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posted by n1 on Tuesday October 20 2015, @04:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the wouldn't-do-that-if-i-were-you dept.

Italian newspaper L'Espresso requested documents from the UK and Sweden using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) mechanisms and while they didn't get anything from the UK Crown Prosecution Service they did get 226 pages from the Swedish Prosecution Authority, enough to cast some light on what went on behind the scene.

From their English version (original in Italian):

The files obtained under Foia reveal that from the very beginning, the "Crown Prosecution Service" in London advised the Swedish prosecutors against the investigative strategy that could have led to a quick closure of the preliminary investigation: questioning Assange in London – as he has requested on many occasions - rather than extraditing him to Stockholm, as the Swedish prosecutors have always tried to do.

In January 2011, not even two months after Julian Assange had been arrested in London, a lawyer at the Crown Prosecution Service, Mr. Paul Close, strongly advised the Swedish magistrates against questioning the WikiLeaks' founder in London.

Much more in the L'Espresso news articles including some of the documents. There's also coverage (so far) by 9news in australia ("Details in new UK documents stun Assange") and RT out of Russia ("UK resisted Swedish efforts to interview Julian Assange").


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Tuesday October 20 2015, @07:23AM

    by zocalo (302) on Tuesday October 20 2015, @07:23AM (#252203)
    To be fair, the media spin in quite real as well. Nowhere I could see in that correspondence does Paul Close refuse Swedish access to Assange as the story asserts, he just advises against it due to likely (but unspecified) complications, probably due to legal issues. The Ecudorean audthorities however do decline to allow the Swedish investigators access at one point due to legal issues - possibly the same ones Paul Close was advising them against? I'm not so sure the inability to stage in interview between the Swedes and Assange (anywhere) is so much a conspiracy as just general incompetence in the legal systems and procedures of the three countries involved - something Paul Close all but owns up to. That it also keeps Assange bottled up and presumably limits his ability to be involved in the operation of Wikileaks is perhaps something they are not too upset about, of course.
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