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Two DaysMeditating on an almanac.
Two days. That's what Marianne Ny gave Ecuador to receive and process her submission for Mutual Legal Assistance after making the country - and Julian Assange - wait three years.
In those three years, we've heard every lie under the sun. We've heard that it's illegal to travel about to question suspects. But Sweden did just that forty-four (44) times since Julian Assange entered the Ecuador embassy. So that's a lie.
We heard from Carl Bildt that it's unconstitutional. Attorney Svante Thorsell says that it's Bildt's former office (the foreign department) actually in charge of the whole case. And now that Bildt has been replaced by the witless Margot Wallström, and we see nothing's really changed, we finally understand the truth.
Thorsell says it's because the US can twist the thumbscrews - they can and will deny Sweden access to all their important intel if the Swedes don't take care of Assange.
Dissatisfaction in Sweden is growing. The mainstream media in Sweden have kept to a near 100% blackout on all things WikiLeaks. They loved to praise Snowden, because they wanted to give the NSA whistleblower some obscure medal, but both Julian Assange and Sarah Harrison were completely airbrushed out of both the story and the awards ceremony. (Bonniers and Goldman Sachs can do that.)
All the while Marianne Ny worked behind the scenes to not let an interrogation take place.
It was first the Svea appeals court that cautioned her last year that she had to move the case forward. Assange's attorneys, Per E Samuelson and Thomas Olsson, took the matter to the country's supreme court. And that court demanded an explanation from Marianne Ny's superior, prosecutor-general Anders Perklev.
Threatened with losing her case, Marianne Ny suddenly announced that, after nearly five years of doing nothing, she would in fact consent to a trip to London to interrogate Assange. The supreme court relaxed; tranquility could be restored to the duckpond.
But Marianne Ny balked. She did nothing for two whole months. Finally, on 29 May of this year, she sent her submission for Mutual Legal Assistance to 'BIRS', the Swedish agency in charge of diplomacy and translations for matters such as these. (They're connected to the department of justice.)
She simultaneously told the Assange attorneys that her assistant prosecutor and a policewoman would be in Knightsbridge on 17 June. And she planned for her own holiday starting 18 June, the day after.
BIRS needed a fortnight to prepare the submission. But Ny ignored them and went ahead with her plans anyway: she sent Ingrid Isgren to London along with a police interrogator, had Per E Samuelson and Thomas Olsson buy their own tickets, and packed things away for her own holiday.
BIRS finally sent Ny's submission to Ecuador on 12 June. A Friday. As the plan was to meet Assange the following Wednesday, that gave the Republic of Ecuador two days to process her submission, confer with their superiors in Quito, and whatever else they needed to do. There was no way Ecuador could be ready in time.
But that did not stop Marianne Ny. The first version of events, Ny's own version, was that her assistant prosecutor was turned away at the door of the embassy. Curiously, as the media were deliberately not told of the event, a photographer on assignment from Expressen was there and had a twenty minute phone conversation from in front of the embassy with Marianne Ny herself. No one else was seen. Ingrid Isgren never arrived.
So the interrogation didn't happen. Julian Assange was disappointed, to say the least, and issued a statement that same day.
'Today I learned the Swedish legal application to Ecuador, which is likely to take weeks, was only sent to Ecuador two days ago. To behave in such a way seems reckless and it is hard to imagine that it was more than a public relations exercise. It is impossible to maintain confidence in this prosecutor.'
Something that a lot of people seem to miss is how important this interrogation has been for Assange. The WikiLeaks founder has been brilliant in his work, and that work relies on himself having a good reputation. Besides: it's just not nice having things like that hanging over one. As Henrik Alexandersson wrote:
'Now the investigation of the suspected crimes of a lesser degree will be closed. Julian Assange will still be suspected of wrongdoing, in the public view. But not able to clear his name (in these parts) anymore.'
Unless you adhere to the 'presumption of guilt', you have to grant Assange's wish. Countless 'mockingbird' writers have used the allegations to, as the leaked CIA document called it, 'shift the centre of gravity' to damage the trust people have in the organisation. Because the CIA fear Assange and what his WikiLeakers can achieve.
Speaking of which: the year 2015 has been a landmark year for WikiLeaks. Having finally put their new submission system online, after watching hapless attempts by the MSM to offer alternatives, they've been swamped by new leaks and have been publishing nonstop. WikiLeaks came into 2015 with a vengeance.
