Posts Tagged ‘Marianne Ny’
Jagad man. Det svenska rättsväsendets behandling av Julian Assange kan närmast liknas vid trakasserier. Samtidigt har mediernas bevakning varit partisk till förmån för det politiska etablissemanget. Nu har JO avslagit vår anmälan av åklagare Marianne Ny, skriver journalisterna Helene Bergman och Anders Carlgren.
Den juridiska cirkusen kring fallet Julian Assange har nu fått proportioner som saknar motstycke i juridisk historia. Ingen annan man än just Julian Assange skulle bli jagad på detta sätt över flera kontinenter för de påstådda brotten våldtäkt och sexuellt ofredande.
Vi har därför anmält åklagaren Marianne Ny till Justitieombudsmannen, JO, på grund av hennes hantering av ärendet. Men JO Hans Gunnar Axberger avskrev, märkligt nog, saken dagen efter att Assange beviljats asyl, med hänvisning till den pågående rättsliga prövningen.
Sakläget är mycket enkelt. Julian Assange hade sex med två kvinnor vid skilda tillfällen under sin vistelse här i landet. De båda kvinnorna sökte upp en kvinnlig polisinspektör, som var bekant med en av de båda, med avsikt att förmå Assange att genomgå ett hiv-test. Men då våldtäkt faller under allmänt åtal upprättade polisinspektören i stället en anmälan. Ingen av de båda kvinnorna hade helt säkert någon aning om vilka proportioner besöket hos poliskvinnan skulle få.
En åklagare beslöt begära Assange häktad i hans utevaro, trots att han fanns kvar i landet. Dagen därpå fann en annan åklagare att det inte fanns någon grund för påståendena och lade ner saken. Read the rest of this entry »
Två representanter för den svenska åklagarmyndigheten erbjöds att närvara vid utlämningsförhandlingarna mot Wikileaksgrundaren Julian Assange i London under täckmantel som juridikstudenter, rapporterar TV4.
Det är en mejlkonversation mellan den brittiska åklagarmyndigheten och den svenska åklagarmyndigheten som avslöjar den planerade täckmanteln.
Marianne Ny är den åklagare som har hand om den svenska utredningen mot Assange. Hon ville inte medverka vid utlämningsförhandlingarna då det skulle kunna komma att uppfattas som att hon försökte påverka ett beslut.
Karin Rosander, myndighetens informationsdirektör ville däremot åka, och undrade om hon kunde resa i utbildningssyfte, utan att någon trodde att hon åkte på uppdrag av den svenska åklagarmyndigheten. Read the rest of this entry »
And has a casual conversation.
ALMEDALEN (Rixstep) — Sweden’s political elite are spending the week in the city of Visby on the island of Gotland to (of course) talk politics. This is a tradition begun by the assassinated Swedish prime minister Olof Palme nearly fifty years ago. Today’s it’s become more partying than politics but Julian Assange’s legal adviser Jennifer Robinson is there along with Kristinn Hrafnsson as guests of the ‘FuturePerfect’ group and they were invited to speak to the crowds.
By pure coincidence, Jennifer spotted Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs Carl Bildt afterwards and decided to confront him in the interests of her client.
‘I went up to him and introduced myself. We talked for a good ten minutes. It was a very friendly conversation’, said Jennifer afterwards.
No Guarantees, No Nothing
As Julian Assange’s current predicament hinges on the demonstrative eagerness of small dog Sweden to accede to the wishes of big dog US and send him through a revolving door and over the pond if ever he should arrive – and as a lower level clerk already stated nothing could be done to untangle the situation – Jennifer chose to put it to the nobleman point blank.
‘I asked him to guarantee that Assange wouldn’t be rendered to the US if he came to Sweden, and Carl Bildt said that they couldn’t give us that guarantee, that it’s a judicial process. I told him that at the end of the day it’s a political decision by the government.’
Jennifer also asked Bildt why no one’s traveled to the UK to interrogate Julian Assange or carried out an interrogation by telephone as ordained by the EU agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance in the near two years Assange has been wearing that ankle bracelet.
‘He told me it’s not allowed. And when I pointed out that Sweden had only recently done just that in a murder investigation in Serbia, he had no reply.’
But that’s coincidentally the same thing Marianne Ny told Time and a number of Swedish news organisations two years ago.
