The Guardian | 19 Oct 2015
Lawyers for Julian Assange say they are considering launching a fresh appeal against his Swedish arrest warrant, following the publication of correspondence between prosecutors in Britain and Sweden.
The Wikileaks founder’s legal team say the documents show Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service and Marianne Ny, the prosecutor in Sweden seeking Assange’s extradition, were “more interested in winning the case [against him] than finding the truth” following Assange’s arrest in 2010.
Sweden sought Assange’s extradition following allegations of rape and sexual assault against two women in Stockholm in August 2010. He sought asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London in June 2012, after losing his appeal against extradition. The statute of limitations on several of the alleged crimes has since expired, leaving only one allegation outstanding. Assange denies the accusations and has not been charged.
The correspondence was among a number of documents obtained by the Italian newspaper L’Espresso following freedom of information requests in Sweden. In one email, dated 25 January 2011, a CPS lawyer called Paul Close writes to Ny’s office repeating his advice that “in my view it would not be prudent” for Swedish prosecutors to question Assange in the UK over the accusations, rather than insisting on his extradition to Sweden.
“Even if the defendant was to consent to such an interview on a mutually agreed basis, the defence would without any doubt seek to turn the event to its advantage,” he writes.
“It would inevitably allege it was conclusive proof that the Swedish authorities had no case whatsoever against him, and hence the interview was in the hope he would make a full and frank confession … Thus I suggest you interview him only on his surrender to Sweden and in accordance with Swedish law.”
In another email dated 13 January, Close had assured Ny and a colleague, Ola Lofgren, “please do not think that the case is being dealt with just as another extradition request”.
Per Samuelsson, who represents Assange in Sweden, told the Guardian he believed the emails were a “significant development”, because they were “an apparent example of a prosecutor giving another prosecutor advice in order to diminish the rights of the defendant”.
He said they exposed what he argued was Sweden’s true motivation in refusing to interview Assange in the UK at that stage.
“The official explanation was that the quality of the interrogation would be too poor,” he said. “We never believed in that, and consistently questioned it. Now we suspect … the true reason was they were afraid to interrogate Assange was because it would give him a platform to defend himself.”
He said they were considering whether to ask for Ny to be replaced as prosecutor.
A spokeswoman for Ny said she was on holiday and her deputy, Ingrid Isgren, had “no information” on the case before 2013.
But a CPS spokesman said that, when the advice was given in 2011, “we were following due process and advice was being given to facilitate that request. We could not have anticipated later developments, and in particular that Mr Assange would fail to surrender when the courts ordered his extradition to Sweden.”
He said it was “entirely proper that the CPS, when acting for requesting authorities, advise them on all relevant aspects of their extradition request, which can include judicial cooperation.”
Asked what Close had meant when he wrote that this was not “just another extradition case”, the spokesman said some of its cases “stand out because of the nature of the offence, the identity of the requested person, or the complexity of the case, for example. These cases may require greater resources in terms of time and expertise.”
Assange has still not been questioned over the allegations. Ny attempted to interrogate him in the embassy in June, but Ecuador said it could not facilitate the visit because it had not been notified in time, and because it required a bilateral agreement to be in place between the two countries.
After a long period of stalemate, the two countries’ judicial authorities are now in discussions over the arrangements by which they could agree access to the embassy for Swedish prosecutors.
In August the Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire said the government was “frustrated that the interview has not yet taken place. This remains a deeply unsatisfactory and costly situation.” A spokesman for the Foreign Office said Swire had been referring to the circumstances after Assange entered the embassy, rather than to the period covered by the emails.
