British police arrested Julian Assange on December 7 over charges of sexual misconduct in Sweden. Accused by two women of rape, molestation, and sexual coercion, Assange agreed to give himself up to the British police but has vowed to contest extradition to Sweden. Some skeptics question, however, the validity of the charges levied against the founder of Wikileaks.
According to conservative pundit Glenn Beck, who maintains mixed feelings about WikiLeaks but contends that Assange has dangerous anarchist motives, the facts surrounding the sexual accusations against Assange do not add up.
On August 11, Julian Assange arrived in Stockholm, where he was to be the key speaker at a seminar. There, he met the first woman with whom he engaged in a sexual relationship: Anna Ardin.
Anna, a well-known radical feminist who once hosted a blog entitled “Seven Steps to Legal Revenge” that explained how women can use courts to get back at their unfaithful lovers, befriended Assange, and later invited him to stay in her small apartment in central Stockholm in preparation of the seminar. Following a romantic dinner one night, the two had sex with a condom that broke (an important fact in the case). Both admitted later that the condom did in fact break during sex.
The next day, Anna hosted a party in her home for Assange in his honor. During the party, Anna tweeted the following: “Sitting outside; nearly freezing; with the world’s coolest people; it’s pretty amazing.”
Meanwhile, Assange began a concurrent affair with a second admirer, Sofia Wilen. He met Sofia at his seminar, which took place in the afternoon on the same day of the party to be thrown in his honor by Anna. During the party, Assange was allegedly engaging in phone flirtations with Sofia, who boasted about the flirtation with her friends.
On the Monday following their meeting, Assange and Sofia went back to her home and had sex with a condom. The next morning, they had sex again, but this time without a condom. She would later claim that she was angered by Assange’s alleged refusal to wear the condom.
Evidently, she was not angry enough, as the next morning, the couple went out to breakfast together. Afterward, Assange returned to Stockholm on a ticket purchased for him by Sofia.
A lawyer who recently represented Assange explains, “The exact content of Wilen’s mobile phone texts is not yet known but their bragging and exculpatory character has been confirmed by Swedish prosecutors. Neither Wilen’s nor Ardin’s texts complain of rape.”
Following both sexual rendezvous, neither woman seemed to harbor any resentment toward the man they later accused of rape, molestation, and coercion.
It’s worth noting that Anna and Sofia met during the same meeting wherein Assange met Sofia and were acquaintances of sort, because the story only becomes trickier from here.
After Assange returned to Stockholm, Sofia became overwhelmed with fear that unprotected sex with Assange could result in the contraction of a sexually-transmitted disease or pregnancy. She contacted Anna to confide in her, angering Anna, who demanded that Assange no longer stay in her home. He refused. Assange, however, claims that Anna did not ask him to leave her apartment until three days later.
A day or two later, the two women sought police action.
According to the Daily Mail, “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 Sofia had been raped, and {Anna} subject to sexual molestation.”
The story leaked to the press and quickly went viral. Even then, however, Anna told her local newspaper, “In both cases, the sex had been consensual from the start but had eventually turned into abuse.” Denying allegations that she was playing a role in a plot set up by the Pentagon to bring down Assange, Anna said, “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.’”
Both women then enlisted the help of Claes Borgstrom, a “gender lawyer” who has campaigned to extend the legal definition of rape to be all-encompassing.
By September, Assange was wanted for “sex crimes.”
As the facts do not seem to add up, it’s also worth noting that one of the women, Anna Ardin, may have connections to the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency. Raw Story explains, “Anna Ardin, may have ‘ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups,’ according to Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett…. While in Cuba, Ardin worked with the Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White), a feminist anti-Castro group.”
Shamir and Bennett also describe Ardin as both “leftist” and “anti-Castro.”
Also, Shamir and Bennett explain that Las damas de blanco is funded in part by the U.S. government, and is supported by Luis Posada Camiles, a man revealed to be a CIA agent in a declassified 1976 document.
Whether Ardin’s alleged connections to the CIA have any impact on her role in the case against Assange is speculative. But not to Assange.
“We have been warned that, for example, the Pentagon is planning on using dirty tricks to destroy our work,” he told the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet.
He even asserted that he was careful to avoid “sex traps.”
Perhaps not careful enough.
Whether one believes Julian Assange to be a villain or a hero for his role in the release of highly secretive military and government documents is inconsequential in this particular case. One must look only at the facts pertinent to allegations of sex crimes. Of those, Beck concludes, “I’m not convinced this is anything other than a set-up."
Photo: Julian Assange
Related artcles:
