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from Anorak
A day-by-day account of Mr. Assange’s meetings, travels and sexual hook-ups leading up to his arrest on rape charges in Britain.
Julian Assange And A Broken Condom ‘Rape’ In Sweden: A Timeline
from Anorak
This article, with the accompanying illustration previously appeared on anorak.co.uk/
JULIAN Assange, founder of Wikileaks, is wanted on suspicion of rape. Is it a set up, a smear? The Swedish word for it is sexfalla, which sort of means honeytrap. Assange slept with two women in August 2010. And then they said he raped them because he failed to wear a condom.
The timeline of events:
August 11: Assange is in Sweden. He is to speak at the behest of the Brotherhood Movement. His address will be on “war and the role of the media”.
He is met by a woman. At university she was the “campus sexual equality officer”. She is a feminist. She has a posting on her website called: “7 steps to legal revenge.” It’s a guide to getting back at an ex-lover.
Assange and she agree that he can stay at her Stockholm apartment.
August 12: Assange has drinks at the Beirut cafe in Stokholm.
August 13: The pair have dinner. They go back to her place and have sex. He wears a condom. It breaks.
August 14: The woman throws a party at her home for Assange.
Assange is at the headquarters of the Swedish trade union. In the front row is a woman. She is wearing a pink jumper. She stands out from the crowd. She is from Enkoping. She thinks Assange is “interesting, brave and admirable”. She has contacted the Brotherhood Movement and is keen to be involved. The Movement does not offer a job. But she attends the seminar anyhow.
At the seminar, Woman B bought Assange a computer cable. In computing terms this is, possibly, akin to roses.
At the seminar, it is believed the two women meet each other.
The woman in the pink jumper joins Assange and his associates for lunch. At the eatery, Assange puts his arm around her. She says, “I was flattered. It was obvious he was flirting.”
The lunch ends. The pair got to the cinema to watch Deep Sea. She says they were “intimate”. They go for a walk in a park. Assange calls her “attractive”.
You can read the courtship here. It’s one based on cheese.
They ended up at the city’s Natural History Museum, where Assange headed to a computer console and, to the woman’s clear annoyance, twittered about his day.
You can feel the romance. But he has to go. There is to be a crayfish party he has been invited to.
She heads back to Enkoping. He returns by taxi to the first woman’s flat.
The woman tweets:
“Sitting outside… nearly freezing, with the world’s coolest people. It’s pretty amazing!”
August 16: The woman from Enkoping calls Assange. They arrange to meet in Stockholm. They agree to return to her place in Enkoping. But he has no cash to pay for tickets. He does not want to use a credit card because he says it could be “tracked”. She agrees to pay for both of them. At her place they have sex.
Assange wears a condom.
August 17: They have sex again. He wears no condom. The pair have breakfast together. She buys him a return ticket to Stockholm.
Then the second woman calls the first women. She tells her of the unprotected sex.
August 20: The two women go to a Stockholm police station. The first woman alleges that during sex Assange had “deliberately” broken the condom. The police consider the option that the women are victims. They think there has been possible rape and sexual molestation. Prosecuting attorney Maria Kjellstand agrees that Assange should be questioned on suspicion of rape.
August 21: Police look for Assange. They do not find him.
August 22: The news hits the press.
The chief prosecutor looks at the police papers. She dismisses the rape charge. But now the first woman is talking to the press. She says:
“In both cases, the sex had been consensual from the start but had eventually turned into abuse.”
Adding:
“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’.”
Who are the press?
The allegation was first brought to our attention by Swedish tabloid The Expressen. It’s owned by the Bonnier family, who have considerable business interests in Europe and the US. The paper has:
A commitment to protect the editorial voice from commercial and political interests and the courage to publish controversial media content
What of the source? Kristinn Hrafnsson works with Assange. Says he:
“He didn’t know of the charges until he read them in the right wing tabloid Expressen this morning. There are powerful organisations who want to do harm to WikiLeaks.”
August 24: Assange talks to the Swedish press:
Q: But is it not best in this situation to be as transparent as possible?
Yes, but I do not want to drag people’s private lives through the dirt without having the whole situation clear to me.
Why have they turned to the police? What lies behind their actions? What I can say is that I have never, either in Sweden or in any other country, had sex with someone that they haven’t consented to.
August 28: The search phrase “Assange rape” yields about 4,390,000 results on Google. In not one of those results is he guilty.
Sept 1: Julian Assange is judged to be a possible rapist as the case reopens. The Swedish Prosecution Authority says:
“There is reason to believe a crime has been committed. More investigations are necessary.”
Marianne Ny, director of public prosecution, says:
“…considering information available at present, my judgment is that the classification of the crime is rape.”
“Present judgement” is a phrase that suggests that the judgement may change.
Nov 18: A Swedish court issues an international arrest warrant for Assange. Assange issues a statement via this lawyers, who call the charges “bizarre”:
The warrant for his arrest was rightly withdrawn within 24 hours by Chief prosecutor Eva Finne, who found that there was no “reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Yet his name had already been deliberately and unlawfully disclosed to the press by Swedish authorities. The “rape” story was carried around the world and has caused Mr. Assange and his organization irreparable harm.
Eva Finne’s decision to drop the “rape” investigation was reversed after the intervention of a political figure, Claes Borgstrom, who is now acting for the women. The case was given to a specific prosecutor, Marianne Ny.
Nov 20: InterPol issues a “Red Notice” about Assange. This is “a valid request for provisional arrest.”
Nov 25: Russian state radio smears Asange:
His [Assange] culpability for alleged rapes in Sweden has yet to be proven in Stockholm’s courts, but most psychologists interviewed by Western media say that he could’ve done this, given his troubled childhood.
And so to today, where Assange is hiding out in the UK and his lawyers are fighting his arrest. For what it is worth, Anorak believes Assange should return freely to Sweden and defend himself there. Wikileleaks can continue to publish without him.
UPDATE: He’s been nicked and refused bail.
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