Wikileaks and the Arrest of Julian Assange

First let me declare this: rape is bad. All cases of rape deserve investigation. If you do not believe these two statements then you are reading the wrong blog. Now that we have accepted this let us turn to the strange case of Julian Assange. Now I do not know if he is guilty, but nor does anyone else bar Mr Assange and his two accusers. There has yet to be a trial and so I suspend judgement until after this date. However, I object to the reaction of the supporters of Wikileaks (let us call them the ‘Assangists’) toward the arrest of Mr Assange. As I have already stated rape is bad and all cases of rape deserve investigation. Julian Assange is accused of rape by two people, and so I think that Mr Assange should be investigated-after all it is only his word against the two accusers’ at this stage and so it is a very real possibility that Mr Assange could have raped his ex-companion’s. However, the founder of Wikileaks has refused to return to Sweden voluntarily and so that government has issued an arrest warrant. At this the Assangists have declared that Sweden is an American stool, and it is all a great conspiracy orchestrated by the CIA in order to get the Messiah...opps, sorry-Julian Assange into an American prison.

At this point we really need to make some things clear. First Sweden is not and never has been known as an ‘American stool’. There is more chance of Mr Assange being extradited from the UK than Sweden. In other words he is safer from the CIA in Stockholm than London. Second the man is accused of rape. He may be innocent, but while there is a chance that he could be guilty of that horrible crime then he should be tried. However, it is bloody difficult to put a man on trial who refuses to remain in the same country in which the crime he is accused of is committed-hence the arrest warrant. Of course this is where the Assangists point out that St Assange...opps, sorry-Mr Assange will be heading toward a kangaroo court. The problem with this theory is that Sweden has quite a good reputation for education, high living standards etc, but has never really been able to develop a really good corruption problem-I mean to really experience kangaroo courts it is usually customary to head to Burma, or Zimbabwe. This possibility is highly unlikely since it is Sweden that he shall find himself.

This brings me to my third point. Like them or loath them what the documents from Wikileaks have shown over the last couple of years is that there is no conspiracy. What governments say in public tend to be what they do in private plus or minus a fact or two. In other words Mr Assange’s own organisation has shown that a grand conspiracy orchestrated by the American government to slander his name by pressuring two women and the Swedish government in order to get him convicted of rape is not a bet you should make. This kind of thing only happens in cheap airport novels. The far more likely scenario is that the two women genuinely believe that they have been assaulted in some manner and that the Swedish government is doing its duty by investigating a case of possible rape. In other words the Assangists are attempting to prevent the proper investigation of a possible incident of rape. This is utterly wrong even if Mr Assange is found to be innocent.