Fair Trial for Julian Assange? - Sweden vs. Assange

Criticism of Swedish justice system

Of all the signatories to the European Convention of Human Rights, Sweden has the highest per capita rate of cases brought to the European Court of Human Rights relating to article 6.1 (right to a fair trial). It also has the highest rate of adverse rulings when it comes to the fair trial.

Fair trial as a ground for challenging the EAW - February Hearing

In the February Hearing, Julian Assange’s lawyers argued that the UK should not extradite him because he would not face a fair trial in Sweden. If extradited, Assange will be:

- Held in prison in solitary confinement when he is returned, despite not having been charged (likely to spend up to a year in custody). There is no time limit to detention in Sweden.

- There is no bail system, so he would remain in detention indefinitely.

- If there is a charge and a trial, it will be held in secret.

- He will not be judged by an ’independent and impartial tribunal’, a fundamental requirement under the European Convention of Human Rights (article 6.1). Three out of the four judges are lay judges, who have been appointed by political parties and have no formal legal training (see Lay Judges).

- The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has not given Julian Assange or his lawyers information on the allegations against him in writing, which violates the Swedish Code of Procedure (RB 23:18) and the European Convention of Human Rights (article 5), and the EU Fundamental Charter on Human Rights.

- There has been political interference with the Prime Minister’s statements to the Swedish Parliament during the trial (see Political Interference, and constant press attention has been given to the complainants’ lawyer (see Media climate in Sweden).

- The bilateral agreement between the United States and Sweden allows Julian Assange to be extradited to the US as soon as he arrives in Sweden (see section on US extradition). Under US custody, Julian Assange risks kidnapping, torture, and execution.

via swedenversusassange.com

Guantánamo Files - Lawyer Seeks WikiLeaks Access

The lawyer, David H. Remes, who represents Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani businessman accused of discussing plots against the United States with Al Qaeda leaders after Sept. 11, 2001, filed an emergency petition in the Federal District Court here. Mr. Remes is challenging a Justice Department notice on Monday that appears to prohibit lawyers from publicly discussing the leaked documents.

Mr. Remes, who has devoted his law practice to Guantánamo prisoners, asked the court to order the government to allow him “full and unfettered access to all publicly available classified WikiLeaks documents relevant to Mr. Paracha’s case.” He says he wants to be able to view the documents on his home and office computers and to “print, copy, disseminate and discuss” them without fear of punishment.

On Monday, the Justice Department’s Court Security Office sent a notice to lawyers for Guantánamo prisoners informing them that prison documents obtained by WikiLeaks, now being posted online by the antisecrecy group and several newspapers, remained classified by law.

The notice advised the lawyers, who have been granted security clearances, that they must handle the documents “in accordance with all relevant security precautions and safeguards.”

The notice did not explain what was prohibited. But Mr. Remes and other lawyers are concerned that if they view or discuss the documents, they may be stripped of their security clearances or face other punishments. “Losing his clearance will disable him from continuing to represent his current or future detainee clients,” Mr. Remes’s petition says. “Counsel is concerned that the government may even prosecute him.”

A Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, said he could not comment on Mr. Remes’s petition, which he said the department would answer in court.

“We’re aware that publication of these materials has prompted questions from habeas attorneys about the unusual position they find themselves in,” Mr. Boyd said, referring to habeas cases challenging the prisoners’ detention. He said the department was studying the issues posed by the disclosure of the documents.

Since last year, when WikiLeaks published or provided to news organizations military reports from Iraq and Afghanistan and State Department cables, government agencies have struggled to respond. In the case of the Guantánamo lawyers, there is a particular irony: people without security clearances can freely read and discuss the documents, while the lawyers cannot.

Mr. Remes included in his petition an article in The Times on Tuesday about Mr. Paracha, whom a classified document described as offering his shipping business to move explosives into the United States. Mr. Remes wrote that because he could not comment on the document, “counsel could not rebut the government’s accusations.”

via nytimes.com

About the Report | Media Piracy in Emerging Economies | A Report by the Social Science Research Council

Media Piracy in Emerging Economies is the first independent, large-scale study of music, film and software piracy in emerging economies, with a focus on Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa, Mexico and Bolivia.

Based on three years of work by some thirty-five researchers, Media Piracy in Emerging Economies tells two overarching stories: one tracing the explosive growth of piracy as digital technologies became cheap and ubiquitous around the world, and another following the growth of industry lobbies that have reshaped laws and law enforcement around copyright protection. The report argues that these efforts have largely failed, and that the problem of piracy is better conceived as a failure of affordable access to media in legal markets.

