Assange Rape Case Reopened

eldavojohn writes "Wikileaks' Julian Assange had a warrant issued for his arrest in Sweden on the charges of rape. But it was withdrawn shortly thereafter. Now the case has been reopened to investigate 'molestation charges.' On top of that, a new site (parody?) called wikileakileaks.org has been launched by the chief editor of Gawker to give Wikileaks a taste of its own medicine. You can find links to details on the molestation charges there."

Childish

[RafaelAngel]

Gawker is just mad they didn't get the scoop. Maybe next time they should offer Assange cash. Apparently that's how they get their scoops.

Re:Childish

[ahankinson]

Have you been living under a rock? [latimes.com]

Re:Molestation charge

[operagost]

The swedish political system is similar to the US. In the us you either chose between the elephant right wing or the donkey right wing.

You rattle on about "senior socialist politicians" in Sweden, but you think the major parties in the USA are both right wing? Megan's laws (I like to call them "The Ultimate ThinkOfTheChildren Acts") pretty much make it illegal for a male of any age to get within 20 yards of a female below 18, or have to wear a virtual scarlet letter for the rest of his life. Heck, a minor doesn't even have to be involved; you can just be caught peeing outside and be recorded as a "sexual offender". In other words, they are just a stroke of a pen away from scorned women filing rape charges like in Sweden. I don't even have to get into how many truly socialist bills have been passed in just the last two years. When you have trillions of dollars being spent-- none for inarguably constitutional uses such as defense-- and a big tax hike across the board, that's redistribution of wealth by definition.

Re:Molestation charge

[halfaperson]

How this got modded up is beyond me. I've lived in Sweden for my entire life, and I while this country has its pros and cons just as any country, what you describe just isn't true.

In Sweden everything that a woman can find offensive is a molestation charge. And if they have consentual sex while mutually pissing drunk, then it's rape.

Umm, I've never even heard of a woman filing molestation charges for just being "offended". Where did you get that from? And I've had consensual sex (yeah, this is /. I know) "while mutual pissing drunk" countless times without ever beeing accused or even afraid of such accusations.

This is more or less the consequences of senior socialist politicians getting too much power, enabling them to take their reality-detached feminist education pet projects too far. The swedish political system is similar to the US. In the us you either chose between the elephant right wing or the donkey right wing. In sweden you chose between the blue socialists or the red socialists, though of course, the red socialists have had two decades in power so they've been able to entrench the country with their north korean style indoctrination for a while now so things are even more stagnated.

As a liberal I'm inclined to agree to a certain extent, but "north korean style indoctrination"? Geez, let's get some perspective.

Re:Molestation charge

[Fnkmaster]

After reading this [gawker.com], assuming it's at all accurate, whatever you attribute these charges to, they are all absolutely ridiculous. So... the guy had sex with two women, both groupies, who found out about the other one, and then got angry that they had agreed to have sex without a condom with him because shocker-of-shockers, he had banged some other woman recently.

This is classic rape-after-the-fact, i.e. not rape at all, since they had already consented to the relationship. There is nothing in any of this to indicate that the guy forced himself or coerced anybody. Nor even that he lied or misled anybody, beyond saying that he'd call and then not calling.

I think Julian Assange is a narcissistic creepy fellow, and I have serious reservations about some of what Wikileaks has done. I support the goal of more openness in government, but they do a terrible job at presenting information in an unbiased fashion (at least with those leaked videos) and they dump out huge volumes of classified information without consideration as to whether the public interest in that material outweighs the risk to people's lives of having that information disclosed.

I don't claim to know whether these charges originate with the US Government in any way, but it sounds more like the by-product of the Swedish legal system gone completely and absolutely bonker-nuts-insane, having criminalized relatively normal everyday behavior among single men and women.

There are a couple of misunderstandings here

[pEBDr]

1) Molestation ("ofredande") is NOT a sexual offense, but "sexual molestation" ("sexuell ofredande") is. These are two separate things and there is a big difference in punishment: sexual molestation often puts you in jail, molestation will usually only result in a small fine (but theoretically up to a year in prison, but that never happens). The legal distinction between the two is that in sexual molestation, the person committing the crime has to be sexually motivated, which is of course often very difficult to judge. Also note that in Sweden, neither sexual molestation or molestation has anything to do with the age of the victim.

2) The charges on molestation was never completely dropped. The attorney was still arguing for the charge to be rape of two persons, while the case was still classified as "molestation" (note: not sexual molestation). The judge was to decide whether to re-open the rape charges, as requested by the attorney. This was to be decided yesterday, but since new information came up, it was delayed until today. And obviously it was decided that the rape charges should be reopened. The submitter claims that "case has been reopened to investigate 'molestation charges'", this is therefore only partially true, since the charge now is:
rape ("våldtäkt"), sexual forcing ("sexuellt tvång") and sexual molestation ("sexuellt ofredande"). This is A LOT worse for mr Assange than only "molestation".
It is probable that Assange will be taken into custody (to prevent him from attacking more swedes)... (Google translate with more on this. [google.com])

3) Yes, Sweden has less macho culture than most other countries. Yes, women in Sweden more often dare to report rapes/sexual offences to the police. Yes, the police usually actually listens to them. And no, this is not a bad thing.

Re:Childish

[Anonymous Coward]

Wild guess here, but probably because someone with mod points thought it was funny.

Re:More important issues

[tmk]

I did not find the exact quote I was looking for, but close enough. Here is a press release from 2009 [wikileaks.org]:

Wikileaks source documents are received in Sweden and published from Sweden so as to derive maximum benefit from this legal protection. Should the Senator or anyone else attempt to discover our source we will refer the matter to the Constitutional Police for prosecution, and, if necessary, ask that the Senator and anyone else involved be extradited to face justice for breaching fundamental rights."

Newspaper article from 2010 [theaustralian.com.au]:

“We're registered as a library in Australia, we're registered as a foundation in France, we're registered as a newspaper in Sweden,” Mr Assange said.