
Sweden wants Britain to extradite the 39-year-old Australian to face questioning over allegations from two women that he raped one of them and sexually assaulted the other in Stockholm in August.
Assange said he was used to attention from women but would not reveal how many women he had slept with.
"A gentleman certainly doesn't count," he said. "I've never had a problem with women. Women have been extremely helpful and generous with me and put up with me, assisting me in my work, caring for me, loving me and so on. That's what I'm used to."
Assange claimed that the Swedish authorities had asked that his Swedish lawyer be "gagged", adding that his offers to be interviewed by video link or by Swedish officials in Britain had been rejected.
"I don't need to be at the beck and call of people making allegations," he said.
"I don't need to go back to Sweden. The law says I... have certain rights, and these rights mean that I do not need to speak to random prosecutors around the world who simply want to have a chat, and won't do it in any other standard way."
He said that one account of what occurred in August was that after having discovered they had each had sex with him, they had got into a "tizzy", or a panic, about the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases.
As a result, he said, the women had gone to the police for advice "and then the police jumped in on this and bamboozled the women".
WikiLeaks has enraged Washington by releasing thousands of US diplomatic cables and US Vice President Joe Biden described Assange as a "hi-tech terrorist".
US officials are believed to be considering how to indict Assange for espionage.
In an interview with The Times on Tuesday, Assange compared WikiLeaks' "persecution" to that endured by Jews in the US in the 1950s.
Assange also confirmed that WikiLeaks was holding a vast amount of material about Bank of America which it intends to release early next year.
"We don't want the bank to suffer unless it's called for," Assange told The Times. "But if its management is operating in a responsive way there will be resignations," he said, without giving details about the material.
Shares in Bank of America have fallen amid speculation that it was a WikiLeaks target.
AFP
CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force: WTF, Indeed
By Spencer Ackerman December 22, 2010 | 9:33 am | Categories: Info War
It can set up mirrored sites. It can bounce from server to server. But whatever impact WikiLeaks continues to have on the U.S. government after dumping tens of thousands of military reports and diplomatic cables, the CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force is watching, studying, learning. It’s literally a WTF operation.
Actually, what makes it a WTF operation isn’t just the task force’s acronym. It’s the WTF’s mandate: not to launch any subterfuge against the radical disclosure entity — that would be a job for NSA, most likely, or maybe Saturday Night Live — but rather to study its disclosure’s impact on the CIA’s ability to recruit snitches and retain the trust of spy agencies worldwide.
According to the Washington Post’s Greg Miller, it takes an entire task force to determine that CIA came out of the WikiLeaks saga with minimal exposure. While WikiLeaks appeared to show CIA operations in Iraq, its biggest-hyped disclosure was a boring piece of analysis on homegrown terrorism. The Pentagon and the State Department can only wish they had such limited breaches.
Score one for the CIA’s distaste for sharing information. It didn’t participate in the government-wide SIPRNet secret internet that allowed an Army private like Bradley Manning to allegedly put hundreds of thousands of State Department cables on a Lady Gaga CD. While the Defense Department is rushing to ban thumb drives, an ex-CIA official tells Miller that if he ever put a thumb drive into his work computer, “there would probably be a little trap door under my chair.” For all the carping about CIA’s reluctance to share information from earnest think-tankers and angry congressional panels, here’s an enormous information-security upside.
That’s partially the result of an institutional culture of secrecy. But CIA’s also had a lot of early experience with cyber-insecurity. In 1995, then-Director John Deutch put classified information on his home computer, which his AOL account left vulnerable to cookies, malware or phishing – though a CIA inquiry found no harm was done. More seriously, in what might be the biggest reply-all-FAIL of all time, a CIA agent accidentally emailed the agency’s entire spy network inside Iran in 2004, allowing a double agent to identify and then neutralize all the CIA’s snitches.
And the CIA might not WikiLeak, but it leaks like a sieve. In his first public speech as director of national intelligence, Jim Clapper said that President Obama was pissed at “widely quoted amorphous and anonymous senior intelligence officials who get their jollies from blabbing to the media.” All those are WTF moments — though, as a reporter, I’m not complaining — but chances are they’re not going to merit their own task force.
Photo: CIA
The truth lies trapped in a web of intrigue
December 24, 2010
A murky situation ... Julian Assange outside a police station this week in Britain, where he is on bail. Photo: Reuters
This sexual and political drama has more mysteries than any thriller, writes Guy Rundle in London.