But were any of these WikiLeaks releases, these staggering revelations, covered in the Swedish media? No. None. Or as close to that as works for a plea of plausible denial. Check for any of them on Sweden's Google News. You'll find a single mention of the NSA meddling in Thailand, but not much more.
The powers that be in Sweden - and they must now be taken seriously in this regard - do not want the people of the country to understand how indispensable Assange's organisation has become. They don't want the people of the country to have any qualms about letting their power elite continue to harass the WikiLeaks leader.
Anyone with an open mind who's studied the Assange police file knows there is no case. Sweden's most respected prosecutor, Eva Finné, knew it too, and closed the cases five years ago. It took Sweden's by far most crooked attorney, Claes Borgstöm, to start rigging things behind the scenes to have them opened again.
Borgstöm was also found to have 'spiced up' the original testimony of Sofia Wilén to make it more prejudicial. And he spent so much time on state television smearing Assange that his client Sofia Wilén finally got rid of him. The actions of Claes Borgstöm would be condemned as contempt of court in any other country. And Claes Borgstöm doesn't exactly have the most lily white of reputations after his part in the Quick scandal. The only reason he hasn't been disbarred is down to technicalities.
Thomas Olsson is at the other end of the spectrum. Olsson's rapidly emerging as a hero in Sweden. It was Thomas Olsson who took the Quick cases back to court and got all their verdicts overturned. Once a lawyer at the firm of Leif Silbersky, Olsson had announced years ago that he was through with defending clients in sex cases, as the stench of corruption was so overwhelming. Thankfully he changed his mind for Assange.
Last Weekend
Back to last weekend when Marianne Ny and the Swedish Canard Depot began their backpedaling. There's a Swedish law in the way of questioning Assange, wrote DN.e at 06:50 local time.
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/svensk-lag-i-vagen-for-assange-forhor/
State television news picked it up at 07:59.
http://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/olagliga-krav-pa-assange-forhor
The ever-sycophantic Local picked it up at 11:39.
http://www.thelocal.se/20150807/sweden-hits-out-at-illegal-ecuador-demands
All the above articles were based on (or simply copied from) a Swedish wire service. The claims made were, to say the least, breathtakingly ludicrous, claiming that Sweden's own immigration authority would have to be involved, and that Ecuador demanded Sweden grant Assange asylum too.
When all that had been written was that Ecuador wanted assurance that Assange's asylum was recognised by Sweden, as per a treaty to which Sweden is already a signatory.
David Allen Green came out of the woodwork, issuing a triplet of toxic tweets, all found to be in error. Reuters picked up the story with the same contradictory twist with as little thought as Green. Nothing was corrected or retracted.
The story broke everywhere, the links too numerous to recount here, yet what no one seemed to realise was that Ecuador would respond. And respond they did.
http://reinounido.embajada.gob.ec/statement...on-the-assange-matter/
Reactions both inside and outside the Swedish duckpond were explosive. The one thing protecting the MSM in Sweden from their readers has been being able to turn off article comments, but Swedes have learned to take to social media instead.
Stunned by this reaction, Cecilia Riddselius of the justice department, who almost singlehandedly created the mess in the first place, backtracked on Monday, but in typical Swedish fashion could not bring herself to admit the whole truth and nothing but. 'The Ecuadoreans must have a different way of interpreting their own letter', Riddselius told local media.
Two Days
It later emerged that what Marianne Ny had given Ecuador wasn't even five days. It was more like two. Her translated letter to Ecuador left 'BIRS' on Friday; then came the weekend. Monday was 15 June. That's when the Republic of Ecuador could begin processing.
But they only had 15 June and 16 June to get it done, as Marianne Ny had already sent her people.
And in a sly reference to that 'mishap', Riddselius today acknowledged that next time they'd make sure they got the go-ahead before setting off again for Harrods.
Ny's assistant Ingrid Isgren never turned up at the embassy, despite Swedish claims to the contrary, and today the Swedes were forced to backpedal there too.
One has to wonder how Julian Assange - or anyone for that matter - could trust such a judicial system.
There's an old saying about not attributing to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. The Swedes again made themselves a global laughing stock, but it remains to be seen how much longer that can help them.
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