WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in an interview published on Sunday he believed the Pentagon could be behind a rape allegation against him that was swiftly dropped by Swedish authorities.
His comments came as prosecutors justified their treatment of the 39-year-old Australian, whose whistleblowing Web site is embroiled in a row with Washington over the publication of secret Afghan war documents.
The Aftonbladet newspaper quoted Assange as saying he did not know who was “hiding behind” the rape claim, which prompted prosecutors to issue a warrant for his arrest on Friday but which was cancelled the following day.
“But we have been warned that, for instance, the Pentagon will use dirty tricks to destroy us. I have furthermore been warned about set-up sex traps,” he said, in a translation of comments published in Swedish.
The former computer hacker described the allegations as “shocking” and said he had “never, neither in Sweden nor in any other country, had sex with someone in a way which wasn’t completely voluntary on both sides.”
Assange told Aftonbladet — for which he last week agreed to write a regular column — that his enemies would still use the claims to damage WikiLeaks despite the lifting of the warrant.
The Web site is set to publish 15,000 more secret papers about the war in Afghanistan in coming weeks, having recently released nearly 77,000 papers and sparking charges that it had endangered the lives of informants and others.
“I know from experience that WikiLeaks’ enemies continue to trumpet things even after they have been denied,” Assange said.
He refused to give more details about the two women whose claims sparked the furor, saying that it would impinge on their privacy.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said any allegation of dirty tricks was “absurd.”
Sweden’s prosecution service said on Saturday that Assange was now “not suspected of rape” and was no longer wanted for questioning on the allegation, but added that an investigation into a separate molestation charge remained open.
He had been in Stockholm earlier this month giving a press conference on the upcoming release of the last batch of Afghanistan documents, but he generally remains on the move around the world staying with supporters.
He told Aftonbladet he was currently at a friend’s summerhouse in northern Sweden.
As the furor over the arrest warrant grew, the Swedish prosecutor’s office issued a statement on Sunday defending its actions.
It said that chief prosecutor Eva Finne, who was responsible for withdrawing the arrest warrant, had “more information available to decide on Saturday than the duty prosecutor on Friday evening.”
“A decision regarding restrictive measures, such as this, must always be reevaluated in a preliminary inquiry,” the statement added.
Prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Karin Rosander said late on Saturday that the procedure followed was normal and would have been launched automatically by the duty prosecutor in serious cases such as rape.
Separately the duty prosecutor, Maria Haljebo Kjellstrand, said that she “did not regret her decision.”
The two women who originally made the allegations did not make an official complaint and it was the police who took the decision to inform the prosecutor’s office, she told Expressen newspaper, which broke the story of the charges.
“I received a report from the police which seemed to me to be sufficient to arrest him. On Friday evening I got a call from the police describing what the women said. The information I received was convincing enough for me to take my decision,” Hljebo Kjellstrand was quoted as saying.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS