| Posted
Thursday, November 4, 2010  December 7, 2010 British Court
Denies Bail to Assange in Sex Inquiry (NWO
ALREADY IN PLACE) By JOHN F. BURNS and ALAN COWELL LONDON - Julian Assange, the
founder of the beleaguered WikiLeaks anti-secrecy
group, was denied bail by a London court in London
on Tuesday and said that he would resist
extradition to Sweden where he faces questioning in
connection with alleged sex offenses. Mr. Assange was ordered to remain in custody
until a further court session on Dec. 14, the
latest twist in the drama swirling around WikiLeaks
following its publication of leaked documents. Mr. Assange's associates said his detention
would not alter plans for further disclosures like
those it has made in recent months relating to the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and, over the past
nine days, disclosing confidential diplomatic
messages between the State Department and American
representatives abroad. "Today's actions against our editor-in-chief
Julian Assange won't affect our operations: we will
release more cables tonight as normal," a posting
on the WikiLeaks Twitter account said.  The
defiant tone seemed to draw ever clearer
battle-lines by supporters of Mr. Assange who cast
him as a crusader, and foes, including the Obama
administration, who have been infuriated by
revelations of sensitive material whose
publication, his critics say, could threaten
American security interests, alliances and
lives.
Mr. Assange was arrested by officers from
Scotland Yard's extradition unit when he went to a
central London police station by prior agreement
with the authorities, the police said. He arrived at the court near the Houses of
Parliament on the banks of the River Thames, using
a rear entrance to the building to skirt a scrum of
television cameras, satellite vans and reporters
from Britain, the United States, China, Russia,
Japan and many European countries. Mr. Assange was asked whether he understood that
he could consent to be extradited to Sweden. Mr.
Assange replied that he did not consent. In a statement earlier on Tuesday, the police
said: "Officers from the Metropolitan Police
extradition unit have this morning arrested Julian
Assange on behalf of the Swedish authorities on
suspicion of rape." Mr. Assange has denied the charges of sexual
misconduct said to have been committed while he was
in Sweden in August. It was not immediately clear
if Mr. Assange would resist extradition to Sweden
for questioning by prosecutors there. Previously, his British lawyer, Mark Stephens,
had suggested that Mr. Assange might resist on the
grounds that Swedish authorities could interview
him by video-link from Stockholm or at their
embassy in London and that the extradition request
itself is politically motivated. "It's about time we got to the end of the day
and we got some truth, justice and rule of law,"
Mr. Stephens told reporters on Tuesday. "Julian
Assange has been the one in hot pursuit to
vindicate himself to clear his good name." The British police statement said that Mr.
Assange was "accused by the Swedish authorities of
one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of
sexual molestation and one count of rape, all
alleged to have been committed in August 2010." The arrest was made under a European arrest
warrant "by appointment at a London police station
at 09:30 today," the statement said. The charges involve sexual encounters that two
women say began as consensual but became
nonconsensual after Mr. Assange was no longer using
a condom. Mr. Assange has denied any wrongdoing and
suggested that the charges were trumped up in
retaliation for his WikiLeaks work, though there is
no public evidence to suggest a connection. While widely anticipated, the arrest opened an
array of new questions about Mr. Assange's future,
even as the Justice Department in Washington said
it was conducting what Attorney General Eric H.
Holder Jr. called "a very serious, active, ongoing
investigation that is criminal in nature" into the
WikiLeaks matter. Since late November, WikiLeaks has been
publishing documents from a trove of over 250,000
diplomatic cables. Mr. Assange has threatened to
release many more if legal action is taken against
him or his organization. "Over 100,000 people" were given the entire
archive of 251,287 cables in encrypted form, Mr.
