Julian Assange Arrested by Scotland Yard

Posted: December 7, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Breaking News, Wikileaks | Tags: , | 24 Comments

Julian Assange

From The Independent UK:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard’s extradition unit today.

The 39-year-old Australian was held when he attended a central London police station by appointment.

He is now expected to appear before a district judge at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court later today.

As everyone knows by now, Assange faces rape and sexual molestation charges in Sweden.

The accusations have stalked Assange since the summer, before his website began publishing portions of the huge cache of U.S. State Department diplomatic cables that have dismayed American officials and other governments around the world in recent days.

But Assange, who is Australian, and his lawyers and supporters believe that the U.S. has pushed the sexual assault case behind the scenes as a way of embarrassing, harassing and silencing him.

Assange is believed to have been in southern England for much of the past few weeks as the State Department cables have been released. Swedish prosecutors last month issued an international warrant for his arrest, but British authorities did not move to arrest him until this week, apparently because of a technical mistake on the warrant.

At his court hearing, Assange’s lawyers are expected to ask for him to be released on bail while he fights the attempt to extradite him.

That legal battle could take weeks or even months. Assange’s attorneys fear that a successful extradition to Sweden on the sexual assault allegations could also make it easier for him to be extradited to the United States if prosecutors there charge him with various offenses relating to the WikiLeaks disclosures.

According to The Guardian UK, Wikileaks will continue releasing documents from its cache of previously secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

The whistleblowers’ website has made arrangements to continue publishing the classified documents, the airing of which has embarrassed the US government. The leaked cables have provided a daily flow of revelations about the superpower’s involvement in the most sensitive issues around the world, including those affecting Iran, Afghanistan and China.

The decision to press on will help allay fears among Assange’s supporters that his arrest would hobble the organisation’s work.

Assange has also pre-recorded a video message, which WikiLeaks is due to release today. But the Guardian understands the organisation has no plans to release the insurance file of the remaining cables, which number more than 200,000. It has sent copies of the encrypted file to supporters around the world. These can be accessed only by using a 256 digit code.

In one piece of good news for Wikileaks and its supporters, a French judge has resisted pressure from France and the U.S. to shut down the organization’s website.

update 1

[MABlue here]
This whole development was predictable. Once the US got thoroughly embarrassed on the world stage through “Cablegate”, it was certain he was not going to freely roam around.
Julian Assange Becomes the US’s Public Enemy No. 1

He may be on the short list for Time magazine’s “person of the year,” but many Americans consider Julian Assange to be a criminal and a terrorist. The WikiLeaks founder has been fighting a battle on several fronts since the publication of the diplomatic cables. He has now been arrested in London.

[…]

London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement that Assange had been arrested at around 9:30 a.m. local time, by appointment at a police station in the British capital. “He is 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 statement read. Assange was due to appear before a London court later on Tuesday

update 2

[Dkat here]

If you want to know some background on these charges, you can check on the Daily Mail: ‘The Wikileaks sex files: How two one-night stands sparked a worldwide hunt for Julian Assange’.  It’s a bit of a pot boiler, but you probably should read it.

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.

Glenn Greenwald has an op-ed up on this at Salon: ‘ Anti-WikiLeaks lies and propaganda – from TNR, Lauer, Feinstein and more’. He challenges some fabrications in the right wing press on charges that Wikileaks is endangering intelligence operations.

I understand that the media has repeated over and over the false claim that WikiLeaks “dumped” all 250,000 diplomatic cables on the Internet — which is presumably how this falsehood made its way into Gitlin’s brain and then into his column — but that’s no excuse for him and TNR editors failing to undertake the most minimal due diligence (such as, say, checking WikiLeaks’ website) before publishing this claim.

I imagine more news and reaction will be coming on this story today. We can use this post as a live blog for updates. Please let us know if you hear anything new.

Devasting Wikileaks leads to loss of life and calls for Clinton to Resign!!!