Whatever prompted Naomi Wolf to defend Julian Assange by penning a satirical article for The Huffington Post titled ''Julian Assange Captured by World's Dating Police'', one assumes she is now regretting it. Ditto Michael Moore's ex cathedra statements on whether the sex crime allegations made against the WikiLeaks founder constituted rape or not: ''His condom broke during consensual sex. This is all a bunch of hooey as far as I'm concerned.''
Two weeks ago, when he was on remand in Wandsworth prison, it was broadly accepted that the man responsible for humiliating and challenging great powers across the world had been railroaded by a series of accusations relying on scorned female fury.
But now people more critical of the ethereal 39-year-old former hacker have hit back, as tabloid articles and a long piece in The Guardian detail the allegations against him blow by blow. The tabloid pieces in Sweden's Expressen and Britain's Mail on Sunday seemed more interested in his sexual encounters that were unquestionably consensual than in the criminal accusations. It is the report from The Guardian, one of WikiLeaks' publishing partners, that may do him more damage. Yet even this assessment is more interesting for what it left out - stories of influence, tampering, shadowy establishments and hidden agendas that leave the late Stieg Larsson out in the cold.
The story begins in early August, with the first complainant, Miss A, a woman now universally acknowledged as Anna Ardin, a rising star in the Social Democratic Party and an organiser of Assange's speaking engagement in Stockholm. Ardin had put up Assange in her apartment and organised a crayfish party for him, a traditional Swedish summer get-together attended by journalists and the leaders of Sweden's libertarian anti-censorship Pirate Party.
Assange and Ardin had begun a sexual relationship but, according to Nick Davies in The Guardian report, Ardin had told two friends that the sex had been ''violent''; Assange had pinned down her arm to prevent her applying a condom. She had let him stay in her apartment, but not her bed.
Unbeknown to her, Assange was also seeing Sofia Wilen, a photographer who, by her own account to police, had become a little obsessed with Assange after seeing him on TV. Though she had told him she never had unsafe sex, she said she had woken to find him having sex with her without a condom. According to her account to prosecutors, they joked about pregnancy, had breakfast and returned to Stockholm by train, with Wilen paying for the tickets - as she had paid days earlier for the cinema, the meal and the train out.
On the Wednesday, August 18, Wilen rang Ardin, whom she did not know, to find out where Assange was. They compared notes and, on Friday, August 20, went to Klara police station to inquire how they could force Assange to take a test for sexually transmitted infections. Fifteen minutes into the interview the police decided to ask the duty prosecutor to open a rape investigation.
Though it would be months before it began to be adjudicated in The Huffington Post, the case became murky and mysterious from the get-go. Wilen's experience had been the basis for the rape accusation, Ardin's for two misdemeanour accusations. The senior prosecutor threw out the rape accusation, leaving a case barely worth pursuing.
But then Claes Borgstrom entered the scene. Battered and feisty, a real-life Kurt Wallander, Borgstrom is both a celebrity lawyer and a major figure in the Social Democratic Party, its gender equality spokesman. He petitioned the appeals prosecutor, Marianne Ny, to revive the accusations. When she did, in early September, there were four accusations, not three, the most serious being a new one - that of violent sexual coercion of Ardin.
The new accusation created a substantial difference between the first and later account of events to the police. It was at this time that material began to disappear from the internet. Two tweets were removed from Ardin's Twitter feed in early September - one saying ''Julian wants to go to a crayfish party, anyone around'' and another from the crayfish party Ardin organised for him that night ''2am - sitting outside with the most exciting, interesting people in the world'', both tweets sent in the 24 hours after the alleged violent sexual encounter took place.
Simultaneously, two items disappeared from blogs written or co-written by Ardin: a record of events making no mention of a violent sexual encounter, and a ''7-step guide to revenge'' on ex-lovers. All four deleted items were retrieved from internet caches by Swedish bloggers.
One of those who retrieved the deleted material was Goran Rudling, an activist involved in a campaign to revise Sweden's 2005 Sex Crimes Act, which he believes has rendered the law unworkable. No fan of Assange, whom he describes as a ''villain - he wants to make himself more important by saying there is a conspiracy to get him'', Rudling nevertheless points out that the investigation of his case has been hamstrung by a routine disregard for the proper procedures.