Assange said on Friday in a question-and-answer
session on the Web site of the British newspaper
The Guardian. "If something happens to us, the key parts will
be released automatically," Mr. Assange said. In an article in The Australian newspaper on
Tuesday, he also depicted WikiLeaks as a proponent
of what he termed scientific journalism, which
"allows you to read a news story, then to click
online to see the original document it is based
on." "That way you can judge for yourself: Is the
story true? Did the journalist report it
accurately?" he wrote. "Democratic societies need a
strong media, and WikiLeaks is part of that media.
The media helps keep government honest." His arrest came amid mounting challenges to the
operation of WikiLeaks, as computer server
companies, Amazon.com and PayPal.com, have cut off
commercial cooperation with the organization. Visa said on Tuesday that it had suspended all
payments to WikiLeaks pending an investigation of
the organization's business, Reuters reported. The
decision appeared to strike a further blow against
the organization, which relies on donations made
online, and came a day after a Swiss bank froze an
account held by Mr. Assange that had been used to
collect donations. As of Monday night, the group had released fewer
than 1,000 of the quarter-million State Department
cables it had obtained, reportedly from a
low-ranking Army intelligence analyst. So far, the group has moved cautiously. The
whole archive was made available to five news
organizations, including The New York Times. But
WikiLeaks has posted only a few dozen cables on its
own in addition to matching those made public by
the news publications. According to the State
Department's count, 1,325 cables, or fewer than 1
percent of the total, have been made public by all
parties to date. Justice Department prosecutors have been
struggling to find a way to indict Mr. Assange
since July, when WikiLeaks made public documents on
the war in Afghanistan. But while it is clearly
illegal for a government official with a security
clearance to give a classified document to
WikiLeaks, it is far from clear that it is illegal
for the organization to make it public. Perhaps in a warning shot of sorts, WikiLeaks on
Monday released a cable from early last year
listing sites around the world - from hydroelectric
dams in Canada to vaccine factories in Denmark -
that are considered crucial to American national
security. Nearly all the facilities listed in the
document, including undersea cables, oil pipelines
and power plants, could be identified by Internet
searches. But the disclosure prompted headlines in
Europe and a new denunciation from the State
Department, which said in a statement that
"releasing such information amounts to giving a
targeting list to groups like Al Qaeda." Asked later about the cable, Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton said the continuing
disclosures posed "real concerns, and even
potential damage to our friends and partners around
the world." In recent months, WikiLeaks gave the entire
collection of cables to four European publications
- Der Spiegel in Germany, El País in Spain,
Le Monde in France and The Guardian. The Guardian
shared the cable collection with The New York
Times.  Since
Nov. 28, each publication has been publishing a
series of articles about revelations in the cables,
accompanied online by the texts of some of the
documents. The publications have removed the names
of some confidential sources of American diplomats,
and WikiLeaks has generally posted the cables with
the same redactions.
The five publications have announced no plans to
make public all the documents. WikiLeaks's
intentions remain unclear. Reporting was contributed by Scott Shane,
Charlie Savage and Brian Knowlton from Washington,
and Ravi Somaiya from London.
The Wikileaks
sex files: How two one-night stands sparked a
worldwide hunt for Julian Assange By Richard Pendlebury Last updated at 10:44 AM on 7th December
2010 A winter morning in backwoods Scandinavia and
the chime of a church bell drifts across the
snowbound town of Enkoping. Does it also toll for
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange? Today, this small industrial centre, 40 miles
west of Stockholm, remains best-known - if known at
all - as the birthplace of the adjustable
spanner. But if extradition proceedings involving Britain
are successful, it could soon be rather more
celebrated - by the U.S. government at least - as
the place where Mr Assange made a catastrophic
error. Victim of a honeytrap plot? Julian Assange
denies the accusations of sex crimes, insisting he
had consensual sex with his accusors Victim of a honeytrap plot? Julian Assange
denies the accusations of sex crimes, insisting he
had consensual sex with his accusors Here, in a first-floor flat in a dreary
apartment block, the mastermind behind the leak of
more than 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables
this month slept with a female admirer whom he had
just met at a seminar. She subsequently made a
complaint to police. As a result, Assange, believed to be in hiding
in England, faces a criminal prosecution and
possibly jail. Last night, a European Arrest
Warrant was given by Interpol to Scotland Yard.
