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Desperate attempt by Borgström, Lambertz to save reputation

The trick is to stand perfectly still. By Jan Guillou. Published in Aftonbladet 26 August 2012.


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STOCKHOLM (Rixstep) — Claes Borgström had a theoretical chance of survival, as did his buddy Göran Lambertz, when the Quick scandal finally saw daylight. But they lost their cool. They blew it. They should have left well enough alone and waited out the storm, as the others in the scandal have chosen to do.

Jan Guillou, as most journalists in Sweden, has been highly critical of the Quick case from the beginning. Now that Hannes Råstam's definitive work on the case has been published posthumously, there's seemingly no holding the dikes any longer.

Verdict after verdict is being overturned - five acquittals so far, with Assange attorney Thomas Olsson taking care of the remaining three.

The Quick scandal is the biggest travesty of justice in Swedish history. And right at its epicentre is the same individual who's been trying for over two years to make a show trial out of a case once dismissed by a chief prosecutor.

The case of WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange.

Desperate attempt by Borgström, Lambertz to save reputation
By Jan Guillou. Published 26 August 2012.

'If you go to the media with sensational accusations, there's no turning back'

A wise maxim is that when you step in the shit, you stand still. For if you try to move out, the shit'll get all over you.

In the tragic and farcical soap opera of the 'serial killer Quick', most of the show's creators have understood that core concept.

No matter how fascinating it might be to hear psychotherapist Birgitta Ståhle tell us how she summoned up Quick's repressed memory of how he was forced by his parents to eat his own little brother Simon (who never existed) and how that childhood trauma of course turned him into a serial killer - she's keeping quiet. Just as the other medical experts in the case who helped turn fiction into fact are keeping quiet.

Because Quick was convicted of eight murders he didn't commit, the evidence brought before the courts has to have been powerfully twisted. That's obvious. So the burden of guilt has to be divided - unevenly - amongst the players in this, Sweden's most comprehensive travesty of justice in history. And most of them are standing perfectly still right now, shit on their feet, and that seems the wise thing for them to do.

It was therefore all the more surprising to see two of the minor characters in this scandal, attorney Claes Borgström and supreme court justice Göran Lambertz, doing the foxtrot in the media spotlights this past week. They wanted to save their reputations. The result of course was the opposite.

This is of course an embarrassing situation for Claes Borgström: holding the Swedish national record for getting innocent clients convicted of murder. Proper lawyer work should have prevented it, or so one might think.

So Claes Borgström appears to be grossly incompetent. But better that, one might argue, than to appear, as the others in this tragedy, as an outright crook. Borgström should have stood perfectly still.

But injured pride won out over common sense in the end, and Claes Borgström popped up in the media, claiming he was 'deeply violated' on Swedish state radio. He further claimed he had 'secret evidence' that proved Quick was guilty and the original verdicts were correct - but for 'ethical reasons' (attorney client privilege) he of course couldn't divulge this evidence.

So to polish his escutcheon, Borgström chooses to pull the defamation card, made worse still with the dirtiest trick in the bag: 'secret evidence'. An attorney cannot behave more unethically.

And out came Göran Lambertz dancing as well. His boner in the Quick scandal is that in 2006, when he was chancellor for justice, the land's most exalted guardian of the judicial system, he quickly reviewed all eight verdicts (in a single week) and declared them fully correct and worse still: he declared the investigative work of police and prosecutor performed in an expert fashion, with due diligence.



So it could of course be aggravating to struggle onward with a career in jurisprudence with such a blooper on one's CV. But he probably could have survived, supreme court justice Göran Lambertz, even if he was teased now and again by his colleagues at the court. So he too should have stood perfectly still.

But just like Borgström, Lambertz instead tried to save his reputation by, in grandiose fashion, appearing on the pages of DN.se, claiming Quick was guilty and therefore the rulings to reopen the cases and the following acquittals by the high court and the appointed prosecutors were simply wrong. And Lambertz offered five pieces of evidence which he claimed were still crucial in two cases where Quick's been acquitted.

