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Australia appeals to Sweden over Assange

Australia's ambassador in Stockholm has written an appeal to Sweden's justice minister for assurances that Julian Assange, an Australian national, will be treated fairly should the WikiLeaks founder be extradited to Sweden.

Published: 17 February 2011 16:21 CET
Australia appeals to Sweden over Assange
Ambassador Paul Stephens; An Assange supporter in London

In a letter sent to Justice Minister Beatrice Ask last week, Australian ambassador Paul Stephens took up Assange’s case, which the ambassador termed as “high profile”.

“I am writing in relation to the situation concerning Mr. Julian Assange, an Australian citizen who is facing extradition to Sweden from the United Kingdom under the terms of a European Arrest Warrant,” Stephens wrote to Ask last Friday.

Stephens explained that Assange “has been detained in his absence” by a Swedish court on suspicions of having committed “a criminal offence”.

“I wish to convey the Australian Government’s expectation that, should Mr. Assange be brought into Swedish jurisdiction, his case would proceed in accordance with due process and the provisions prescribed under Swedish law,” the Australian ambassador.

He emphasised as well that he expected Assange’s case to adhere to “applicable European and international laws, including relevant human rights norms”.

The letter was written on the same day as Assange’s last court appearance at the end of three days of legal arguments in his extradition trial.

He has been ordered to return to a London court next Thursday to learn if he will be extradited to Sweden to face questioning over sex crime allegations.

Last week, his lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson launched a scathing attack against Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt after he made comments saying that Sweden does not take women’s rights lightly.

Ask’s press secretary Martin Valfridsson told The Local that Sweden’s justice minister is legally prohibited from interfering in the legal process.

“The minister of justice is not involved in the trial, nor did she ask for the arrest warrant that has been submitted by the Swedish prosecutors,” he told The Local.

“She can’t give any comment on it, but I can confirm that the letter has arrived. We can’t comment on the ongoing process. She is forbidden by the Swedish constitution to have any influence on the ongoing case.”

Assange’s mother Christine has previously appealed to the Australian government for assistance since her son’s arrest.

“Julian did not even get the laptop you had publicly promised him which he needed to prepare for his case while he was in Wandsworth Prison,” she wrote to former Australian prime minister and current Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd.

Attempts by The Local on Thursday to reach a representative at the Australian embassy in Stockholm for comment were unsuccessful.

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OPINION AND ANALYSIS

OPINION: Sweden must demand that Julian Assange go free

Given Sweden’s involvement in the Assange case, the government’s continued silence over his impending extradition to the US is indefensible, says David Crouch

Published: 17 June 2022 13:37 CEST
OPINION: Sweden must demand that Julian Assange go free

I have no personal fondness for Julian Assange. I cannot forgive him for not condemning the torrent of abuse and slander suffered by the two Swedish women who, in 2010, accused him of sexual assault. His treatment of them has been shameful. Assange has continued to protest his innocence and has not expressed any regret for what happened. 

But that was then and this is now. At stake is something much bigger than the fate of one man and two women. And the Swedish government bears a clear share of responsibility for the outcome. 

Sweden’s prosecutors dropped the sexual assault investigation against Assange in 2017. For more than three years, he has been held in a maximum security prison in London while he has fought extradition to the United States on espionage charges. In April, a British court finally approved the extradition and referred the matter to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel. 

Today (June 17), Patel gave the green light for extradition; Assange has 14 days to appeal. 

Extradition would be a colossal blow against media freedom. Journalists would fear to investigate US military and surveillance operations around the world. Assange himself faces a lifetime in jail for publishing classified documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including evidence of war crimes. 

Many Swedish free speech organisations recognise this. “The information obtained thanks to Julian Assange and Wikileaks is of great public interest. In a democracy, whistleblowers must be protected, not taken to court to become pawns in a political game,” says the Swedish Journalists’ Association. A large number of press freedom and human right organisations have echoed these words, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Index on Censorship, to name but a few.

“Should Assange be extradited to the US, it could have serious consequences for investigative journalism,” says the Swedish branch of Reporters without Borders. “Through the indictment of Assange, the US is also sending a signal to all journalists who want to examine the actions of the US military and security services abroad, or US arms deals for that matter. This also applies to Swedish journalists.”

Last month, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, called on Patel not to extradite Assange, saying it would have “a chilling effect on media freedom”.  Anna Ardin, one of the women who brought the original accusations of sexual assault, describes the accusations against Assange for espionage as “helt galet” (completely crazy). 

Given Sweden’s involvement in the Assange case, the continued silence from Rosenbad, the seat of government offices in Stockholm, is indefensible. 

For the seven years in which Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, he said consistently and repeatedly that he was prepared to face justice in Sweden, but feared extradition to the United States and therefore required a guarantee that this would not happen. His treatment in the UK is proof that his fears were justified. 

As early as September 2012, The Local quoted Amnesty International on this matter: “If the Swedish authorities are able to confirm publicly that Assange will not eventually find himself on a plane to the USA if he submits himself to the authority of the Swedish courts then this will … it will break the current impasse and second it will mean the women who have levelled accusations of sexual assault are not denied justice.”

And yet, throughout, Sweden’s Ministry of Justice kept quiet. Instead, the Swedish Prosecution Authority stated repeatedly: “Every extradition case is to be judged on its own individual merits. For that reason the Swedish government cannot provide a guarantee in advance that Julian Assange would not be subject to further extradition to the USA.”

In 2016, a United Nations panel decided that Sweden had violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It called on the Swedish authorities to end Assange’s “deprivation of liberty”, respect his freedom of movement and offer him compensation. Again, the government itself remained silent, although Sweden’s director-general for legal affairs said that it disagreed with the panel.

Freedom of speech is one of the four “fundamental laws” that make up the Swedish constitution. There can be no excuse now for Morgan Johansson, Justice Minister, not to speak out in defence of Assange’s role as a whistleblower and journalist. 

Imagine if Assange had revealed Russian war crimes in Ukraine and was being held in Moscow’s high security prison? Every Western leader would be up in arms. 

Assange’s wife Stella Moris has Swedish citizenship. Her life, and that of their two children, will be destroyed if her husband, their father, is sent to rot in a US jail.

At this point in time, when Sweden’s independence in global affairs is in doubt owing to pressure from Turkey over its application to join Nato, it is even more vital for the government to break its silence and help bring the persecution of Julian Assange to an end. 

David Crouch covered Julian Assange’s campaign in the Swedish courts for The Guardian newspaper and is among 1900 journalists to have signed a statement in his defence. He is a freelance journalist and a lecturer in journalism at Gothenburg University.

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