Major Findings

  • Prices are too high. High prices for media goods, low incomes, and cheap digital technologies are the main ingredients of global media piracy. Relative to local incomes in Brazil, Russia, or South Africa, the retail price of a CD, DVD, or copy of MS Office is five to ten times higher than in the US or Europe. Legal media markets are correspondingly tiny and underdeveloped.
  • Competition is good. The chief predictor of low prices in legal media markets is the presence of strong domestic companies that compete for local audiences and consumers. In the developing world, where global film, music, and software companies dominate the market, such conditions are largely absent.
  • Antipiracy education has failed.The authors find no significant stigma attached to piracy in any of the countries examined. Rather, piracy is part of the daily media practices of large and growing portions of the population.
  • Changing the law is easy. Changing the practice is hard. Industry lobbies have been very successful at changing laws to criminalize these practices, but largely unsuccessful at getting governments to apply them. There is, the authors argue, no realistic way to reconcile mass enforcement and due process, especially in countries with severely overburdened legal systems.
  • Criminals can’t compete with free. The study finds no systematic links between media piracy and organized crime or terrorism in any of the countries examined. Today, commercial pirates and transnational smugglers face the same dilemma as the legal industry: how to compete with free.
  • Enforcement hasn’t worked. After a decade of ramped up enforcement, the authors can find no impact on the overall supply of pirated goods.
via piracy.ssrc.org

About the Report | Media Piracy in Emerging Economies | A Report by the Social Science Research Council

Media Piracy in Emerging Economies is the first independent, large-scale study of music, film and software piracy in emerging economies, with a focus on Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa, Mexico and Bolivia.

Based on three years of work by some thirty-five researchers, Media Piracy in Emerging Economies tells two overarching stories: one tracing the explosive growth of piracy as digital technologies became cheap and ubiquitous around the world, and another following the growth of industry lobbies that have reshaped laws and law enforcement around copyright protection. The report argues that these efforts have largely failed, and that the problem of piracy is better conceived as a failure of affordable access to media in legal markets.

Major Findings

  • Prices are too high. High prices for media goods, low incomes, and cheap digital technologies are the main ingredients of global media piracy. Relative to local incomes in Brazil, Russia, or South Africa, the retail price of a CD, DVD, or copy of MS Office is five to ten times higher than in the US or Europe. Legal media markets are correspondingly tiny and underdeveloped.
  • Competition is good. The chief predictor of low prices in legal media markets is the presence of strong domestic companies that compete for local audiences and consumers. In the developing world, where global film, music, and software companies dominate the market, such conditions are largely absent.
  • Antipiracy education has failed.The authors find no significant stigma attached to piracy in any of the countries examined. Rather, piracy is part of the daily media practices of large and growing portions of the population.
  • Changing the law is easy. Changing the practice is hard. Industry lobbies have been very successful at changing laws to criminalize these practices, but largely unsuccessful at getting governments to apply them. There is, the authors argue, no realistic way to reconcile mass enforcement and due process, especially in countries with severely overburdened legal systems.
  • Criminals can’t compete with free. The study finds no systematic links between media piracy and organized crime or terrorism in any of the countries examined. Today, commercial pirates and transnational smugglers face the same dilemma as the legal industry: how to compete with free.
  • Enforcement hasn’t worked. After a decade of ramped up enforcement, the authors can find no impact on the overall supply of pirated goods.
via piracy.ssrc.org

EUobserver / Assange case highlights EU arrest warrant ‘abuses’

15.03.2011 @ 17:34 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU arrest warrant scheme under which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is set to be extradited to Sweden is a “threat to human rights,” as it is often abused with harsh consequences for the lives of the people concerned, Europe’s chief human rights defender Thomas Hammarberg said Tuesday (15 March).

Julian Assange is to be extradited on an EU warrant (Photo: wikipedia)

“The request made by Sweden to the United Kingdom for the surrender of the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, put the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) in the headlines,” said Hammarberg, who is the high commissioner for human rights with the Council of Europe, a Strasbourg-based intergovernmental organisation.

Created in 2002 as a “fast-track extradition scheme” for persons suspected or convicted of serious crimes, the European arrest warrant is in fact used mostly for minor offences and has resulted in a number of cases being brought before the European Court of Human Rights.

“The problems appear to have worsened with the increase of the number of EAWs – there are now an average of more than one thousand per month, the overwhelming majority of which relate to minor crimes,” Hammarberg noted.

He cited the imprisonment of innocent persons, disproportionate arrests, violations of procedural rights and the impossibility in some countries for an innocent person to appeal against a decision.

Since the only condition for carrying out the extradition is that the suspect must be accused of a crime carrying a minimum prison sentence of 12 months, judges in the home country of the suspect have few means to verify how justified the charges are.