WikiLeaks boss
'could be arrested in hours' after new warrant is
issued The Stockholm police want to question him
regarding the possible rape of a woman and separate
allegations from another Swedish admirer, with whom
he was having a concurrent fling. But there remains
a huge question mark over the evidence. Many people
believe that the 39-year-old Australian-born
whistleblower is the victim of a U.S. government
dirty tricks campaign. They argue that the whole squalid affair is a
sexfalla, which translates loosely from the Swedish
as a 'honeytrap'. One thing is clear, though: Sweden's complex
rape laws are central to the story. 'Jessica' claims she was sexually assaulted by
Julian Assange 'Sarah' claims she was sexually assaulted by
Julian Assange 'Jessica' and 'Sarah' claim they were sexually
assaulted by Julian Assange Using a number of sources including leaked
police interviews, we can begin to piece together
the sequence of events which led to Assange's
liberty being threatened by Stockholm police rather
than Washington, where already one U.S. politician
has called on him to executed for 'spying'. The story began on August 11 this year, when
Assange arrived in Stockholm. He had been invited to be the key speaker at a
seminar on 'war and the role of the media',
organised by the centre-Left Brotherhood
Movement. His point of contact was a female party
official, whom we shall refer to as Sarah (her
identity must be protected because of the ongoing
legal proceedings). An attractive blonde, Sarah was already a
well-known 'radical feminist'. In her 30s, she had
travelled the world following various fashionable
causes. While a research assistant at a local university
she had not only been the protegee of a militant
feminist academic, but held the post of 'campus
sexual equity officer'. Fighting male
discrimination in all forms, including sexual
harassment, was her forte. Sarah and Assange had never met. But in a series
of internet and telephone conversations, they
agreed that during his visit he could stay at her
small apartment in central Stockholm. She said she
would be away from the city until the day of the
seminar itself. The prosecution's case has several puzzling
flaws, and there is scant public evidence of rape
or sexual molestation What happened over the next few days - while
casting an extraordinary light on the values of the
two women involved - suggests that even if the
WikiLeaks founder is innocent of any charges, he is
certainly a man of strong sexual appetites who is
not averse to exploiting his fame. Certainly his stay was always going to be a very
social affair, mingling with like-minded and
undoubtedly admiring people. That Thursday, he held court at the Beirut Cafe
in Stockholm, dining with fellow 'open government'
campaigners and an American journalist. The following afternoon, Sarah returned to
Stockholm, 24 hours earlier than planned. In an interview she later gave to police, she is
reported to have said: 'He (Assange) was there when
I came home. We talked a little and decided that he
could stay.' The pair went out for dinner together at a
nearby restaurant. Afterwards they returned to her
flat and had sex. What is not disputed by either of
them is that a condom broke - an event which, as we
shall see, would later take on great
significance. At the time, however, the pair continued to be
friendly enough the next day, a Saturday, with
Sarah even throwing a party for him at her home in
the evening. That same day, Assange attended his seminar at
the Swedish trade union HQ. In the front row of the
audience, dressed in an eye-catching pink jumper -
you can see her on a YouTube internet clip recorded
at the time - was a pretty twentysomething whom we
shall call Jessica. She was the woman - who two
sources this week told me is a council employee -
from Enkoping. Swedes are calling the whole squalid affair a
honeytrap, a plot to bring down the Wikileaks
supremo.
