A winter morning in backwoods Scandinavia and the chime of a church bell drifts across the snowbound town of Enkoping. Does it also toll for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange?
Today, this small industrial centre, 40 miles west of Stockholm, remains best-known – if known at all – as the birthplace of the adjustable spanner.
But if extradition proceedings involving Britain are successful, it could soon be rather more celebrated – by the U.S. government at least – as the place where Mr Assange made a catastrophic error.
Here, in a first-floor flat in a dreary apartment block, the mastermind behind the leak of more than 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables this month slept with a female admirer whom he had just met at a seminar. She subsequently made a complaint to police.
As a result, Assange, believed to be in hiding in England, faces a criminal prosecution and possibly jail. Last night, a European Arrest Warrant was given by Interpol to Scotland Yard.
The Stockholm police want to question him regarding the possible rape of a woman and separate allegations from another Swedish admirer, with whom he was having a concurrent fling. But there remains a huge question mark over the evidence. Many people believe that the 39-year-old Australian-born whistleblower is the victim of a U.S. government dirty tricks campaign.
They argue that the whole squalid affair is a sexfalla, which translates loosely from the Swedish as a ‘honeytrap’.
One thing is clear, though: Sweden’s complex rape laws are central to the story.
Using a number of sources including leaked police interviews, we can begin to piece together the sequence of events which led to Assange’s liberty being threatened by Stockholm police rather than Washington, where already one U.S. politician has called on him to executed for ‘spying’.
The story began on August 11 this year, when Assange arrived in Stockholm.
He had been invited to be the key speaker at a seminar on ‘war and the role of the media’, organised by the centre-Left Brotherhood Movement.
His point of contact was a female party official, whom we shall refer to as Sarah (her identity must be protected because of the ongoing legal proceedings).
An attractive blonde, Sarah was already a well-known ‘radical feminist’. In her 30s, she had travelled the world following various fashionable causes.
While a research assistant at a local university she had not only been the protegee of a militant feminist academic, but held the post of ‘campus sexual equity officer’. Fighting male discrimination in all forms, including sexual harassment, was her forte.
Sarah and Assange had never met. But in a series of internet and telephone conversations, they agreed that during his visit he could stay at her small apartment in central Stockholm. She said she would be away from the city until the day of the seminar itself.
What happened over the next few days – while casting an extraordinary light on the values of the two women involved – suggests that even if the WikiLeaks founder is innocent of any charges, he is certainly a man of strong sexual appetites who is not averse to exploiting his fame.
Certainly his stay was always going to be a very social affair, mingling with like-minded and undoubtedly admiring people.
That Thursday, he held court at the Beirut Cafe in Stockholm, dining with fellow ‘open government’ campaigners and an American journalist.
The following afternoon, Sarah returned to Stockholm, 24 hours earlier than planned.
In an interview she later gave to police, she is reported to have said: ‘He (Assange) was there when I came home. We talked a little and decided that he could stay.’
The pair went out for dinner together at a nearby restaurant. Afterwards they returned to her flat and had sex. What is not disputed by either of them is that a condom broke – an event which, as we shall see, would later take on great significance.
At the time, however, the pair continued to be friendly enough the next day, a Saturday, with Sarah even throwing a party for him at her home in the evening.
That same day, Assange attended his seminar at the Swedish trade union HQ. In the front row of the audience, dressed in an eye-catching pink jumper – you can see her on a YouTube internet clip recorded at the time – was a pretty twentysomething whom we shall call Jessica. She was the woman – who two sources this week told me is a council employee – from Enkoping.
December 8, 2010