And when she realised what a stir she’d caused, all the original stories (at least in the Swedish media) were made to mysteriously ‘disappear’ much like her chronology of events in September and October 2010 at her website.
Mutual Legal Assistance
There is of course no reason Marianne Ny or someone else couldn’t have interrogated Julian Assange by now. By now it’s more than apparent that this case isn’t about broken condoms anyway. There isn’t even a hidden clause in the MLA agreement to back Bildt and Ny up. They simply refuse to interrogate Assange and explain why – and EU jurisprudence be damned.
Perhaps the most comical part of Jen-Rob’s interchange with Bildt was when he told her no one is above the law in Sweden. Coming from the likes of Carl Bildt what with his history of hanging out with the US Strategic Air Command, flying ‘Top Gun’ F-14s, taking government documents to his friends in Langley, and above all his involvement in the genocides in Africa during his time with the Lundin’s, that’s quite the statement. Read the rest of this entry »
Background
Assange has made himself available to the Swedish prosecution from the beginning: he stayed in Sweden for 5 weeks waiting to be interrogated, and left Sweden after asking permission to do so from the Swedish Prosecutor Marianne Ny (which she granted).
The preliminary investigation into ’third degree rape’ was opened, dropped and then re-opened in quick succession over a space of ten days. On 1 September 2010 a prosecutor who heads one of four Swedish legal development centres made the decision to re-open the case. The centre takes on test cases, recommends changes to laws and policies, and ensures that certain cases are taken to the Supreme Court.
For over 500 days, the Swedish prosecutor has refused to progress the investigation by questioning Assange. Standard EU practice (Mutual Legal Assistance) allows the Swedish prosecutor to question Julian Assange and to collect forensic evidence. She has refused to do this and has failed to explain why. This is a point that the UK High Court judges challenged in the hearing (July 2011), on the basis that the Swedish prosecutor’s failure to explain her actions was undermining the EAW system, which is based on ’mutual trust’.
Evidence of a Biased Preliminary Investigation
In the February Hearing, all of the expert witnesses testified that there had been serious irregularities in the way Sweden’s preliminary investigation was being handled. Leaked documents from the Swedish police show the problems with the preliminary investigation. Failures in police investigations have been flagged as a serious problem in the Swedish legal system by several jurists, and by the Chancellor for Justice in his 2006 report, Wrongfully Convicted (see Rule of Law).
“While we cannot comment on the specifics of the case, we are extremely concerned at the apparent conduct of the investigators. Anyone concerned about free speech and human rights will be alarmed at any suggestion that the allegations against Mr Assange are being manipulated for political purposes.” – Index on Censorship chief executive John Kampfner
Observers agree that the conduct of the first interrogating officer, Irmeli Krans, biased the investigation against Julian Assange. But they differ on whether Krans failed to follow police protocol in the preliminary investigation out of loyalty to her friend woman complainant “AA”, or simply out of negligence. Read the rest of this entry »
Irregularities in the conduct of the Swedish prosecution in the investigation against Julian Assange
- Leaked Police Report: English and Swedish
- Why does the Prosecutor refuse to Question Assange?
- Prosecutor insists Assange be held in remand incommunicado, pre-charge, pre-trial
- Abuse of Process Argument (February Hearing)
- Issuing EAW is for an ’improper purpose’
- Failure to disclose evidence to the defence
- Prosecutor Discloses Assange’s identity to the Press within 2 hours
- Media Reaction to Prosecutor’s Disclosure
- Senior Prosecutor Finne demands and explanation
- No remedy for Assange>
- News
Swedish police report in Swedish and in English
Sweden does not follow the so called “investigating judge model”, and Swedish public prosecutors have very strong powers compared with the situation existing in other Member States: They may decide on any kind of measures during investigations, including coercive measures… e.g. phone surveillance, or detention. (European Commission Evaluation Report on Sweden, Doc 99227/2/08 REV 2. October 2008, para 2.1., cited in the submission by the Appellant to the Supreme Court, paragraph 24)
Al Jazeera interview with Julian Assange on 21 August 2010, just after the rape investigation was dropped
It is highly irregular in Sweden for an international arrest warrant to be sought in relation to allegations of this kind, and for a preliminary investigation where there is no charge. The only recent example of Sweden issuing an INTERPOL Red Notice and The European Arrest Warrant for sexual offences involved a repeat-offending paedophile.
What I have to say will not make me very popular with prosecutors: the suspect’s right is not always respected, prosecutors are not objective, prosecutors fight too hard to get a conviction somewhere down the line – I have seen too many accusations of this type to believe that this doesn’t happen. – Göran Lambertz, former Chancellor of Justice, 2006
Why is the Swedish Prosecutor refusing to Question Assange?
The only beneficiary from delaying the questioning of Julian Assange for 1,5 years is the US, which is preparing it’s case against Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and Bradley Manning. The delay in no way benefits the two women, who were reportedly not seeking to report Assange to the police anyway, nor Julian Assange, who has been robbed of his liberty in the 500 days spanning from his detention on 7 December 2010 to the Supreme Court judgment. Marianne Ny has given no explanation, either to the two women or to Assange, why she has chosen to delay the case and handled it in such an extraordinary manner. The behaviour of the prosecutor even conflicts with her own directives to the Swedish authorities, which call for the speedy questioning of the suspect.
As can be seen from the history of these proceedings, the Swedish prosecutor takes an adversarial stance towards the person under investigation. For example, in this case, the prosecutor applied to the Stockholm District Court for a detention order in absentia for the purposes of interrogation. When the Appellant appealed to the Svea Court of Appeal against the making of that order, the Swedish prosecutor made written submissions in opposition to this appeal. The same prosecutor (Marianne Ny), having participated as a party to these proceedings before the Swedish courts, later issued the EAW, purportedly as a “judicial authority”. Cited in the submission by the appellant para 25
The February Hearing was held on 7, 8, 11 February 2011. The judgement was delivered on 24 February.
Grounds for challenging Assange’s arrest warrant
The arguments of the defence are summarised below. The original submission is available here.
1. The EAW is not valid
Marianne Ny does not have authority to issue the warrant and is not ’a judicial authority’:
Marianne Ny is not “the Director of Public Prosecutions” as referred to by the prosecution.
Whether she has authority to issue the warrant is a fundamental question going to the heart of the court’s jurisdiction in this case.
There is lack of clarity as to who is the judicial authority in this case.
Expert opinion of Brita Sundberg-Weitman:
“In my opinion, the EAW has not been issued for prosecution but, strictly speaking, been issued for the purposes of enforcing the order for detention in absentia referred to at box (b) of the EAW. Therefore, the Swedish National Police Board was the only authority which could issue the EAW.”
Witness statement by Björn Hurtig:
“I can confirm that Ms. Ny is not the Director of Public Prosecutions, as she is incorrectly described in the English version of the EAW (see page 5). The Swedish word to denote her title is överåklagare and in fact means ’Senior Prosecutor’ and she is one of a number of senior prosecutors. The Director of Public Prosecution in Sweden (i.e. the most senior Prosecutor in Sweden and the equivalent of the DPP in England, Keir Starmer) is the Riksåklagaren – the Prosecutor General – Mr. Anders Perklev.”
Even if Ms. Ny were to technically fall under this category, Ms. Ny’s personal and professional investment in the Assange case (see Sundberg-Weitman’s comments about Ny under Gender Politics) would cast into doubt her suitability as a judicial authority. Although not further defined in the 2003 Extradition Act, a judicial authority can be defined as a person or body independently exercising judicial power. Ms. Ny could not be said to be independently exercising judicial power given that, as expert witness Sven-Erik Alhem (retired Chief District Prosecutor) explained:
“Ms. Ny is the person who both makes the decision to revive the rape investigation and then handles that investigation herself. It may still be considered that here, in a sense, she is ’judge in her own cause’ – having decided to reverse Ms Finné’s decision, she may be perceived as having an interest in deciding to charge Mr. Assange.”
2. EAW sought for improper purpose: disproportionality and abuse of process
The warrant has not been issued “for the purpose of being prosecuted … for an offence”, but merely for questioning.
- Evidence emerged that Julian Assange was not wanted for prosecution in Sweden in the hearings on 7 and 8 February (see the Judgement, p. 15).
- Marianne Ny made a late submission on 4 February explaining her position (Judgement, p. 16->http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resourc…]).
- Julian Assange’s defence counsel challenged the admissibility of Marianne Ny’s late submission, on grounds that it relates to disputed evidence and she should therefore have submitted herself to cross-examination (inter alia, see the Judgement, p. 11).
- See Controversies: Prosecution
The conduct by the Prosecutor Marianne Ny amounted to abuse.
- There have already been abuses in Sweden that cannot be remedied: disclosure to the media, exclusion from appeal, non-disclosure of exculpatory evidence to the defendant, non-interrogation, political intervention. (These are explained in more detail in the Judgement, p. 24).
- See Controversies: Investigation and Prosecution.
3. The offences described in the EAW are not extradition offences
Expert witness and Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford, Andrew Ashworth, provided an analysis on:
- Double criminality – whether the offences described in the warrant would also be offences under English Law.
- The prosecution’s argument that it is possible to infer Assange’s criminal intent (mens rea) from the complainants’ statements.
Ashworth found that on the evidence provided, Assange’s conduct would not amount to offences under UK law because there was no suggestion that the complainants did not consent and in all cases Assange may have reasonably believed that the women did not object to his conduct.
See Ashworth’s analysis of each of the four offences listed in the EAW, under Allegations.
4. Extraneous considerations
The EAW has been issued for political purposes.
- If extradited he may be prejudiced at his trial or punished, detained or restricted in his personal liberty by reason of his political opinions.
- See Political Interference and Gender Politics
5. Julian Assange will not face a fair trial in accordance with Article 6.1 of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)
- Assange would be tried behind closed doors, which is contrary to the ECHR, Art. 47 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the UK’s fundamental constitutional principles.
- Political interference by the Prime Minister of Sweden is calculated to encourage the Swedish media and legal officials to pursue Mr Assange’s guilt and to regard him as a public enemy.
- If Julian Assange is extradited it is more than likely that he will be extradited to the United States where he risks being sent to Guantánamo Bay or executed as a traitor.
- The extradition of Julian Assange would violate articles 3 (torture), 6 (fair trial), 8 (private and family life) and 10 (freedom of expression).
- See Rule of Law and Fair Trial for Julian Assange?. Read the rest of this entry »
By DJ Pangburn
January 11, 2012 will mark the 400th day of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s house arrest, a court order that arose after an erstwhile Swedish prosecutor decided to re-launch a case against the free information and open government activist for a broken condom. According to Swedish laws, sex with a broken condom is deemed not fully consensual.
Assange by that point, of course, was international public enemy #1 for most of 2010 after WikiLeaks began leaking diplomatic cables to the media, some of which contributed to the Arab Spring, which in turn inspired protests across the world, including Occupy Wall Street. Thus, some viewed it as rather convenient that Assange’s presence was rather suddenly demanded in Sweden at the precise moment when WikiLeaks’ influence in the free and open government movement was at its apogee.
Lead Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny has stated that the arrest warrant was issued because interviews in the case cannot be conducted over the phone or internet; they must be held in person, according to Swedish law. Assange and his legal team have argued that it was an attempt to have him extradited to the United States for prosecution under U.S. espionage laws.
Shortly thereafter, WikiLeaks efforts were severely limited by Amazon, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal refusing service due to the political strong arm tactics from the likes of Senator Joe Lieberman, who was Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
While Assange is scheduled for a two-hour hearing at the UK Supreme Court on February 1st over an “application for permission to appeal,” it is quite clear that Assange’s house arrest has also functioned as a de facto political detainment; that Assange is thus a political detainee, and the lengthy process has largely been successful at tightening a logistical and financial vice grip around WikiLeaks’ free information journalism. Read the rest of this entry »
Sweden’s veteran news anchor Olle Andersson doesn’t miss much in this attack on feminist Sweden.
I hereby confess I am guilty of sexual abuse and rape of my wife. I’ve ransacked my memory this past month and calculated that there have been 75 cases of sexual abuse in our 38 years of marriage. In all cases it’s about the condom coming loose without my pointing it out to my partner. Most of the time I didn’t even notice it myself.
And the past few months I’ve realised I’ve raped my wife perhaps 100 times through completed sex – often without a condom, but when she was half asleep.
I now understand, after having drilled down into my suppressed memory, that I’m a simple rapist and should be treated accordingly.
This is no joke, Ms Prosecutor. My wife will corroborate the details when you summon her to interrogation.
For this is the way it has to be, Marianne Ny, that a nation of civil rights has to work the same way for everyone, both megastars like Assange and pensioners like myself. We can’t discriminate between high and low. The law is to be applied equally to all.
So I should be interrogated about my crimes. It is your self-evident duty as prosecutor. This website has my phone number and my approval to forward it to the police and prosecutor’s office. And if you don’t contact me, then I shall conclude that our nation of rights is off kilter. And then I shall file charges against you.
I wish at the same time to file charges against my wife for sexual assault and sexual coercion. We’ve gone together through dozens of cases where she’s taken a firm grip of my arms and held onto me. And even if I didn’t say ‘no’, I very often felt helpless – I couldn’t extricate myself from her iron grip even if I liked the rest of what she did. Read the rest of this entry »
by Siv O’Neall | November 11, 2011 – 11:41am
Crossposted from Axis of Logic
Swedish director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, who requested Assange’s extradition is under fire.
As the French leftist newspaper Libération states, the accusations for rape against Julian Assange were intended to “destroy” Wikileaks ‘ (August 22, 2010).
“There have been [headlines in the media] worldwide claiming that I was suspected of rape (…) And I know from experience that the enemies of WikiLeaks continue to trumpet things even after they were denied.” he says.
Since there is a strong suspicion that political interests are behind the extremely suspicious wheelings and dealings of the Swedish system of justice, we are posting excerpts from an article which was posted in The Standard, New Zealand, on December 4th, 2010 and also by the site Radsoft on December 4th, 2010 “Assange, FSI, Marianne Ny, & The Swedish Media” (FSI – Finers Stephens Innocent is a central London based law firm).
There have been contradictory statements by Swedish legal officers ever since this brouhaha started in August 2010. Two women were wrongly quoted by police officers as having been the victims of rape, whereas only one of the women was complaining of anything at all, and definitely not of rape, which was simply the interpretation of the police officer. The accusation of rape was later withdrawn by the woman in question. The expression ‘trumped-up’ charges comes back rather frequently in the writings dealing with this legal scandal.
The accusations have been moving back and forth from rape to sexual coersion and then to coercion. The Swedish director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, seems to be the official who has been mishandling this case and made herself guilty of lies and strange delays from the very beginning. She overruled the decision by the previous prosecutor, Eva Finné, without even having seen and talked to Julian Assange who had repeatedly asked to see her. Read the rest of this entry »
Rubriken ovan kommer från en svensk folksaga. Mäster Skräddare. En saga som handlar om en man som går till en skräddare med lite tyg och beställer en rock och till slut, efter ett antal veckor och underliga besked, får veta att det blev ingenting. Sagan finns att läsa här.
Personen på bilden har inget med fallet Assange att göra.
Den 20 augusti 2010 går två kvinnor till Klara Närpolisstation. Väl inne på stationen slutar det med att Julian Assange blir anmäld för sexuella övergrepp. Det är dessa anmälningar som är utgångspunkten i hela affären. I en lång artikel, ”Sex, lögner, inga videoband och mer lögner. Falska anklagelser i fallet Assange”, har jag gått igenom polisförhör och kända fakta. Min slutsats är att Anna Ardin, en av de två som anmält Julian Assange, har kommit med påhittade anklagelser. I artikeln gjorde jag ett misstag som jag vill kommentera. Misstaget ändrar inte min slutsats. Men min miss gjorde att jag inte korrekt beskrev överåklagare Marianne Nys tvivelaktiga hantering av fallet.
Det är klarlagt att Anna Ardin inte hade för avsikt att anmäla Julian Assange när hon gick till polisen tillsammans med Sofia Wilén. Det är i alla fall det Anna har sagt till ett antal personer. Hon har gått med som stöd och hjälp till Sofia. Enligt vittnet Donald Boström så fyller Anna i en mening under samtalet på polisstationen. Det är detta uttalande av Anna som gör att polisen gör bedömningen att Julian Assange har gjort sig skyldig till våldtäkt och som medför att Julian blir anhållen i sin frånvaro redan kl 17.00 den 20 augusti. Annas uttalande medför också att polisen antar att Anna också har blivit utsatt för en våldtäkt och i samband med anhållan inleds en förundersökning som fortfarande pågår.
När Anna Ardin lämnar polisstationen den 20 augusti har hon endast lämnat en anmälan om ofredande. Polisen misstänker dock att hon blivit utsatt för en våldtäkt och startar en utredning om våldtäkt. I den utredningen ingår polisförhör med Anna som genomförs per telefon dagen efter, den 21 augusti. Read the rest of this entry »
