[Peace-discuss] Swedish PM errand-boy for Obama

[C. G. Estabrook]

Swedish PM Taps Assange as ‘Public Enemy Number One’
Comments Add to Argument Assange Cannot Get a Fair Trial in Sweden
by Jason Ditz, February 13, 2011

Can Julian Assange count on a fair trial in Sweden? Not if you believe the 
nation’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who insisted over the weekend that 
Assange is “public enemy number one” for the nation.

This is an incredible claim for the prime minister to make, particularly when 
Swedish officials haven’t even formally charged the WikiLeaks founder with a 
single offence yet. Indeed, the official reason for seeking his extradition is 
still “questioning,” though puzzlingly Swedish officials have declined offers to 
question him in London, where he presently resides.

Assange’s alleged crime in the Swedish case, which isn’t even a formal 
accusation yet so much as a vague suspicion, is an exceedingly minor offence 
related to consensual sex with a pair of different women. But Assange’s 
objection to the extradition has never so much been his belief that he cannot 
get a fair trial in Sweden, though clearly his lawyer’s arguments to that effect 
have been greatly strengthened by the prime minister’s comments.

Rather the concern is that the Swedish government, keen to build up their 
relationship with the US, will never even try to charge Assange with a crime 
themselves, but will simply trade him off to the Obama Administration, whose 
officials have called him a terrorist for his publication of embarrassing 
information about them, and that he will simply disappear into a legal black 
hole as so many other administration foes in the US have. Though the Swedish 
government’s bias will no doubt be an issue in the case, the prospect of sending 
Assange, who is an Australian citizen and subsequently part of the Commonwealth 
of Nations, from Britain to a possible summary execution somewhere, will no 
doubt be the bigger concern for British officials, and not the prospect that he 
will serve a few years in Swedish prison.