''There is, for example, no full record of the first interviews, written or audio/video. So we don't know what questions were asked, or how they were answered,'' Rudling says. ''The arrest warrant was issued before the interview proper had even begun, and one of the complainants was only interviewed the next day, by telephone.''
Why was a warrant for a serious allegation issued so quickly? One possibility is so that it could be leaked in time for the afternoon news, especially to the right-wing tabloid Expressen, which painted such a harsh picture of Assange that it prompted Ardin to give an interview to the rival paper Aftonbladet the next day, in which she said that ''Assange is not violent and we do not fear him … this is about someone who has problems with women''.
It is this quote that has become a headache for Borgstrom, since it contradicts Ardin's later claims. Questioned about this by reporters, Borgstrom replied that said the women ''weren't jurists - they don't know what rape is''. This claim was shaky. As gender equality officer at Uppsala University, Ardin had issued a new edition of the student union's gender equality procedures, including a guide to legal recourse.
By now, however, attention had turned to Borgstrom and the passion with which he was pursuing the case. His decision to take the case had been met with bemusement by many as his party was on the verge of contesting the September general election, one it lost badly.
When the Social Democrats were last in power, Borgstrom had helped draft the 2005 Sex Crime Act, which had made it possible to charge people with what has become known as ''sex by surprise''. Since losing power in 2006, his party has claimed that the ruling centre-right coalition has done nothing to give the new laws any force. Opponents of the law contended that it was unworkable, prompting investigations into matters that would be reduced to two conflicting stories in court and open to misuse for reputation damage and revenge.
Crucially, the 2005 law had gone beyond simple notion of consent and elaborated the idea of ''violation of sexual integrity'' and non-financial ''sexual exploitation'' - that is, psychological or situational manipulation. It thus became possible to charge someone with a sex crime even if consent was present throughout, a feature of at least two, and possibly all four, of the accusations against Assange.
The accusations against him occurred at a highly charged time, as the centre-right government received an exhaustive review of the law. The review had been prompted by bitter struggle between those who said it was unworkable - people drawn from the left and right - and those on the centre-left, feminists and greens who argued that the justice system should be further transformed to overcome the low conviction rate it achieved.
One of the players in the debate had been Gothenburg's crime development unit, a department of the prosecutor's office responsible for exploring new modes for the development of sex crime legislation, and headed by the appeals prosecutor Marianne Ny.
Does this add up to a possible hidden agenda? Yes and no. Unlike the experience of Larsson's character Lisbeth Salander, Sweden has less explicit corruption than a lot of countries. What it does have is a suffocatingly tight political elite, much of it grouped around the Social Democratic Party, which has huge cultural power even in opposition.
Some, such as the law blogger Marten Schultz, are impatient with Assange's repeated claims of especially bad treatment, arguing that the most surprising decision from the prosecutors was the second one, stating that Assange was not a suspect - without carrying out any investigation.
Others, such as Christian Engstrom, a Pirate Party member of the European Parliament, suggest that it would be difficult for Assange to get a fair trial in Sweden, as the judge and ''lay examiners'' who assess each case are appointed by the political parties in proportion to their numbers in parliament. ''Usually Swedish justice works well,'' he argues. ''But in cases like Julian's everything goes strange.''
His chief of staff, Henrik Alexandersson, is more forthright, saying that as Assange has antagonised all major parties ''there is no chance of him getting a fair trial''.
Few cases in recent times have been so argued about on the basis of so much misinformation. Even Davies's account in The Guardian has been criticised as one-sided by a WikiLeaks associate in Sweden who was one of several people who tried to mediate between Assange and Ardin, before she went to the police. ''I would say that it is simply the case for the prosecution,'' he says. ''The police record contains Assange's early interview with the police on the 'misconduct' [accusations], yet none of that has been included.''
Assange has at no time been charged with any crime. His arrest warrant was issued in relation to questions the prosecutors' office wishes him to answer regarding the accusations. Assange is next due in court in Britain on January 11 for the beginning of his extradition hearing.
The WikiLeaks associate suggests the case may never come to trial, noting that ''one of the complainants has refused to sign off on her statement''. Even if that proves to be the case, Julian Assange has entered history, though it remains to be seen whether in triumph or tragedy.