All of which gave the impression he simply hadn't read the rulings of the prosecutors and the high court, as they had carefully chopped those very pieces of evidence to bits.

The worst was probably the claim Quick had specific knowledge of a birthmark on young Johan's body. The prosecutor who dismissed the case came to the conclusion that Quick's knowledge in the matter came from the police interrogator. And also Johan's mother had told the media (SvD) in detail on 21 August how the police altered the drawing of the birthmark she'd given them so it would better match Quick's story.

The thoughtlessness of Göran Lambertz is baffling for someone otherwise regarded as an accomplished jurist. Because truthfully he's made things much too difficult for himself. If you go to the media with sensational accusations, there's no turning back. After being laughed at for his 'evidence' that had already been dismissed by the prosecutors and the courts, Göran Lambertz then pops up in Expressen and declares that he now has not only five pieces of evidence but seventeen!

But he'll be keeping them secret for now. All of which puts him too in an impossible situation.

Claes Borgström and Göran Lambertz couldn't take the heat when the Quick scandal finally saw daylight. They became desperate and lost their composure.

They're about to learn the painful truth in another maxim: you can't wash yourself clean with printer's ink.

I'm so sick of it all. Will it never end? At any rate I want to say the other girl's just as much to blame.
 - Anna Ardin

Apparently Swedish laws are unique. If you have a penis you're half a rapist before you even get through customs.
 - Scott Adams

If I am able to reveal what I know, everyone will realise this is all a charade. If I could tell the British courts, I suspect it would make extradition a moot point.
 - Björn Hurtig

I can tell you that the Swedish prosecution still hasn't provided copies of those SMS texts that have been referred to. Those texts are some of the most powerful exculpatory evidence. In Australia prosecutors have a very grave duty to disclose such evidence to courts when seeking the grave exercise of a court's power against an individual. Yet in Sweden in this case, in the first hearings to obtain an arrest warrant, those texts were not submitted to the Swedish court, which is highly improper.
 - James Catlin

The prosecutor could achieve this broadening of the law during Assange's trial so he can be convicted of a crime that didn't exist at the time he allegedly committed it. She would need to. There is no precedent for this. The Swedes are making it up as they go along.
 - James Catlin

Julian Assange will surely learn that considering what WikiLeaks has published, he's got a few enemies in the Pentagon, the CIA, and the White House. Sweden began an investigation into rape which was later dismissed. Assange was even denied residence in Sweden. One can only speculate to what extent the security agencies of the US were involved. And considering the obvious interest of the US to silence WikiLeaks, is it likely Assange will have an accident of the 'Boston brakes' kind in the coming years? Or will he be snared with compromising information of the 'honey trap' kind?
 - 'Drozd' at Flashback 23 October 2010

The truth will out, the truth wins out. Let no journalist ever again speculate into what the protocols say. Six months of digging and the people at Flashback have the actual documents. The sleaze printed by rags such as the Daily Mail, Sweden's Aftonbladet and Expressen, and perhaps above all the toxic Nick Davies of the Guardian, can stand no more. Yet more: these documents are an indictment of the 'news organisations' who've printed deliberate inaccuracies all along or even worse: refused to print anything at all. Nick Davies' account of the protocols was maliciously skewed; both Aftonbladet and Expressen had copies early on and printed nothing. Bloggers had copies but arrogantly kept the information to their Smeagol selves.
 - The Assange Police Protocol: Translator's Note

See Also
Red Hat Diaries: Borgström & Quick
Red Hat Diaries: The Claes Borgström Interview
Red Hat Diaries: Julian Assange & Claes Borgström
The Technological: Borgström: 'I Know Things Too!'
Industry Watch: Claes Borgström: 'I feel deeply violated'

Aftonbladet: Claes Borgström: 'Jag känner mig djupt kränkt'
Aftonbladet: Desperata försök att rädda äran från skandalens smuts

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