Posted: November 29, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Diplomacy Nightmares, just because, The Media SUCKS, Wikileaks | Tags: , | 67 Comments
Or not …

Here’s an example:

Addressing the Ambassador directly, Prince Andrew then turned to regional politics. He stated baldly that “the United Kingdom, Western Europe (and by extension you Americans too”) were now back in the thick of playing the Great Game. More animated than ever, he stated cockily: “And this time we aim to win!” Without contradicting him, the Ambassador gently reminded him that the United States does not see its presence in the region as a continuation of the Great Game. We support Kyrgyzstan’s independence and sovereignty but also welcome good relations between it and all of its neighbors, including Russia.
¶10. (C) The Prince pounced at the sound of that name. He told the Ambassador that he was a frequent visitor to Central Asia and the Caucasus and had noticed a marked increase in Russian pressure and concomitant anxiety among the locals post-August events in Georgia. He stated the following story related to him recently by Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev. Aliyev had received a letter from President Medvedev telling him that if Azerbaijan supported the designation of the Bolshevik artificial famine in Ukraine as “genocide” at the United Nations, “then you can forget about seeing Nagorno-Karabakh ever again.” Prince Andrew added that every single other regional President had told him of receiving similar “directive” letters from Medvedev except for Bakiyev. He asked the Ambassador if Bakiyev had received something similar as well. The Ambassador answered that she was not aware of any such letter.
¶11. (C) The Duke then stated that he was very worried about Russia’s resurgence in the region. As an example, he cited the recent Central Asian energy and water-sharing deal (septel), which he claimed to know had been “engineered by Russia, who finally pounded her fist on the table and everyone fell into line.” (NOTE: Interestingly, the Turkish Ambassador to the Kyrgyz Republic recently described her analysis of the deal to the Ambassador in strikingly similar language. END NOTE.)
¶12. (C) Showing that he is an equal-opportunity Great Game player, HRH then turned to the topic of China. He recounted that when he had recently asked the President of Tajikistan what he thought of growing Chinese influence in Central Asia, the President had responded “with language I won’t use in front of ladies.” His interlocutors told the Prince that while Russians are generally viewed sympathetically throughout the region, the Chinese are not. He nodded, terming Chinese economic and possibly other expansion in the region “probably inevitable, but a menace.”
RUDE LANGUAGE A LA BRITISH

I’m sure we should designate Wikileaks a terrorist organization over these terribly embarrassing diplomatic moments!!!!      Lives are undoubtedly being lost at this very minute due to the nature of these sensitive topics.  Hang them from the Treason Tree, I say!!!

Oh, and Jack Shafer needs to remember his monkeyfishing expedition and be relegated to writing obits for Salon.

I guess this is my way of saying a lot of people are going completely over the top about the Wikileaks drop including the next Congressman in charge of the Homeland Security Committe. A terrorist organization, Congressman King, really?  And what’s with the press? Is Wolf Blitzer pouting because he wasn’t included in the drop?

And my next question is this:  VP Cheney can get away with outing an undercover CIA agent and violating the Geneva Convention for all to see, why is this garnering more hand wringing and  more talks of treason than that?

Perspective any one?

Notable Tweets from Glenn Greenwald on the subject:

I’m keeping a running list of all the lives lost from the WikiLeaks disclosures – here are the names so far: http://is.gd/hXc0B

The Watchdogs: RT @digby56 “Right now, Wolf Blitzer is on TV acting very upset that the government was unable to keep its secrets from him.”

@erikkain That’s precisely the dynamic driving this. They’re guardians of power and the status quo. That’s what is threatened here.

and one from Jeremy Schahill via Empty Wheel!!!

RT @jeremyscahill: We do know this: Wikileaks didn’t leak the NY Times the bullshit about Iraqi WMDs or Bob Novak Valerie Plame’s identity

and one from Greg Mitchell via Eric Boehlert!


As palm hits forehead…..RT @GregMitch Jack Shafer: Hillary Clinton must quit after these WikiLeaks. http://www.slate.com/id/2276190/

Newer Entries →