“There is a need to strengthen the human rights safeguards in EAW procedures,” he stressed, especially since the system “affects thousands of persons every year.”

Catherine Heard from Fair Trials International, a British charity offering legal assistance to people arrested in other countries, said that her group has long time documented EAW abuses.

“We have seen the lives and futures of many ordinary people – teachers, firemen, chefs and students –blighted by the European Arrest Warrant, a system that infringes basic rights and fails to deliver a fair and efficient extradition system,” she said in a press statement, welcoming Hammarberg’s remarks.

In the case of Gary Mann, a fireman who was extradited to serve a two-year prison sentence for alleged hooliganism in Portugal, British courts stated that the warrant was an “embarrassment” to the UK and Portugal, said “serious injustice” had occurred, and that his trial in Portugal breached his basic fair trial rights.

A review of the way the EU arrest warrant has been implemented since 2002 is currently being worked on in the European Commission, with proposals for improvement likely to be published early April, a spokesman for justice commissioner Viviane Reding told this website.

The scheme is unlikely to be scrapped, however, meaning that for WikiLeaks chief Assange, the extradition will still have to be carried out.

Last month, a British judge has ruled that Assange can be extradited to Sweden to be tried on charges of harassing and raping two women. His lawyers have filed an appeal saying Assange could face extradition to the United Sates, imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay and even the death penalty. The appeal is still pending.

via euobserver.com

Assange extradition fears are real - Unleashed (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks (Reuters: Valentin Flauraud)

Assange extradition fears are real

255 Comments

Greg Barns

Greg Barns

In theory, it ought to be difficult for the Obama administration, pressured by the resurgent and bloodthirsty Right, to demand the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Sweden.

But the reality is that the Swedes will succumb to political pressure and undermine or sidestep the rule of law and allow the US ‘to land their quarry’.

The claim by Assange’s legal team that one of the prime arguments against their client being extradited to Sweden to face investigation over alleged sexual assault charges is that he will end up being tortured in a high security American prison, are not simply hyperbolic advocacy.

Under Swedish law the extradition of an individual to a non-Nordic or non-European Union country can only occur if the following conditions are met.

Firstly, the principle of dual criminality applies. That is, the act or alleged crime for which extradition is requested must be equivalent to a crime that is punishable under Swedish law by a jail term of one year or more. So you can’t be extradited for traffic offences for example.

Secondly, extradition will not be granted for the prosecution of “military or political offences”.

And finally extradition will not be granted if the person being extradited runs a risk on account of his or her religious or political beliefs, or ethnic origin of being persecuted. And if he or she faces the death penalty the Swedes will not hand the person over to another state.

If it is assumed Sweden has an equivalent to an American official secrets or espionage law and therefore the issue of dual criminality is settled, the US could not possibly satisfy the Swedish government that Mr Assange would not face all manner of cruel and unusual punishment by security agencies and US police. Even keeping Mr Assange isolated from other detainees and locked in his cell for 23 hours a day - a common penal American practice - should be enough to stop Swedish cooperation in an extradition. Then there is the fact that US federal law in respect of the offences of espionage and treason both carry the death penalty as a theoretical sentence. Theoretical because there is no-one currently on death row who has been convicted of these offences. But Mr Assange’s hosting of a website which carried an unprecedented number of US government documents might have prosecutors arguing for the death penalty.

In short, it is hard to see how Sweden, acting strictly in accordance with its own laws on extradition, could contemplate acceding to any US request to hand over Mr Assange.

But Sweden’s track record in recent years in cases where extradition or forcible return to another country would result in human rights abuse is not one that would give Mr Assange any comfort.

In 2005 the European Court of Human Rights intervened to overturn a Swedish decision to deport two Syrian men, brothers, who were wanted in Syria over alleged ‘honour killings’. The Swedish authorities, having received information that the death penalty was unlikely to be imposed on the brothers, ordered that they been returned to Syria. The European Court upheld the brother’s argument that they feared persecution on return to Syria and noted that the Swedish government had been prepared to act on incomplete information and vague assurances from the Syrian embassy.

Four years earlier in December 2001, the Swedish authorities, again acting after obtaining assurances from Egypt that two asylum seekers would not be subjected to torture and would receive a fair trial, handed over Mohammed al-Zari and Ahmed Agiza, to the Americans who transferred the men to Cairo.

There is also the political overlay in the Assange case which taints the extradition process. As we saw in this country in relation to David Hicks and Mammoth Habib it did not matter what domestic or international law conventions and rules should have been applied to their cases, the overriding consideration by the Howard government was to cooperate with the Bush White House.

As Australian diplomat and writer Tony Kevin pointed out in a briefing to federal MPs last week (at which I also spoke) the current Swedish government of prime minister Fredric Reinfeldt is a centre-right coalition heeded by the Moderate Party “which has close ties with the US Republican right. Reinfeldt and Bush are friends. Reimfeldt is ideologically and personally close to the former Bush Administration”. And, Kevin noted, that Bush’s former right hand man and Republican strategist Karl Rove is a consultant to the Swedish government on political issues.

Sweden projects an image of liberalism and determined independence but it is an illusion. So the chance of Julian Assange being whisked away by CIA operatives from Sweden is a very real one. If it happens Assange will face the same fate as Hicks and Habib - physical and mental torture over a sustained period.

Greg Barns is a barrister and writer. He is a Director of the Australian Lawyers Alliance.

via abc.net.au

WIKILEAKS - Court Summary of Feb 8, 2011 Events

WIKILEAKS - Court Summary of Feb 8, 2011 Events

5.55pm: Assange’s lawyer, Mark Stephens, has just made this statement about the Swedish prosecutor – who was the subject of much of the testimony heard today in court:

I challenge you Marianne Ny, come to London, come on Friday, subject yourself to the cross-examination of Geoffrey Robertson

Stephens said Ny had been ready to feed the media with stories but not to speak for herself in court.

Standing outside the court Assange made a similar point about the prosecutor’s absence from the hearing. He said:

It’s been a long day. What we have seen is process abuse after process abuse being revealed hour after hour.

What we have not seen yet is the Swedish prosecutor at these proceedings.

He also asked “Where is the equality?” and said the “unlimited budget of Sweden and the UK” had been on display in the case to extradite him.

5.30pm: An end-of-day summary:

• The hearing has over-run and will resume on Friday at 10.30am.

• Julian Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Björn Hurtig, admitted he had made a mistake when he said it was five weeks before Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny said she wanted to interview the WikiLeaks founder. He said texts he discovered yesterday showed it was three.

• Hurtig accused prosecutors of leaking details of the case to the media, specifically telling a Swedish newspaper Assange was suspected of rape.

• Sven-Erik Alhem, a retired Swedish prosecutor, said Ny should have allowed Assange to give his version of events before issuing an arrest warrant. He also said she should not have confirmed his name when it was put to her by the media.

• Clare Montgomery QC, representing the Swedish prosecutor, said Assange must have been aware of the intention to interview him. Alhem said Ny was not wrong to issue a European arrest warrant, but he would have sought to interview him in the UK first.

• Hurtig said Assange had been difficult to contact in mid to late September as he had gone into hiding, following what were described as “death threats” from some US politicians.

5.05pm: The court has now adjourned (Hurtig needed to catch a flight home). Closing arguments are set for 10.30am on Friday.

5pm: Robertson on the timing of Ny’s interview request:

Under cross-examination from Robertson, Hurtig has described his error on the date of the Swedish prosecutor’s request as “embarrassing”. He said he had made sure to mention it so his evidence was correct.

4.55pm: Montgomery has finished and now Robertson, Assange’s QC, returns to cross-examine Hurtig.

4.50pm: Montgomery and Hurtig are now disputing whether a DNA test was needed and whether it was necessary for Assange to be in Sweden if one was.

4.40pm: Hurtig (BH) admits he was mistaken when he said Ny had waited five weeks to interview Assange (JA) – he tells the court it was three:

He tells the court that he found the texts from Ny yesterday and is correcting the record today. He says he is busy and has many clients. (He has also said it is possible there were texts between him and Ny he can’t remember.)

4.35pm: Montgomery first asks Hurtig if he attempted to contact Assange on 27 September after he was told about the Swedish prosecutor’s intention to arrest him. He says he made attempts to contact him. She then asks if it was possible he flew out of Sweden that day after Hurtig told him about the possibility of arrest. Hurtig replies “No”. (Hurtig said the prosecutor has authorised Assange to leave Sweden in a phone conversation on 15 September.)

4.15pm: Back after the 10 minute break, Montgomery is asking Hurtig why he failed to contact Assange (JA) when Ny said she had wanted to speak to him:

Hurtig says that it is important to bear in mind that Assange was diffcult to get hold ofin mid to late September (see 2.50pm).

4.10pm: The judge is talking about extending the hearing to March, which means that it won’t finish today (Hurtig’s evidence is still continuing this afternoon).

3.57pm: The court has broken for 10 minutes to allow Hurtig to check his records.

3.55pm: Hurtig is now being cross-examined by Montgomery (representing the Swedish prosecutor). There is some dispute over the exact wording of a text from 22 September and she asks him to get his phone out and check the sent folder. He does, but says that his sent messages aren’t saved that far back. She then asks him to check two in his inbox from that time.

3.30pm: Hurtig’s summary of his contacts with Ny, some of which were by text message, has broadened out to some of the other details of the case. He says he had concluded the police were leaking plans to interview Assange to the press (which he describes as “appalling”) and that he had seen text messages from woman B where she describes herself as “half-asleep” when Assange began to have sex with her without a condom.

Hurtig says he thought carefully about coming to the Belmarsh hearing because of the confidential nature of this material.

2.50pm: Hurtig (BH) says Assange (JA) was at one point difficult to get hold of because he was in hiding following the pronouncements of some US politicians.

Assange’s lawyer is also disputing the date when he was told by Ny of her intention to prosecute.

2.35pm: The hearing has resumed after lunch with the continuation of testimony from Björn Hurtig, Assange’s Swedish lawyer. He is going through the chronology of his contacts with Marianne Ny, the Swedish prosecutor, under questioning from Assange QC Geoffrey Robertson.

1.40pm: Here is Esther Addley with a lunchtime audio report on the main event so far today, the appearance of defence witness Sven Erik Alhem, a retired Swedish prosecutor.

Here are the main points:

• Alhem said he had no interest in the case’s outcome, just that Swedish justice was done and seen to be done.

• He said Marianne Ny, the Swedish prosecutor, should not have confirmed Assange’s name when the media put it to her.

• He said Assange had not had the opportunity to put forward his side of the case before the arrest warrant was issued.

• Clare Montgomery QC, representing the Swedish prosecution, said Alhem only knew what he had been told by Assange’s lawyers and took him through Ny’s account of her attempts to interview Assange.

• He said based on his understanding of the case it was not wrong to issue a European arrest warrant against Assange, but he would have attempted to interview him in the UK first.

1.20pm: The court has broken for lunch. Shortly before, Robertson was running through Hurtig’s version of events – the court has already been told there are differences with Ny’s chronology.

Hurtig is told he can’t speak to anyone during the break.

1.15pm: Hurtig has said that within a couple of hours of the Assange allegations being made on 20 August, there were 2-3m search returns online linking the WikiLeaks founder to rape.

1.05pm: The next witness is Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Björn Hurtig (BH), who is being cross-examined by Geoffrey Robertson QC (GR) for the defence.

He is also questioned on the possibilty of public trials for rape defendents in Sweden. He says he acted for very high profile rape defendent in 2004-05 with much media attention. He says he asked for a public trial but was denied.

In answer to a further question, he says there is no way he can protect his client from prejudical media coverage.

12.35pm: After some short questioning, Alhem is discharged with thanks from the judge for “coming all this way”. The court then rises for a short break.

12.25pm: Alhem says he believes it would be impossible for Assange to be extradited from Sweden to the US without a media storm. He says he is speaking not as an expert in extradition law but as a social commentator.

He tells the judge he is tired because he has been up since 4am but wishes to continue because he is enjoying the atmosphere.

Jones, Assange’s junior counsel, will now return to questioning Alhem.

12.10pm: Montgomery asks Alhem to not give “long lectures” in his answers; Alhem replies that he will answer “in my way”. There is also an exchange on whether Ny was right to issue a European arrest warrant – see Esther Addley’s tweet below for the retired Swedish prosecutor’s answer:

Alhem though adds that he would have tried harder to interview Assange in the UK (see also 12pm).

12.00pm: Montgomery asks Alhem if he was the prosecutor in this case if he would have issued a European arrest warrant. Alhem says he would have detained Assangefrom the beginning.

He also says he would have interviewed Assange in the UK with a Swedish police officer present.

11.55am: Montgomery is reading from Ny’s statement a chronology of her attempts to interview Assange in September and October last year.

11.45am: Montgomery has told Mark Stephens’, Assange’s lawyer, to “sit down”.

11.40am: Under cross-examination from Montgomery, Alhem says of Assange that if he was “in his shoes” he would have gone to Sweden immediately to clear his name.

11.30am: Clare Montgomery, QC for the Crown, is now cross-examining Alhem.

11.15am: Alhem is taking questions on procedural issues in Swedish prosecutions. He says it is a “golden rule” that a suspect is allowed to know what he or she is accused of before a prosecution can be brought. He also says there is no reason why Assange could not be questioned in the UK.

11.05am: Alhem is being asked about the conduct of the Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny. He says it was “completely against proper procedure” for her to confirm Assange’s name to the media. He also queries the use of “accused” in the documents, saying “suspect” is a better word.

Earlier Alhem had said he had no interest in the outcome of the case. Only that “justice be done and be seen to be done”. He said he cannot be “bought for money” – a response to some critics in Sweden.

