A lawyer for one of the women who allege was raped by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has criticized police and others for inerfering in the matter, saying her client was not “out for revenge”.
“Why have courts when we can hold votes in daily newspapers and televised debates?” Massi Fritz wrote in the commentary in a Swedish newspaper.
Assange, from Australia, faces allegations of sexual molestation in which two women allege he coerced and raped them in 2010.
“It is a scandal that women’s rights in Sweden in the year 2014 are still seen by many as a parenthesis, a restraint, in this ‘hero’s’ [Assange’s] important work,” Massi Fritz wrote.
To escape extradition from Britain to Sweden, which Assange said he feared would result in his being turned over to U.S. officials because of the millions of sensitive military and diplomatic documents posted on the whistle-blowing website, Assange has taken refuge in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. Part of a renewed debate in Sweden is whether the prosecutors could question Assange in London, rather than have the suspect travel to Sweden to give his version of events.
