David Allen Green’s latest effort to explode “myths”
about Julian Assange’s case linked to the following article which Green cited as evidence that Sweden’s collaboration with CIA “renditions” (i.e. kidnapping and torture) is no big reason to doubt that Assange would get a fair hearing from Sweden’s judiciary or to fear he would get shipped off to the USA to be charged with political crimes.
Green noticed that according to this article above “it appears that in 2006 Sweden stopped rendition flights for the USA”
What Green somehow missed in this article he cited was that it also stated
““Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, two Egyptians who had been seeking asylum in Sweden, were arrested by Swedish police in December 2001. They were taken to Bromma airport in Stockholm, had their clothes cut from their bodies, suppositories inserted in their anuses and in diapers, overall, handcuffs and chains put on an executive jet with American registration N379P with a crew of masked men. “
In other words the men were raped and tortured in Sweden which makes the Swedish officials involved in turning them over to US agents accomplices to torture, rape and other grave violations of international and national law that took place in Sweden.
I leave it to David Allen Green and his keen legal mind to explain why the men were not raped and tortured.
As of 2009 the International Commission of Jurists and the UN Human Rights Council deplored Sweden’s failure to criminally prosecute the Swedish officials or US agents involved.
The Human Rights Committee in Alzery v Sweden found that the failure to institute
criminal prosecutions in respect of the conduct of either Swedish or foreign officials
involved in the rendition of Mr Alzery violated Article 7 ICCPR read in conjunction
with Article 2 ICCPR, noting that “as a result of the combined investigations of the
Parliamentary Ombudsman and the prosecutorial authorities, neither Swedish
officials nor foreign agents were the subject of a full criminal investigation, much
less the initiation of formal charges […]”.
That’s another huge fact Green missed in his zeal to offer the following apologetic for Sweden’s criminality. Green wrote
Is this case analogous to the Assange extradition? The first answer is that there is a distinction between judicial and extra-judicial activities – and Assange is wanted for a judicial process. Second, rendition is not extradition. Third, the Agiza and Al-Zery case caused scandal in Sweden leading, among other things, to payments of substantial compensation once the judicial system was engaged. It was an awful incident but it is not one which carries over easily to the Assange situation.
No criminal prosecution for being accomplices to rape and torture, no criminal prosecution of the actual rapists and torturers but Green struggles to see how it “carries over” to the Assange case. Is there a liberal pundit out there ready to stoop lower?
A FURTHER NOTE:
According to this document by Amnesty International (a group that is quite easy on Western states and their allies) the rape and torture of the Egyptian men in Stockholm took place in the presence of Swedish officials.
The relevant passage states
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their clothes were cut off with a pair of scissors, and placed in a plastic bag;
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their hair, mouth and ears were thoroughly examined;
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they were then handcuffed and shackled;
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Mohammed El Zari was then forced to bend over, had a tranquilizer — apparently some kind of muscle relaxant — inserted into his anus, and was placed in waterproof underpants. Other reports indicate that both men underwent this;(6)
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they were dressed in boiler suits, blindfolded and hooded; and
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one of the foreign agents took photographs of it.”
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