10.50am: The hearing has resumed. Assange’s junior counsel, John Jones, is questioning defence witness Sven Erik Alhem, a retired Swedish prosecutor (now legal commentator). Alhem says he was critical of the handling of the case before Assange’s lawyers contacted him.

10.25am: Esther Addley tweets the following:

You can follow all her tweets from Belmarsh at @estheraddley

10am: Day two of Julian Assange’s extradition hearing.

Assange and his legal team have arrived at Belmarsh magistrates’ court, and so too have his supporters. The hearing is scheduled to begin at 10.30am.

Yesterday, the defence and prosecuting QCs made their opening arguments. Assange’s QC, Geoffrey Robertson, said his client would not get a fair trial in Sweden and called on a witness, retired Swedish judge Brita Sundberg-Weitman, who said the Swedish prosecutor had “a rather biased view against men in the treatment of of sexual offence cases”.

Clare Montgomery QC, representing the Swedish prosecutor, said the allegations against Assange would be offences under English law and she should be extradited. She also said the Swedish prosecutor intends to prosecute. A key defence argument, made again yesterday, is that extradition cannot be for the purposes of questioning.


via truthcafe.tumblr.com

Court Unseals ACLU and EFF’s Motions on Behalf of Twitter User Birgitta Jonsdottir » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union

Today, a court unsealed three motions filed by the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) last month on behalf of Birgitta Jonsdottir, the Icelandic parliamentarian whose Twitter account records were targeted by the government in connection with its investigation related to WikiLeaks.

A public hearing on the motions is set for February 15 in Alexandria, Virginia. One of the motions seeks to overturn a federal court order requiring Twitter to turn over the private records of some of its users. The second filing seeks to unseal court records concerning the government’s attempts to collect these kinds of private records from Twitter and other companies. The third motion was to unseal the original two motions and the hearing, which were initially sealed by the court.

In early January, the public learned that the Department of Justice had obtained a court order in December requiring Twitter to turn over the account records of five Twitter users: Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gonggrijp and Jonsdottir. The federal district court unsealed that order after Twitter took steps to unseal it and to be allowed to inform its users that their information was sought by the government.

We’ll have more tomorrow!

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via aclu.org

Surprise Witness Says Julian Assange Is Being Framed

A surprise witness appeared at Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London today and said he believes he has compelling evidence that the WikiLeaks founder is being framed on sexual assault allegations.

Goran Rudling, 59, a retired Swedish businessman and crusader for the reform of Swedish rape laws, said he does not support the anti-government-secrecy website or its editor. But he told the court he has acted as a sort of Internet detective on Assange’s behalf ever since the 39-year-old Australian was accused of sexual misconduct by two young Swedish women in August.

Julian Assange
Press Association
Julian Assange is fighting extradition from Britain to Sweden, where he faces sexual assault allegations but has not been formally charged.
Rudling said he tracked down tweets he said were posted and then abruptly deleted by Anna Ardin, one of the two accusers, that would seem to run counter to her later claims that Assange pinned her down forcibly during sex and deliberately tore a condom.

“My interest in sexual offense law and reform to ensure better protection under the law for victims led me to follow the Assange case,” Rudling said in his official witness statement. He said his own mother was a rape victim.

“I should add that I am by no means a supporter of WikiLeaks or Julian Assange (I am critical of their work) and I have no liking of Mr. Assange. My only concern has been to ensure that this investigation is effective, the real offender is punished and to avoid a possible miscarriage of justice.”

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Assange is being held under house arrest in Britain pending the outcome of the two-day hearing to decide whether he will be extradited to Sweden to face questioning about four allegations, one of which is defined as third-degree rape in Sweden.

His lawyers argued that Sweden could, in turn, extradite Assange to the U.S., where prosecutors have suggested they would try him under the Espionage Act — a fate that could send him to Guantanamo Bay or even death row. Lawyers for Sweden denied they would extradite him to the U.S.

Rudling told the court that Ardin sent out several tweets less than 24 hours after her allegedly violent sexual encounter with Assange. In one she asks if anyone is having a crayfish party that night that she and Assange could attend.

Not long after, Rudling said, she tweeted, “sitting outside. with the coolest and smartest people. that’s amazing.”

AOL News does not usually release the names of alleged sexual assault victims. It first identified Ardin in a story in December, after mainstream media outlets such as MSNBC and CBS News identified her. Ardin’s name, along with that of the other accuser, has been widely available on the Internet since the scandal broke in August.

Rudling said that Ardin deleted the tweets around Aug. 20, after she and the other accuser went to the police with their allegations. Rudling said he found them on “mirror” sites on the Internet that Ardin had not deleted.

