La vindicte du Syst\u00e8me contre Julian Assange continue \u00e0 battre son plein. (Pour ce cas, on peut inclure dans le Syst\u00e8me aussi bien les gouvernements US et su\u00e9dois qu’une vaste corporation de journalistes officiels et d’activistes divers, notamment f\u00e9ministes.) Un texte de John Pilger sur Antiwar.com<\/em> le 15 janvier 2011<\/a> donne une appr\u00e9ciation g\u00e9n\u00e9rale sur la situation actuelle du fondateur de WikiLeaks<\/em> et sur les menaces qui p\u00e8sent sur lui.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tPilger reprend notamment un parmi une s\u00e9rie de textes publi\u00e9s dans la presse londonienne lib\u00e9rales (notamment dans le Guardian<\/em>\/Observer<\/em>) il y a quelques semaines (voir aussi notre texte du 23 d\u00e9cembre 2011<\/a>). Il met en \u00e9vidence la complicit\u00e9 de divers commentateurs de cette presse, qui semblaient d’abord s’affirmer comme soutien de Julian Assange et qui jouent d\u00e9sormais, clairement dans certaines occurrences, le r\u00f4le de soutien de l’action des gouvernements acharn\u00e9s \u00e0 la perte d’Assange.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abSo, Julian, why won’t you go back to Sweden now? demanded the headline over Catherine Bennett’s Observer column on 19 December, which questioned Assange’s response to allegations of sexual misconduct with two women in Stockholm last August. To keep delaying the moment of truth, for this champion of fearless disclosure and total openness, wrote Bennett, could soon begin to look pretty dishonest, as well as inconsistent. Not a word in Bennett’s vitriol considered the looming threats to Assange’s basic human rights and his physical safety, as described by Geoffrey Robertson QC, in the extradition hearing in London on 11 January.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIn response to Bennett, the editor of the online Nordic News Network in Sweden, Al Burke, wrote to the Observer explaining that plausible answers to Catherine Bennett’s tendentious question were both critically important and freely available. Assange had remained in Sweden for more than five weeks after the rape allegation was made and subsequently dismissed by the chief prosecutor in Stockholm and that repeated attempts by him and his Swedish lawyer to meet a second prosecutor, who re-opened the case following the intervention of a government politician, had failed. And yet, as Burke pointed out, this prosecutor had granted him permission to fly to London where he also offered to be interviewed a normal practice in such cases. So it seems odd, at the very least, that the prosecutor then issued a European Arrest Warrant. The Observer did not publish Burke’s letter.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThis record-straightening is crucial because it describes the perfidious behavior of the Swedish authorities a bizarre sequence confirmed to me by other journalists in Stockholm and by Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig. Not only that; Burke catalogued the unforeseen danger Assange faces should he be extradited to Sweden. Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England, he wrote, clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is ample reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThese documents have been virtually ignored in Britain. They show that the Swedish political class has moved far from the perceived neutrality of a generation ago and that the country’s military and intelligence apparatus is all but absorbed into Washington’s matrix around NATO. In a 2007 cable, the US embassy in Stockholm lauds the Swedish government dominated by the conservative Moderate Party of prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt as coming from a new political generation and not bound by [anti-US] traditions [and] in practice a pragmatic and strong partner with NATO, having troops under NATO command in Kosovo and Afghanistan.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe cable reveals how foreign policy is largely controlled by Carl Bildt, the current foreign minister, whose career has been based on a loyalty to the United States that goes back to the Vietnam war when he attacked Swedish public television for broadcasting evidence that the US was bombing civilian targets. Bildt played a leading role in the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a lobby group with close ties to the White House of George W. Bush, the CIA and the far right of the Republican Party.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe significance of all this for the Assange case, notes Burke in a recent study, is that it will be Carl Bildt and perhaps other members of the Reinfeldt government who will decide openly or, more likely, furtively behind a fa\u00e7ade of legal formality on whether or not to approve the anticipated US request for extradition. Everything in their past clearly indicates that such a request will be granted.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tCes circonstances autour d’Assange s’inscrivent dans un cadre g\u00e9n\u00e9ral o\u00f9 l’inqui\u00e9tude est tr\u00e8s grande quant \u00e0 son sort, s’il arrivait qu’Assange soit extrad\u00e9 vers les USA, comme Pilger le signale lui-m\u00eame avec ses pr\u00e9cisions sur l’attitude et le comportement du gouvernement su\u00e9dois. Le 12 janvier 2010<\/a>, WSWS.org<\/em> avait publi\u00e9 un texte d’analyse sur la position d’Assange et de ses avocats sur cette question, qui reprend tous les aspects l\u00e9gaux et formels de cette question. L’un des arguments de la d\u00e9fense d’Assange contre son extradition vers la Su\u00e8de est effectivement que cela pourrait conduire \u00e0 son extradition vers les USA, o\u00f9 il serait soumis \u00e0 des conditions de torture, sinon ex\u00e9cut\u00e9<\/p>\n<\/p>\n