Jessica would later tell police that she had
first seen Assange on television a few weeks
before. She had found him 'interesting, brave and
admirable'. As a result, she began to follow the
WikiLeaks saga, and when she discovered that he was
due to visit Stockholm she contacted the
Brotherhood Movement to volunteer to help out at
the seminar. Although her offer was not taken up,
she decided to attend the seminar anyway and took a
large number of photos of Assange during his
90-minute talk. It is believed that by happenstance Jessica also
met Sarah - the woman with whom Assange had spent
the night - during the meeting.  Afterwards,
she hung around and was still there when Assange -
who has a child from a failed relationship around
20 years ago - left with a group of male friends
for lunch.
Sources conflict here. One says that she asked
to tag along; another that Assange invited her to
join them. Subsequently, one of Assange's friends recalled
that Jessica had been 'very keen' to get Assange's
attention. She was later to tell police that, at the
restaurant, Assange put his arm around her
shoulder. 'I was flattered. It was obvious that he
was flirting,' she reportedly said. The attraction was mutual. After lunch, the pair
went to the cinema to see a film called Deep Sea.
Jessica's account suggests that were 'intimate' and
then went to a park where Assange told her she was
'attractive'. But he had to leave to go to a 'crayfish party',
a traditional, and usually boozy, Swedish summer
event. Jessica asked if they would meet again. 'Of
course,' said the WikiLeaks supremo. They parted
and she took a train back to Enkoping while he took
a cab back to his temporary base at Sarah's flat,
where the crayfish party was to be held. You might
think it strange that Sarah would want to throw a
party in honour of the man about whom she would
later make a complaint to police concerning their
liaison the night before. There is scant evidence - in the public domain
at least - of rape, sexual molestation or unlawful
coercion This is only one of several puzzling flaws in
the prosecution case. A few hours after that party, Sarah apparently
Tweeted: 'Sitting outside ... nearly freezing, with
the world's coolest people. It's pretty amazing!'
She was later to try to erase this message. During the party, Assange apparently phoned
Jessica and a few hours later she was boasting to
friends about her flirtation with him. At that
point, according to police reports, her friends
advised her 'the ball is in your court'. So it was that on the Monday, Jessica called
Assange and they arranged to get together in
Stockholm. When they did meet they agreed to go to
her home in Enkoping, but he had no money for a
train ticket and said he didn't want to use a
credit card because he would be 'tracked'
(presumably, as he saw it, by the CIA or other
agencies). So Jessica bought both their tickets. She had snagged perhaps the world's most famous
activist, and after they arrived at her apartment
they had sex. According to her testimony to police,
Assange wore a condom. The following morning they
made love again. This time he used no
protection. Jessica reportedly said later that she was upset
that he had refused when she asked him to wear a
condom. Again there is scant evidence - in the public
domain at least - of rape, sexual molestation or
unlawful coercion. What's more, the following morning, on the
Tuesday, the pair amicably went out to have
breakfast together and, at her prompting, Assange
promised to stay in touch. He then returned to
Stockholm, with Jessica again paying for his
ticket. It has been suggested that the two women had
discussed approaching a tabloid newspaper to
maximise Assange's discomfort What happened next is difficult to explain. The
most likely interpretation of events is that as a
result of a one-night stand, one participant came
to regret what had happened. Jessica was worried she could have caught a
sexual disease, or even be pregnant: and this is
where the story takes an intriguing turn. She then
decided to phone Sarah - whom she had met at the
seminar, and with whom Assange had been staying -
and apparently confided to her that she'd had
unprotected sex with him. At that point, Sarah said that she, too, had
slept with him. As a result of this conversation, Sarah
reportedly phoned an acquaintance of Assange and
said that she wanted him to leave her apartment.
(He refused to do so, and maintains that she only
asked him to leave three days later, on the Friday
of that week.) How must Sarah have felt to discover that the
man she'd taken to her bed three days before had
already taken up with another woman? Furious?