Days of his life
August 20 Julian Assange is accused of the rape and sexual assault of Sofia Wilen and of ofredande (''unfreedom'' - a misdemeanour crime under Swedish law) in relation to Anna Ardin. The accusations are leaked to the tabloid Espressen.
August 21 Stockholm's chief prosecutor withdraws the arrest warrant for Assange, saying she sees no description of rape or assault. An investigation into the ofredande accusation stands.
August 31 Police in Stockholm question Assange and formally tell him of the allegation against him. He denies the accusations.
September 1 Marianne Ny, an appeals prosecutor, reopens an investigation into rape in relation to Ardin.
November 18 An arrest warrant is issued in Sweden for Assange to answer questions from the prosecutor.
November 30 Interpol issues a ''red notice'' for Assange's detention.
December 6 A European arrest warrant is issued.
December 7 Assange gives himself up to British police. The Crown Prosecution Service reads out four accusations: rape: that Assange had held Ardin down, forcibly parted her legs and had sex with her; ofredande: that Assange had unsafe sex with Ardin, thereby violating her sexual integrity; ofredande: that Assange had pushed his erect penis into Ardin's back, thereby violating her sexual integrity; sexual assault: that Assange had had unsafe sex with Wilen while she was sleeping.
December 16 Assange is released on bail of £200,000 ($308,000) plus several sureties. An initial extradition hearing is set for January 11. The substantive hearing will begin in early February.
US Army launches WikiLeaks probe
Nancy A Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers
December 24, 2010 - 2:59PM
WASHINGTON - The US Army has launched a wide-ranging investigation into how a private suspected of downloading thousands of secret reports and diplomatic cables and handing them over to WikiLeaks was able to do so and whether other soldiers should face criminal charges in the case.
An army official familiar with the investigation told McClatchy newspapers that the six-member task force has been given until February 1 to complete a report that will look at everything from how Private Bradley Manning was selected for his job and trained to whether his superiors missed warning signs that he was downloading documents he had no need to read.
The army confirmed the investigation, but wouldn't release details.
Advertisement: Story continues below The report could change how the army - the largest distributor of government security clearances - grants access to government documents as well as lead to recommendations of charges against soldiers who worked with Manning and may have been aware of his activities.
Manning was working as an intelligence specialist in Baghdad during 2009 and the early months of 2010 when he allegedly downloaded hundreds of thousands of classified documents.
Those documents reached WikiLeaks - army officials have said they're not certain how - and have been published by the website in four separate bursts that began in April with the release of a video showing an army helicopter firing on civilians in Baghdad, killing two Reuters news agency employees.
The website also released tens of thousands of documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before the current, ongoing publication of hundreds of thousands of US State Department cables, which began on November 28.
Manning allegedly downloaded the documents while pretending to listen to music by Lady Gaga on headphones, a cover story, investigators say, to explain the sound of the computer's CD drive whirring as he copied the files.
He's being held in solitary confinement at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia on charges that could lead to a 52-year prison sentence.
Some human rights groups charge that Manning is being mistreated, with no ability to exercise or access to news.
The Defense Department has denied the claims.
Army Lieutenant General Robert Caslen Jr, the commander of the Army General Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, will lead the study, which was ordered by John McHugh, the Army secretary.
"Lt Gen Caslen has a very broad investigative mandate and he has been assured of the co-operation of both the Department of the Army and the US Central Command as he proceeds. Lt Gen Caslen's investigation will not interfere nor conflict with the ongoing criminal investigation," Army spokesman Lt Col Christopher Garver said in a statement prepared in response to questions from McClatchy.
No other service branch is conducting a similar investigation, but the army findings could lead to changes throughout the military. With more than 800,000 uniformed personnel, the Army issues more security clearances than any other government organisation.
The US Justice Department also is conducting an investigation into whether to bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, though such a prosecution faces a number of challenges, including the apparent difficulty prosecutors are having tying Assange directly to Manning.
Manning, now 23, reportedly isn't co-operating with investigators, and Defense Department officials who have been briefed on the case said according to their most recent information, now months old, that no direct tie has been established between Manning and Assange.
© 2010 AAP
Assange says he could be killed in US jail
December 24, 2010 - 11:59AM
The only reason there'd be a "high chance" is because he is such a mouthy, obnoxious little prick and people would want the peace his non-existence would bring.............his paranoia and media manipulation continues.............
WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange says there is a "high chance" he would be killed in a US jail if he were to be extradited from Britain on espionage charges.
The Australian is on bail in Britain fighting a bid by Sweden to extradite him over sex assault claims, but Washington is believed to be considering how to indict him over the leaking of thousands of US diplomatic cables.
Assange told The Guardian it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to send him across the Atlantic, adding that the government of Prime Minister David Cameron would want to show it had not been "co-opted" by Washington.
"Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception," he said.
He said US authorities were "trying to strike a plea deal" with Bradley Manning, the US army soldier suspected of providing WikiLeaks with the cables.
Assange added that if the United States succeeded in getting him extradited from Britain or Sweden, then there was a "high chance" of him being killed "Jack Ruby-style" in an American prison.
Ruby, a nightclub owner, shot dead Lee Harvey Oswald at a police station in Dallas, Texas days after Oswald was arrested for the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963.
Ruby's alleged links to organised crime sparked conspiracy theories about his involvement in an overall plot surrounding the assassination of Kennedy.
Assange has previously said that he and other WikiLeaks staff have received death threats since the website began to release a cache of about 250,000 secret US State Department cables in November.
The 39-year-old has been staying at a friend's country mansion in eastern England since his release from jail last week on strict bail conditions that include reporting to police daily and wearing an electronic tag.
A court in London is due to hold a full hearing on the Swedish extradition request starting February 7.
The only reason there'd be a "high chance" is because he is such a mouthy, obnoxious little prick and people would want the peace his non-existence would bring.............his paranoia and media manipulation continues...........
Wow, are you serious?
Not sure if it was posted here but finally got to read the police report summary, what an arse! Doesn't change anything though
Originally Posted by
Deks 
Wow, are you serious?
No I wrote that to pass the time of day..................
Originally Posted by
buglerbilly
No I wrote that to pass the time of day..................
h fair enough, I thought you may respond with some reasoning into your thoughts though.
For myself, I haven't yet decided whether on balance wikileaks is a good thing or not. I'm certainly not calling for the julian assanges head over and above anyone else in that particular arena
I thought my views on Mr Assange were very clear: -
1) Personally, I think he's an obnoxious little prick who's ego is only matched by his inability to keep his zip up..........this doesn't only refer to the Swedish instances............
2) He's of a left-wing "society" that believes TOTALLY in its own supreme correctness ensuring that the rest of us mere mortals have our outlooks and beliefs modified to understand that THEY are always right.........IF you've never dealt with such vermin, then undoubtedly this will sound strange to you BUT I've had to deal with it, understand the type and still have difficulty being polite when discussing the same.
3) WikiLeaks, as a group, I have no problem with IN THEORY. However, taking the current example as a case in point, we still are in the very early days of how we handle Cyber Leaks where people ILLEGALLY download masses of information NOT business info but State, Defence and Political "secrets"; to then say this puts no one at risk 'cos they've read it OR "its your fault cos you didn't read the STOLEN info we have in our possession to verify what or who was at risk" defies description in its banal rigtheous naivety and blatant stupidity. Equally, to ignore the Global political impact such disclosures can creat is also naive and stupid.
4) Do I want to live in a society where all matters are open to disclosure as a right? Nope I do NOT...........it's idealistic and almost moronic to beleve that this will somehow ensure either equality, justice or peace in this World. I most certainly do not want other people knowing what I do or say in every instance, I value my privacy far more than that and make no mistake, being allowed to leak State secrets is only a skip and a jump away from no one have any rights to privacy as privacy, by definition, could be viewed as having "secrets".
Watching the critically acclaimed HBO series 
Full disclosure: A few tobacco brand advertisers currently run ads through AWN mostly viaRJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. The ad shown on the left ran in late 2010 in a number of alternative weekly publications. A trend toward smokeless tobacco which we also are seeing in the same pages unfortunately doesn’t skirt by the authorities; snuff, snus, chewing tobacco and other similar products contain the same bad boys as cigarettes.
Here’s one that caught our attention over the weekend where MediaPost blogger Erik Sass’ commentary on the recent bubblicious trend led by social deal mammoth Groupon captures the imagination of the reader—whether he’s right or wrong, it makes you think about what is happening in the business social media world. 
Now you can find out via the awn web site. AWN has added a “special sections” feature to individual publication pages at 
I got nothing but love for a person who risks their life to tell the truth.
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