Abbott has faced a storm of criticism for her statement, accused of not giving enough weight to the Swedish case. In fact, her only mistake was to give it more weight than it currently deserves. She spoke of "rape charges," but there are in fact no such charges. (Additionally, although the case is classed broadly as a rape allegation in Sweden, in the U.K. it would be classed at most as sexual assault. Forgotten too is that the evidence was considered too weak by the original prosecutor to bring any charges, Assange was allowed to leave Sweden and the investigation was dropped.)
Assange Did Not Flee Questioning
Rather, Assange was previously wanted for questioning, and has never been charged with anything. If the Swedish extradition request is revived, it will be so that he can be questioned about those allegations. I should also point out, as almost no one else is, that Assange did not "flee" questioning. He offered Swedish prosecutors to question him at the embassy.
Even though questioning overseas in extradition cases is common, Sweden has done it dozens of times. Sweden repeatedly refused in Assange's case, leading the Swedish appeal court to criticize the prosecutors. When he was finally questioned after four years of delays, Swedish prosecutors violated his rights by refusing access to his Swedish lawyer.
Further, the MPs and media getting exercised that Assange "took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden" are forgetting that he did not object to extradition as long as he received a promise that he would not then be extradited on to the U.S. Sweden refused to offer such assurances. We can now see only too clearly that Assange had every reason to insist on such assurances.
I don't have space here to analyze the Swedish case on this occasion (that's maybe for another time), though it is worth briefly noting that most of the problematic details of the case have been disappeared down the memory hole.
Given that the political and media class are still speaking in terms of "charges," rather than questions about allegations, we should recall that there were glaring problems with the evidence in the Swedish case. Not least, the key piece of evidence against Assange a torn condom produced by the woman was found to contain not a trace of DNA from either Assange or from her.
Those at the forefront of the attacks on Abbott and Corbyn, echoed by The Guardian, are the same Blairite Labour MPs who have been trying to oust Corbyn as Labour party leader, despite his twice being elected overwhelmingly by the membership.
These MPs, who dominate the Labour parliamentary party, have spent the past four years focusing on smears that Labour is "institutionally anti-Semitic" in an obvious effort to terminally wound Corbyn. Now they have found another possible route to achieve the same end.
They are suggesting that Corbyn and Abbott are disregarding the Swedish woman's right to justice. The clear subtext of their arguments is that the pair are rape apologists.
As I have pointed out, Abbott has actually overstated the current status of the Swedish case, not sidelined it at all.
But what Corbyn and Abbott have done is to make a clear political, legal and moral demarcation between the Swedish case, which must be resolved according to accepted legal principles, and the U.S. extradition, which has no legal or moral merit whatsoever.
What these U.K. MPs and The Guardian have done in this front-page story is muddy the waters yet further, with enthusiastic disregard for the damage it might do to Assange's rights, to Corbyn's leadership and to the future of truth-telling journalism.
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