Assange Hung Out on a Phone Call?

The case gets murkier and dirtier by the day.

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There's new evidence the girls filing the complaint against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange never even visited the police and spoke with them in person. They simply placed a telephone call.

And on the basis of this telephone call alone, the police rang up the prosecutor's office, the prosecutor issued a top priority arrest warrant, and then disclosed the details of the case to the media.

'This is corrupt', said Sweden's most famous lawyer Leif Silbersky. ''What's going on here? First you arrest someone on the basis of almost no evidence at all? For a crime most people consider heinous? And then you confirm his identity to the media?'

'It shouldn't be possible for things like this to happen.'

'A woman can't just ring up a police station and get them to arrest someone only on her word. It's not right. I can say I've never had so many foreign correspondents contacting me and they don't understand how this could happen. They're understandably critical of our legal system.'

Yesterday the cards were falling differently. All evidence seemed to point to a 'jilted lover' affair, although some were sceptical any such 'love affair' could happen between Julian Assange and an outspoken militant lesbian.

Yesterday the suspicion of collusion with 'foreign powers' seemed remote.

But today it's an entirely different matter again. Silbersky is right: you can't just ring someone up and get an arrest warrant issued. And the very fact this may have transpired only on the phone makes the entire process questionable. There are just too many 'coincidences' here.

If the CIA and the Pentagon really wanted to exert pressure on the Swedish government to smear or destroy Julian Assange, they would of course start with feelers through the Swedish foreign department led by former prime minister Carl Bildt. And Bildt's already admitted his people have been approached.

But once they'd agreed to do something, they'd go through the office of the minister of justice - just as they did in the 2006 affair of The Pirate Bay. The Swedish minister of justice back then was the currently disgraced Thomas Bodstöm, one of the few ministers of justice through the years with no legal credentials - and to some, a warped view of civil rights.

It was that affair that contributed greatly to the downfall of that government and to Bodstöm's replacement by Beatrice Ask, another minister of justice without a degree of law and for most people an even more warped sense of civil rights.

Ask, dubbed 'Tant Gredelin' by the more and more incredulous media, is the one who seriously suggested sending out snail mail notifications to suspects in colour-coded envelopes - so they'd know they were under suspicion and all their neighbours would as well. Ask figured it was a good way to shame people.

She's also suggested that the police should have the power to confiscate the property of suspects without due process and that certain crimes don't need to be tried in a court of law. 'It can save time', she said.

√ One of the people in Ask's office is married to the prosecutor who was on duty when the police rang up to talk about a phone call they'd received concerning Julian Assange.

√ As if on cue, the prosecutor issued a top priority arrest warrant based on that telephone call alone.

√ As if on cue, representatives from the tabloid Expressen ring her up and ask her to confirm the details.

There's just too much coincidence here.

See Also
Rixstep Industry Watch: Assange Case: 'Legal corruption, one of the worst I've seen'