Jealous? Out for revenge? Perhaps she merely felt
aggrieved for a fellow woman in distress. Having taken stock of their options for a day or
so, on Friday, August 20, Sarah and Jessica took
drastic action. They went together to a Stockholm police station
where they said they were seeking advice on how to
proceed with a complaint by Jessica against
Assange. According to one source, Jessica wanted to know
if it was possible to force Assange to undergo an
HIV test. Sarah, the seasoned feminist warrior,
said she was there merely to support Jessica. But
she also gave police an account of what had
happened between herself and Assange a week
before. The female interviewing officer, presumably
because of allegations of a sabotaged condom in one
case and a refusal to wear one in the second,
concluded that both women were victims: that
Jessica had been raped, and Sarah subject to sexual
molestation. Assange continues to insist that he has done
nothing wrong, and that his sexual encounters with
both women were consensual It was Friday evening. A duty prosecuting
attorney, Maria Kjellstrand, was called. She agreed that Assange should be sought on
suspicion of rape. The following day, Sarah was questioned again,
cementing the allegation of sexual misconduct
against Assange. That evening, detectives tried to
find him and searched Stockholm's entertainment
district - but to no avail. By Sunday morning, the news had leaked to the
Press. Indeed, it has been suggested that the two women
had discussed approaching a tabloid newspaper to
maximise Assange's discomfort. By now, the
authorities realised they had a high-profile case
on their hands and legal papers were rushed to the
weekend home of the chief prosecutor, who dismissed
the rape charge. She felt that what had occurred were no more
than minor offences. But the case was now starting to spin out of
control. Sarah next spoke to a newspaper, saying: 'In
both cases, the sex had been consensual from the
start but had eventually turned into abuse.' Rejecting accusations of an international plot
to trap Assange, she added: 'The accusations were
not set up by the Pentagon or anybody else. The
responsibility for what happened to me and the
other girl lies with a man with a twisted view of
women, who has a problem accepting the word
"no".' The two women then instructed Claes Borgstrom, a
so-called 'gender lawyer' who is a leading
supporter of a campaign to extend the legal
definition of rape to help bring more rapists to
justice. As a result, in September the case was reopened
by the authorities, and last month Interpol said
Assange was wanted for 'sex crimes'. Yesterday, his lawyer Mark Stephens said the
Swedish warrant was a 'political stunt' and that he
would fight it on the grounds that it could lead to
the WikiLeaks founder being handed over to the
American authorities (Sweden has an extradition
treaty with the U.S.). He is responsible for an avalanche of political
leaks. Whether he is also guilty of sexual offences
remains to be seen. But the more one learns about
the case, the allegations simply don't ring
true Assange continues to insist that he has done
nothing wrong, and that his sexual encounters with
both women were consensual. But last week, the Swedish High Court refused to
hear his final appeal against arrest, and
extradition papers were presented to police in
England, where Assange is currently in hiding. He
is able to stay in this country thanks to a
six-month visa which expires in the spring. So what to make of a story in which it's hard to
argue that any of the parties emerges with much
credit? How reliable are the two female
witnesses? Earlier this year, Sarah is reported to have
posted a telling entry on her website, which she
has since removed. But a copy has been retrieved
and widely circulated on the internet. Entitled '7 Steps to Legal Revenge', it explains
how women can use courts to get their own back on
unfaithful lovers. Step 7 says: 'Go to it and keep your goal in
sight. Make sure your victim suffers just as you
did.' (The highlighting of text is Sarah's
own.) As for Assange, he remains in hiding in Britain,
and his website continues to release classified
American documents that are daily embarrassing the
U.S. government. Clearly, he is responsible for an avalanche of
political leaks. Whether he is also guilty of
sexual offences remains to be seen. But the more one learns about the case, the more
one feels that, unlike the bell in Enkoping, the
allegations simply don't ring true.