“It seemed obvious that the story told to the police and these facts just didn’t go together,” Rudling said. “The tweets reveal that Ms. Ardin had a high opinion of Mr. Assange and that she very much enjoyed his company while he was staying at her home, and these were posted after the alleged sexual assault.”

Rudling also tracked down a press release dated Aug. 17, three days after Ardin says Assange assaulted her, in which Ardin is listed as Assange’s new press liaison.

Assange’s Swedish lawyer Bjorn Hurtig, who will testify Tuesday at the second and final day of the extradition hearing, told AOL News today there are also text messages from the two accusers that he believes cast doubts on their claims of sexual assault.

Hurtig said he is concerned that the text messages will either not become available or that Assange’s accusers will have been allowed to explain them away.

“I’m worried because I know the police have conducted two new interviews with the women, interviews that haven’t been leaked like everything else,” said Hurtig, who has seen the messages but is forbidden under Swedish law to reveal their content.

“I’m afraid they showed them the text messages and gave them a chance to make something up,” he said.

Assange was uncharacteristically emotional at the end of today’s hearing at Woolwich Crown Court.

“Five and a half months we have been in a condition where a black box has been applied to my life,” Assange told reporters outside the courtroom.

“On the outside of that black box has been written the word ‘rape.’ That box is now, thanks to an open court process, being opened. And I hope that over the next day that we will see that box is in fact empty and has nothing to do with the words that are on the outside of it,” he said.

A Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has classified one of the allegations as third-degree rape or “minor rape” because the act allegedly took place while one of the women was asleep or half-asleep and it “violated her sexual integrity.”

Clare Montgomery, representing Sweden at the hearing, said Assange’s conduct included “violent unlawful coercion” and that he “exploited” the fact that one of the women was asleep, The Telegraph reported.

AOL News reported exclusively on Friday that one of the witnesses in the investigation, Swedish journalist and photographer Donald Bostrom, said that Ardin told three different versions of what happened between her and Assange.

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Bostrom said Ardin admitted lying to him and changing her story. Then she told a third version to police, he said.

Assange’s Australian lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, told the judge today that the rape allegation does not qualify as rape in other European countries, Bloomberg News reported. Robertson said Assange can only be extradited if the alleged acts are also illegal in the U.K.

“What is in Swedish law ‘minor rape’ does not amount to rape in any other European country,” Robertson said. “The charge does not meet the European law standard concept of rape.”

But Montgomery said the sex offenses would be considered criminal in both the U.K. and Sweden.

via aolnews.com

The Associated Press: Assange lawyer: Risk of ‘denial of justice’

Assange lawyer: Risk of ‘denial of justice’

(AP) – 1 hour ago

LONDON (AP) — A lawyer for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Monday that Swedish secrecy around rape proceedings and his client’s global notoriety mean there is a risk of a denial of justice if he is extradited to Sweden over sex crimes allegations.

Geoffrey Robertson said at a hearing that his client was fighting extradition because such trials are usually held in secret. A trial behind closed doors would be “a flagrant denial of justice … blatantly unfair, not only by British standards but by European standards and indeed by international standards,” Robertson said.

Rape trials are often held behind closed doors in Sweden to protect the alleged victims.

Assange is accused of sexual misconduct by two women he met during a visit to Stockholm last year. Defense lawyers are arguing that he should not be extradited because he has not been charged with a crime, because of flaws in Swedish prosecutors’ case — and because a ticket to Sweden could eventually land him in Guantanamo Bay or on U.S. death row.

The prosecutor representing Sweden, Clare Montgomery, opened by dismissing several key planks of the defense. She said Marianne Ny is a public prosecutor, dismissing defense claims that she is not authorized to issue a European Arrest Warrant.

She also said the rape allegation was an extraditable offense even under Sweden’s broad definition of the crime. Assange’s lawyers say he cannot be extradited because he has not been charged with a crime in Sweden and is only wanted for questioning — and that the allegation is not rape as understood under European and English law.

“The Swedish offense of rape contains the core element of rape … the deliberate violation of a woman’s sexual integrity through penetration,” she said.

American officials are trying to build a criminal case against the secret-spilling site, which has angered Washington by publishing a trove of leaked diplomatic cables and secret U.S. military files. Assange’s lawyers claim the Swedish prosecution is linked to the leaks and politically motivated.

Preliminary defense arguments released by Assange’s legal team claim “there is a real risk that, if extradited to Sweden, the U.S. will seek his extradition and/or illegal rendition to the USA, where there will be a real risk of him being detained at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere.”

