Australian Internet activist Julian Assange
(Source: Wiki Commons) 

WHAT A SHOCK TO the global antiwar movement: Yesterday, the Swedish chief prosecutor announced that Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, which had recently leaked more than 91,000 classified documents to the press, had been accused of rape and molestation, and that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. Two women had claimed that Assange committed violent acts against them during his recent visit to Stockholm, where Wikileaks is based. The news, the Swedish press reported, spread across the Internet “like a wildfire.” The daily paper Expressen took the unprecedented step of both announcing the charges and publishing Assange’s photo, even though the two women had not filed formal charges against him.  Then, at 4:30 p.m. today, it was suddenly all over. The prosecutor withdrew the charges and Assange remains a free man. Yes, free – and damaged goods as well. The faintest hint of sexual abuse can ruin a person’s reputation forever. And whatever the truth of the charges, the subject has been spectacularly changed from Wikileaks’ revelations about the unpopular war in Afghanistan to the integrity of Mr. Assange as a person. I mean, he must have been up to something shady in Stockholm, don’t you think? Wink wink, nudge nudge.  

What – if anything – actually occurred between Assange and the two Swedish women in question? It is far too early to know anything for sure, and I have no intention of speculating here, except to note “how conveeeeenient” the charges are for the angry Obama Administration, which is terrified that Assange will publish even more of the damaging documents. But the Swedes are much less reticent, as their online forums show. One observer of the scene, respected writer and military expert Anders Jallai set down his suspicions on the Swedish website Newsmill and reprinted them in the mass-circulation Dagens nyheter, opining that “Julian Assange might have been set up for a classic so-called honey trap. Of course, there is a risk that Assange is guilty, but, without falling into conspiracy theories, there is more reason to believe that it was a sex trap, and that the women were dispatched or contracted by an intelligence service. Why not a Swedish one?” Since the Wikileaks documents theoretically threaten the security of the armed forces, including those of Sweden, Jallai suggests that Assange may have been lucky that he was “only” caught in a sex trap.

Jallai points out that such set-ups are nothing new and cites the British “Profumo Affair” of 1963. In this most famous of honey traps, the KGB hired a young British call girl called Christine Keeler to start an affair with British defense minister John Profumo in hopes of caressing military secrets out of him.

The author goes on to cite the regrettable Swedish brothel affair of 1976, but could also have mentioned the fate of former UN weapons inspector and war critic Scott Ritter, who was caught in an online honey trap back in January of this year when he chatted with a police officer pretending to be an underage girl. Ritter, who has been caught in repeated sting operations of this kind since 2001, goes on trial in September. Whatever the verdict, his reputation is done for and his critical voice has fallen silent.

Jallai, writing shortly before the chief prosecutor’s statement today, goes on to say: “The future will show what Julian Assange will have to do to get the accusations dropped. Because I suspect that is what will happen. That’s what the instruction manual calls for. A compromising situation cannot be allowed to go on for too long because then the whole operation risks coming undone. But it will have its effect – namely that not all the Afghan documents will be published. I don’t know if Julian Assange is innocent, but I suspect as much. The timing is just a little too good. He probably had two pleasant nights in Sweden but didn’t rape or abuse anyone.”

We shall see about that. After the original announcement, Assange himself tweeted: “We have been warned about dirty tricks. We are experiencing the first one.” One of the women has given an interview to the Aftonbladet, in which she insists that she and her girlfriend were not put up to anything, and also admits that Assange is not "violent" but "has a twisted view of women and can't take no for an answer."

Obviously, if Assange really did travel to Sweden a few weeks ago and just so happened to rape two Swedish women in two separate incidents while he was under massive pressure from the Obama Administration not to publish further classified documents about the failing Afghan mission, then he deserves to be punished for it. But until then, I can’t help think that these accusations are just a little too conveeeenient to swallow just now. 

Incidentally, Assange had traveled to Stockholm to deliver a lecture entitled “Truth is the first victim of war.”

When I tapped out this little post on Saturday night I had no way of knowing it would become an EP two days later long after this breaking news had gone cold (I was rooting for today's piece about the German parliamentarian who is donating a kidney to his sick wife), so it only seems fair to update it today as time allows. Needless to say, I am only summarizing Swedish press reports and have no access to inside information, either about the case at hand or the appropriateness of Mr. Assange's actions as head of Wikileaks.

According to Dagens nyheterna today, serious questions are being raised on how an arrest warrant could be issued against a person who hadn’t even been spoken with yet and why the prosecutor would leak this news to the public in such a spectacular way.

According to the newspaper, it was the prosecutor’s office that instantly leaked the information to the tabloid Expressen, not the two women themselves. The employer of one of the women claiming to have been molested by Assange said that “she is at home and is on sick leave. There is no chance whatsoever that she wanted this to become public. She is a crime victim.”

The arrest warrant was apparently withdrawn after the prosecutor’s office received more information, apparently including admissions from the two women that no violence was involved. What actually happened remains exceedingly murky, and information director Karin Rosander’s attempt to clear things up in an interview with Al-Jazeera (I’ve inserted the video below) is simply embarrassing.

In the meantime, the Svenska Dagbladet reports that the prosecutor’s office will continue to investigate the molestation accusations against Assange.

Despite the excitement, Assange has gone ahead and worked out an agreement with the Swedish Pirate Party, which has promised to provide Wikileaks with data capacities and servers. “We work together with Wikileaks as an organization, and not with Julian Assange as a person,” Anna Troberg, a Pirate Party spokeswoman, told the Svenska Dagbladet. “The accusations will not affect this cooperation.” 

So here we have yet another reason to mourn the early death of crime author Stieg Larsson: This story would be a perfect case for Mikael Blomquist and Lisbeth Salander.

Here's information director Karin Rosander's effort to shine light on the darkness: