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Assange in Sweden: Marianne Ny 'Quiet as a Mouse'

As are the country's regulatory agencies and mainstream media.

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DUCKPOND (Rixstep) — The following was posted at Flashback exactly 51 weeks to the day after Marianne Ny's lieutenant Erika Lejnefors' hearing in the Stockholm district court to apply for a new arrest warrant for Julian Assange.

This time - as opposed to 27 September - things would not be kept secret.

The post is by 'trenterx' shortly after midnight on 11 November 2011. In light of what's recently been revealed, in light of the affidavit of Julian Assange recently published online, this timeline by trenterx, along with his comments, becomes extraordinarily revelatory.

For background see previous articles here, here, and here.

Now to Trenterx. [Note: editor's comments in square brackets.]

Was Assange really willing to be interrogated by police and prosecutor in Sweden? I've made a small timetable. Feel free to correct anything if you find errors. My source is the testimony of Assange attorney Björn Hurtig in the British court in December 2010 and the press referrals from the interrogation of Hurtig in Belmarsh [February 2011].

30 August 2010. Assange is questioned about allegation of molestation of Anna Ardin. He reports voluntarily.

1 September 2010. Marianne Ny reopens the preliminary investigation into the alleged [by the police] rape in the case of Sofia Wilén and adds further allegations in the case of Anna Ardin.

2 September 2010. Sofia Wilén is questioned again. Assange is still waiting his turn, remains in Sweden. Ny refuses to interrogate him.

3-7 September 2010. Assange waits for word from Marianne Ny. Ny again refuses to interrogate him.

8 September 2010. Assange is still waiting. Hurtig rings Ny and demands she interrogate Assange. 'Not yet' is Ny's reply.

9-13 September 2010. Assange waits in Sweden to be interrogated. Marianne Ny still refuses to interrogate him.

14 September 2010. Assange is still waiting to be interrogated, and Marianne Ny is still refusing to interrogate him. [It is now one month since the alleged incidents took place.] Hurtig sends a message to Ny asking if it's OK Assange leaves the country.

15 September 2010. Assange is still waiting in Sweden to be interrogated. Hurtig speaks with Ny on the telephone. Hurtig demands Assange be interrogated 'as soon as possible'. Ny refuses point blank with the motivation that the police inspector who is to interrogate Assange (Mats Gehlin) is on sick leave. Hurtig suggests using another interrogator, but Ny says there is only one interrogator she's willing to use! Hurtig then asks again if it's OK Assange leaves the country, and Ny says it's OK. [Note that Ny will later motivate two arrest warrants on the grounds Assange is a flight risk.]

16-21 September 2010. Assange is still waiting to be interrogated in Sweden. Hurtig rings Marianne Ny a number of times to arrange an interrogation. Hurtig says Marianne Ny never gets back to him in the matter, and he gets the impression she's about to close the case.

22-23 September 2010. Assange is still in Sweden. Marianne Ny sends an SMS message to Hurtig asking to interrogate Assange. One version says she's asking for an interrogation 28 September. They most likely talk on the phone as well. Hurtig can't reach Assange. Hurtig 'forgot' the SMS messages in his deposition, something he discovers and reveals in Belmarsh.

27 September 2010. Marianne Ny claims she spoke on the telephone with Hurtig on this day. [Telephone records weren't checked?] According to Marianne Ny, Hurtig has not been able to reach Assange. Assange leaves Sweden on the 17:25 flight to Berlin [arriving and checking in at Arlanda already at noon - 12:06 some have calculated]. Two hours later, at 14:15, Marianne Ny issues a secret warrant for Julian Assange. [Marianne Ny has to this day refused to account for her actions on this day or for anything in the month of September, despite having a website that otherwise reports on developments in detail.] Hurtig is not told about the secret warrant. [Neither are police at the airport who otherwise would have prevented Assange's departure.] Ny insists in her presentation to the court of appeals in November that she so told Hurtig about this warrant. [Something most researchers today agree is a lie.]

28-29 September 2010. Additional contact between Hurtig and Marianne Ny but no agreed date for an interrogation. Hurtig: 'she wouldn't agree to any of my proposals'.

29 September 2010. Hurtig reaches Assange in Berlin.

30 September 2010. Hurtig contacts Marianne Ny's assistent Erika Lejnefors. He tells her Assange has suggested an interrogation on 10 October, a Sunday. Lejnefors was against a Sunday interrogation because she'd have to pay the interrogator overtime, so she instead suggests any of the following weekdays 11-15 October. Lejnefors told Hurtig she'd get back to him. But Marianne vetoed their plans because those dates were 'too late' [sic].

After 30 September 2010. Innumerable contacts between Hurtig and Ny regarding alternative methods of interrogating Assange: video, Skype, the London embassy, et al. Ny isn't keen on any of them.

18 November 2010. Erike Lejnefors, on behalf of Marianne Ny, requests permission to issue a warrant for Assange first with the district court in Stockholm, then with the court of appeals. The international arrest warrant (EAW) is rejected by Britain.

26 November 2010. An Interpol Red Notice for Assange is posted online.

6 December 2010. The fourth attempt by Marianne Ny to correctly fill in the warrant form is finally accepted by Britain. [Ny was assisted by a Swedish attorney active in the US , a university friend of one of the Klara police investigators, summoned home for the occasion.]

7 December 2010. Julian reports voluntarily to the police in Britain.

7 December 2010 - November 2011 [when this post was written]. Assange is under arrest (Wandsworth) and house arrest (Ellingham). He is available for interrogation at any time for eleven months. So far. Marianne Ny has refused to use Mutual Legal Assistance.

The whole thing is unbelievable if you go back through it.

1. Assange may have been hard to get ahold of, but it's obvious he's not against being interrogated in Sweden. Ny evidently sent out new SMS messages about an interrogation 22-23 September, but this information never reaches him.

2. Hurtig can't reach Assange 22-23 September, but they speak 29 September and it should have been a triviality to find a time for an interrogation - either 10 October as Assange suggested, or any day the week after that, as Lejnefors suggested.

3. Lejnefors and Hurtig had a de facto preliminary arrangement for an interrogation 11-15 October. The refusal of Marianne Ny to go along with her own assistant is extraordinarily unprofessional and should lead to an investigation by the prosecutor-general or the ombudsman for justice. One has to wonder if this is only about prestige and poor judgement on Marianne Ny's part, or whether she was sent a signal that Assange was to be crushed? Perhaps she'd already been informed by 30 September that the way forward was through an EAW and Interpol in order to put Assange in an untenable situation.

A political strategist with the right wing government of Fredrik Reinfeldt is the most likely source of such information. The sensible tactic in such case is to simply refuse all suggestions for interrogation and an end to the case. [We know as well today that all communications were monitored.] And that would explain why Marianne Ny's been quiet as a mouse.

4. Do we not have some regulatory agency in this country that can react and drag Marianne Ny out by her ear? Prosecutor-general Anders Perklev: are you asleep? Or do you too harken only to orders from a higher power?

5. And why are the media all sleeping? Are you asleep, Expressen, Aftonbladet, DN.se, SvD, Radio Sweden, Swedish Television, Kanal 4? Is there really no one who can ask Marianne Ny why she absolutely must have Mats Gehlin as interrogator? Or why the arrest warrant issued 27 September was kept secret - even from the police? Or why it was 'too late' to interrogate Assange after 10 October? Or why Mutual Legal Assistance cannot be used? Are you in the Swedish mainstream media totally blind?

Are we not witnessing corruption?

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