DECEMBER 7, 2010, 7:31 A.M. ET
Julian Assange
Arrested in London By Jeanne Whalen LONDON-WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was
arrested in the U.K. early Tuesday on an
international warrant related to sexual-assault
accusations in Sweden, setting up a battle over an
extradition he has already pledged to fight. London's Metropolitan Police said Mr. Assange
appeared by appointment at a London police station
at 9:30 a.m. local time Tuesday. He is scheduled to
make a court appearance later in the day. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in
London Tuesday. Mr. Assange's attorney, Mark Stephens, didn't
immediately return a call for comment. Mr. Stephens
has said he plans to fight the validity of the
Swedish arrest warrant in court. The U.K. is known
for carefully scrutinizing extradition requests,
and in some high-profile cases has rejected these
requests and refused to extradite people. The arrest marks the latest twist in a
convulsive saga that has unfolded around Mr.
Assange in recent months. Mr. Assange's arrest is unrelated to his
document-leaking activities, and neither he nor
WikiLeaks has been charged with a crime in the U.S.
But soon after he was taken into custody, U.S.
officials indicated they weren't displeased to see
him apprehended. "That sounds like good news to
me," said Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking
to reporters in Eastern Afghanistan. Mr. Assange and his document-leaking website,
WikiLeaks, have faced intense pressure in recent
months after publishing thousands of classified
U.S. government documents that Washington has
characterized as "stolen." In recent days, Mr. Assange's ability to publish
and raise money has come under attack, as corporate
partners of WikiLeaks such as Amazon.com Inc. have
stopped providing Internet-support services. Amid all of that, Mr. Assange over the summer
became embroiled in allegations of sexual
misconduct in Sweden. There, Mr. Assange met and
had sexual relations with two women who later
complained about him to the police, prompting
prosecutors to open an investigation. That resulted
in accusations of rape in one case and sexual
molestation in the other. Mr. Assange hasn't been
formally charged. Mr. Stephens, the attorney for Mr. Assange, said
in an earlier interview that the rape allegation
appeared to arise days after he engaged in
"consensual, but unprotected sex" with one of the
women. He added that it was "only after the women
became aware of each other's relationships with Mr.
Assange did they make allegations against him." Facing both international pressure and legal
scrutiny from Sweden, Mr. Assange has hopped from
country to country in recent months, his precise
whereabouts rarely clear. In recent weeks, it was
widely believed that he was in the U.K., where his
attorney had confirmed his presence in late
November. As Mr. Assange laid low, an international legal
process slowly ratcheted up pressure to detain him
for questioning. A Swedish court issued an order for Mr.
Assange's arrest on Nov. 18, at the request of
Swedish prosecutors. On Nov. 20, Interpol issued an
"international wanted-persons alert" on Mr. Assange
in Interpol's 188 member countries world-wide, at
the request of Swedish authorities. The alert isn't
a warrant, but Interpol says that many countries
consider it "a valid request for provisional
arrest." Mr. Assange has called the Swedish case an
attempt to smear him for his WikiLeaks work, a
claim Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny denied last
week. 
Britain's
day of shame: Scotland
Yard arrests WikiLeaks' Julian Assange on
Swedish Trollops' Trumped-up
charges
Visa,
PayPal, Swiss
cancel accounts | Assange
threatens to release entire
cache |
Newt
Gingrich calls him "enemy combattant," Canadian
politician demands his targeted
killing
WikiLeaks
Documents Expose Israeli Mafia's Growing
Influence in US
| US
embassy in Tel Aviv sent cable in May 2009
entitled "Israel, A Promised Land for Organized
Crime?" How the Mafia crooks are crawling in
through visa loopholes, and Israel is spying on
us all after a "Shark" program was abandoned
| Leaked
cables show: 'Sarkozy the American' mulled
offering French troops to Bush for Iraq
war
| We think: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange
(picture) will soon disappear - so oder
so | Now here is a tool to help you search
those leaked US embassy cables: CABLESEARCH:
key into lower box words like "Israel" or
"oligarchs" to find the cables the world's
newspapers are frightened to talk
about-
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publication of this article does not imply any
endorsement by the Focal Point website of the
facts or opinions stated therein
| 
write to David
Irving