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Royal decrees change nothing.


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So now it's out. Sture 'Quick' Bergwall is not only acquitted in all the bizarre cases where he'd previously been convicted, but he's been released from the institution where the travesty took place. He's free.

The case of Sture Bergwall is the biggest judicial scandal in a country extraordinarily ripe with judicial scandals. Sture's hardly the only victim. Sweden had witch trials 400 years ago, until the king ordered the churches to declare all witches had been chased out of the country. The opportunists protested, but the king told them where to get off.

Yet some would justifiably claim the 'witch trial' mentality never said goodbye.

Sweden has been rightfully famous for many things, but a working judicial model isn't one of them. Sweden can convict without hard evidence. Sweden's court system allows for 'hack judges' culled straight from the political elite. The concept of 'rule of law' is almost unheard of in Sweden, as is the cornerstone concept of presumption of innocence. There are no juries in ordinary trials, and bail is unheard of. Prosecutors can go on wild goose chases for years on end without stating what they're looking for, and can keep their supposed 'suspects' behind bars as long as they want to chase the geese. Such a system was used to harass and detain Anakata recently.

And that's just the judiciary. The people on the street have even less of a grasp of what is right and wrong. The vile 'talk about it' campaign was launched in late 2010 in an attempt to keep Julian Assange in Wandsworth. One especially wacko nut bag even wrote that Assange getting bail was an insult to all women. And they're still talking about someone who's supposed to be presumed innocent.

The cops in New York knew how to do things in the DSK case: they found evidence of wrongdoing with the plaintiff and immediately brought it to the attention of the public defender and the court, and DSK was freed. But in the Assange case, everyone's known for over three years now that the crucial evidence was falsified, and yet no one - not the judiciary, not the prosecutor's office, not the police, not the media, and certainly not the public at large - twitch a muscle.

And they want people to believe they can have fair trials?

Sture was a substance abuser. Speed. He fought the addiction, and for ten years was able to stay clean. A moment of imbalance took him down again, and things rapidly went south. Then along came the 'Quick mafia':

A therapist hungry for fame for fabulous breakthroughs; a criminal inspector willing to prompt Sture with whatever was needed so he'd say the right things in interrogations; a prosecutor who desperately wanted to get out of his far northern office and instead occupy a plusher one in the nation's capital; a loony shrink still in therapy who proclaimed himself an expert on repressed memory; and at the top of it all was a little old lady, crazier than all the others combined, who ran the whole show.

The late Hannes Råstam wrote the first breakthrough book and got the cases reopened. Dan Josefsson wrote the followup book which explained how the whole thing could have happened in the first place.

The hospital didn't want to let Sture go: they were complicit in a lot of the abuse he suffered. But his 'Assange lawyer' Thomas Olsson kept at it, and now Sture's free.

Sture was convicted in eight cases where the prosecution lacked all form of evidence. That's right: there was no evidence. None. All they had were his confessions. It's true they had evidence of a sort - they had proof in many of the cases that Sture was in fact not guilty. But they didn't want that coming out, and so as to not ruin their cases, they kept this hidden from the courts. Both the prosecutor and public defender were involved, perhaps even others. They hid it, much as they're doing today in the case of Julian Assange.

Two medical practitioners were once convicted on the testimony of a little girl recalling events in detail from when she was one and one half years old. That's right, read that again: a girl not even in her school years testified about things she remembered from back before she could walk without a diaper. And the court ratified her evidence and convicted on it.

Rule of law? Presumption of innocence? Sex cases in Sweden don't even allow for presumption of innocence anymore. As of 1991. No, the claims of the complainant (the woman) weigh heavier than the explanation of the defendant (the man) even if the defendant's explanation is water-tight.

Yes you can read that again. Take your time.

The Swedish judicial system is an ugly stinking cesspool with corruption rampant everywhere. You might make your way through it OK if you don't get on their radar, but otherwise... Do you want to chance it?

A great many of Sweden's court judges are convicted criminals. No one cares.

Sture was drugged to within an inch of his life by an opportunist shrink who wanted to make a name for herself in an area of research that had been universally debunked years earlier. The others saw their own opportunities in this bizarre story and jumped right in. The notorious public defender Claes Borgström, the one who later reopened the case of Assange, made a cool $750,000 by promising to do nothing and holding to that promise. Borgström knew of the exculpatory evidence that had been hidden, but the money was a higher priority; Borgström said and did nothing and cashed in.

The Swedish judicial system is ugly. Rotten to the core. All praise to lawyer Thomas Olsson for rescuing Sture 'Quick' Bergwall from that system, after TWENTY-THREE interminably long years.

Julian Assange has been detained for 1198 days today. The physicians in the da Costa case (with the testimony of the little girl) still cannot get their credentials restored some thirty years later.

The king may have stopped the witch trials, but his people never changed.

See Also
Industry Watch: Quick #4
Industry Watch: 7th December
Industry Watch: Third Quick Case Dismissed
Industry Watch: Borgström Digs Ditch Deeper Still
Industry Watch: Claes Borgström - Defence Attorney?
Industry Watch: Claes Borgström: 'I feel deeply violated'
Industry Watch: Quick: Elizabeth Day Travels to Sweden
Industry Watch: Assange in Sweden: Claes Borgström's Bill
Industry Watch: Quick: They Invented a Serial Killer - Not Held to Account
Industry Watch: Assange/Quick: A Long Time Coming, A Longer Still to Wait
Industry Watch: Desperate attempt by Borgström, Lambertz to save reputation
Industry Watch: Assange Case: Claes Borgström Reported to Justice Chancellery

Learning Curve: The Cult Behind the Quick Scandal
Learning Curve: Swedish Criminal Code: 'Rape Doesn't Have to be Unpleasant'

Red Hat Diaries: Assange: Fair Trial in Sweden?
Red Hat Diaries: The Claes Borgström Interview
Red Hat Diaries: Julian Assange & Claes Borgström
Red Hat Diaries: Quick: My Final Chat with Borgström

The Technological: How to Earn a Cool Half Million

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