Marianne Ny's Bells Toll

Tick tock, tick tock.

Get It Try It

STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Rixstep) — Tick tock, tick tock.

Sweden's tabloid Aftonbladet published a revealing report on Marianne Ny yesterday.

Admittedly one has to read between the lines, but in this case the space between the lines is more than sufficient - one can pitch a tent in there.



Using the cleverly misleading title 'Diplomatic fight may save Assange', the Aftonbladet piece covers how the current situation seems to be trying to save Marianne Ny instead.

'WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange seems to have escaped most of the allegations in Sweden. A diplomatic standoff seems to have pushed the investigation past the statute of limitations.'

Which is quite the mouthful, considering that it's hardly a secret that Julian Assange has been asking for the meeting for the better part of five years. It was only when Marianne Ny was threatened with defeat in the country's supreme court that she went through the motions of trying to arrange an interrogation in London. After five years of doing nothing.

One thing Aftonbladet did get right was that the reason Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador had nothing to do with Marianne Ny's Quixotic campaign.

'But now time is running out for Marianne Ny - she can't even get an appointment to question Assange', Aftonbladet's piece continues.

Well of course there can be delays - but Marianne Ny's had five years to question him. When she waits until, as the Swedes say, 'the eleventh hour', then yes, there can be snags. She wouldn't have had this problem if she'd started five years ago.

Aftonbladet kindly pointed out that the Guardian explained the case rather thoroughly. There doesn't seem to be much contest about the details, even from a Swedish tabloid.

Guardian: Ecuador and Sweden in tense standoff over interview

'Julian Assange is arrested in absentia for allegations of four crimes', they continue at Aftonbladet. Yes, we all know those four allegations - they're the same ones that caused riotous laughter and utter disbelief in a courtroom in London.

'But the pressure on Marianne Ny led to her finally making an application for interrogation in London'.. Pressure from Marianne Ny's own justice system, it should be pointed out. The ducks are understandably reluctant to toss one of their own under a bus, but the spectre of full insight by an international court meant they had to tread carefully, and so it was that the court of appeals, although upholding the arrest warrant, added an 'aside' in their verdict that Marianne Ny had to do something - and when asked what that 'something' might be, a court representative said 'well, Marianne Ny can get over to Great Britain and question him'.

The matter was then referred to the supreme court, where the justices were very interested to know exactly what Marianne Ny was doing. And that's when the 'much ado about nothing' by Marianne Ny began: a disapproving verdict in the supreme court would have spelled disaster for Marianne Ny.

So suddenly the scramble. To arrange an interview. Most interesting in this part of the drama is the crime lab report which showed that evidence held by Marianne Ny was faked. But the questioning was not to be: as with her attempt five years earlier to apply for a European Arrest Warrant, which failed four or five times because she didn't know how to fill in the arrest application, this new application - for Mutual Legal Assistance with the UK and Ecuador - crawled towards a similar fate.

Tick tock.

And then things again slowed to a Swedish slug's pace. But this is the way things work in Sweden, where Marianne Ny has worked all her life, and had Marianne Ny had a clue about standard procedure, she'd have started a lot earlier. Perhaps five years earlier.

So Marianne Ny's application lands on a desk at the justice department on 29 May. Now it has to be translated. There is no information about how long her application text was, but it can't have been more than 2,000 words, the expected speed of an authorised translator for one day's work.

Yet the application got shuffled around there for nearly two weeks, so it wasn't until 12 June that her translated application finally turned up at the Ecuador embassy in Stockholm.

Tick tock.

What Marianne Ny says she really can't understand is that the Ecuador authorities want to actually read her application before they let her into the building. The application is said to be laden with 'special requirements' and other bizarre remarks, and the Ecuador authorities need time to go through the legalese and if necessary get back to her and explain what's permissible.

But gee whiz - what happens now? People can't believe it. Marianne Ny goes away for three weeks holiday right in the middle of the ongoing arrangements?

Yes, it is true. Marianne Ny leaves for holidays on 18 June and returns on 8 July.

Tick tock.

No wonder that even the hawks in the Swedish MSM are now calling for her head.

Marianne Ny still isn't available for comment, save for Swedish reporters on the steps of the Ecuador embassy in London, but her press secretary Robin Simonsson is, and Simonsson tells Aftonbladet:

'Our position right now it to try to get permission to interrogate Assange in London as soon as possible. We are waiting for the green light from Ecuador.'

The interrogating prosecutor in such case will be Ingrid Isgren, Erika Lejnefors' replacement. Isgren was rumoured to have already been in London - the reason the Swedish reporter turned up.

Ecuador's Reaction

Ecuador's foreign minister Ricardo Armando Patiño doesn't mince words when it comes to Marianne Ny.

'This is not acceptable', reads the Aftonbladet Swedish translation of words that have been published all over the web. 'After finally deciding to respond to our attempts to arrange an interrogation for all these years, she now expects that our role should be limited to opening the embassy doors!'

But there's consolation, the Aftonbladet piece points out: Marianne Ny has five more years to 'investigate' the final allegation.

Yet given Marianne Ny's track record, that still might not be enough.

See Also
Justice4Assange.com
Assange Defence Fund
WikiLeaks: Support WikiLeaks
The Police Protocol (Translated)
Rixstep: JA/WL (Assange/WikiLeaks)
Rixstep: Assange/WikiLeaks RSS Feed
Radsoft: Assange/WikiLeaks RSS Feed