Many legal experts say the Guantanamo claims are fanciful, and Sweden strongly denies coming under American pressure.

Nils Rekke, head of the legal department at the Swedish prosecutor’s office in Stockholm, has said Assange would be protected from transfer to the U.S. by strict European rules.

“If Assange was handed over to Sweden in accordance with the European Arrest Warrant, Sweden cannot do as Sweden likes after that,” he said. “If there were any questions of an extradition approach from the U.S., then Sweden would have to get an approval from the United Kingdom.”

Assange, wearing a blue suit, was flanked by two prison guards as the hearing opened at Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court. Celebrity supporters Jemima Khan and Bianca Jagger also attended.

Robertson denied Assange had committed any sexual offenses under English law. He said all relationships, long or short, contain “moments of frustration, irritation and argument. This doesn’t mean, in this country, that the police are entitled to sniff under the bedclothes.”

WikiLeaks sparked an international uproar last year when it published a secret helicopter video showing a U.S. attack that killed two Reuters journalists in Baghdad. It went on to release hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it later began publishing classified U.S. diplomatic cables whose revelations angered and embarrassed the U.S. and its allies.

The furor made Assange, 39, a global celebrity. The nomadic Australian was arrested in London in December after Sweden issued a warrant on rape and molestation accusations.

Released on bail on condition he live — under curfew and electronically tagged — at a supporter’s country mansion in eastern England, Assange has managed to conduct multiple media interviews, sign a reported $1.5 million deal for a memoir, and pose for a magazine Christmas photo shoot dressed as Santa Claus.

The full extradition hearing should shed light on the contested events of Assange’s trip to Sweden, where WikiLeaks’ data are stored on servers at a secure center tunneled into a rocky Stockholm hillside. Two Swedish women say they met Assange when he visited the country and separately had sex with him, initially by consent.

In police documents leaked on the Internet, one of the women told officers she woke up as Assange was having sex with her, but let him continue even though she knew he wasn’t wearing a condom. Having sex with a sleeping person can be considered rape in Sweden.

Assange is also accused of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion against the second woman. The leaked documents show she accuses him of deliberately damaging a condom during consensual sex, which he denies.

Assange’s lawyers complain they have not been given access to text messages and tweets by the two women which allegedly undermine their claims. They say text messages exchanged by the claimants “speak of revenge and of the opportunity to make lots of money.”

Whatever happens in court this week, Assange’s long legal saga — and his stay in the tranquil Norfolk countryside — is far from over. The extradition hearing is due to end Tuesday, but Judge Howard Riddle is likely to take several weeks to consider his ruling — which can be appealed by either side.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

via google.com

WikiLeaks: Legal outline leads to hyped headlines

Legal outline leads to hyped headlines

Assange might fear execution, but that wasn’t the main point of the outline released by his attorney. Earlier this week, Assange’s lawyer released a skeletal outline of arguments for the court’s extradition hearing next month. The outline itself is 35 pages long and centers on seven points.

However, the majority of the press coverage of the outline has focused on a single aspect of point seven, which argues that Assange’s human rights may be violated if he is extradited.

Specifically, point seven of the outline says that Assange reserves the right to argue that his extradition may be incompatible with ‘Articles 3, 6, 8 and 10’ of the European Commission on Human Rights.

“It is submitted that there is a real risk that, if extradited to Sweden, the US will seek his extradition and/or illegal rendition to the USA, where there will be a real risk of him being detained at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, in conditions which would breach Article 3 of the ECHR.

Indeed, if Mr. Assange were rendered to the USA, without assurances that the death penalty would not be carried out, there is a real risk that he could be made subject to the death penalty. It is well-known that prominent figures have implied, if not stated outright, that Mr. Assange should be executed.”

The bulk of the legal outline centers on the facts in the case, as the defense sees them.

Namely, that the Swedish prosecutor isn’t authorized to issue European Arrest Warrants (EAWs). In the event that she is authorized to issue them, she was wrong to do so anyway, as EAWs are for prosecution and Assange was wanted for questioning only. The third and fourth points hang on abuse of process and non-disclosure by the Swedish prosecution.

In the fifth point, the outline argues that the offences listed in the EAW for Assange are not of a serious nature in the U.K., so there is no standing for extradition. The sixth and final point overlooked by the majority of the media focuses on Assange being punished for his political opinions and that a trial would therefore be prejudicial.

Headlines draw readers, and the more sensational the headline, the more readers you attract. It is no surprise to see the fear of execution leading the coverage of court documents, but there is much more going on behind the scenes in this trial.

You can view the entire document yourself, courtesy of Assange’s legal team, via the FSI website.

Assange is due to appear in court on February 7 and 8.

via thetechherald.com