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Assange Case: Anna Ardin's Shitfaced Lawyer

After-shave, old booze, and a faint smell of shredded paper.


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DUCKPOND (Radsoft) — It's Thursday 16 August 2012 and the world waits with bated breath. At 14:00 hours in the duckpond (13:00 in London) Ecuador is to announce their decision on the request for asylum by Julian Assange.

A mere 38 minutes earlier, the lawyer of the two Swedish girls, Claes Borgström, bobs his way bravely through the thick pedestrian lunch traffic in the nation's capital.

He's drunk as a skunk.

Of course everyone in Stockholm knows Claes likes a 'wee sip' now and then, but what shocked the three eyewitnesses was his timing.

Flashback contributor Duqu tells the story in his own words.

I was traveling on a Stockholm bus on Thursday, got off at the corner of Kungsgatan and Vasagatan, was going to meet my friends from California. They were in contact with me via mobile phone and walking towards me on Vasagatan. We meet up at the intersection of Vasagatan and Gamla brogatan and begin talking about where to eat lunch. We decide to take bus 69 to where it stops right in front of Burger King. There are a lot of people on the street, so we squeeze up against a lamppost.

When suddenly there's a git approaching in a blue suit. His gait is peculiar, he's weaving and bobbing his way forward as if he were traipsing on weak floorboards, and he's walking very very slowly as well. He's somewhat hidden by the others passing by in the lunchtime commotion, but when he gets closer I can suddenly see his face. For up to now he's kept his eyes to the pavement directly at his feet.

It's Claes Borgström.

I move out of his way when he reaches us. He's still weaving and bobbing like an old woman with a walker, and he obviously can't keep his balance.

Then there's the smell.

Claes Borgström's smell assaults the nostrils. He smells like an old alcoholic bum, but here there's also the smell of after-shave. He's breathing heavily from his exertion as he passes us by.

I turn to my friends and ask them if they got a glimpse of the guy. Sure! said the one. Was that an office wino or what? Well, I said, that was the lawyer of the two women that got Assange into all that trouble.

Holy shit! they say.

We really regretted having older cellphones that don't have cameras.

At the same time Claes Borgström reaches the intersection of Kungsgatan and Vasagatan outside the Oscars theatre, our bus arrives. The time is precisely 13:23. (The bus was three minutes late.) We laughed about poor Claes all afternoon.



Claes had been wearing a cheap ill-fitted blue suit. The suit was very wrinkled and had a lot of dirt around the collar and on the back. His black shoes hadn't been polished in a long while. He looked like he'd slept in his suit. Even the used car salesmen on Sveavägen don't wear clothes so poorly tailored! I'd have the hit of the month on YouTube if I'd had a camera.

But it's very likely he's going to walk the same way again. And he'll probably be just as hammered next time as well. He was of course walking towards Norra bantorget where he has his offices.

He was coming from the World Trade Centre area. And out that way there's only one bar. After that we have the SAS Radisson hotel and the central train station. So I think he must have been drinking lunch at the Radisson - if he'd been anywhere else, we would have missed him, because he would have been walking on the other side of the street.

So the dude was drunk as a skunk, totally drunk 38 minutes before the announcement from Ecuador that they'd granted asylum to Julian Assange, and he was contacted by the media after the top of the hour. Either the photos shown in the MSM are from their archives or else he changed clothes in his office, or conducted the interviews by telephone. For all we saw that day were pics of him in a white shirt and black suit. If anyone from the media had popped into his office, they'd have seen one totally shitfaced Claes, and if they had, then they're keeping mighty quiet about it.

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

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