By Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli
[Authors’ note: At the time of this publication, I had a government appointment as alternative scientific member of the Swedish Ethical Committee for Scientific Research (EPN), Uppsala.]
Prosecutor Marianne Ny, Thomas Bodström, formerly at the Ministry of Justice, and Claes Borgström, formerly the Gender Equality Ombudsman, together constituted the core of the governmental committee set up for the promulgation of the new Swedish 2005 rape legislation. At the bottom of that radical-feminist constellation we found at the time the Social Democratic Christian organization called the Brotherhood, of which Anna Ardin was then the political secretary.
After the case against Assange has been legally dismissed by a senior prosecutor (Chief Prosecutor Eva Finée) the petition of reopening the case was formally presented on the 27 of August 2010 by lawyer Claes Borgström, of the private law-firm Bodström & Borgström –a firm based in Gothenburg. Former Justice Minister of Sweden Thomas Bodström proudly announces 3 of December 2010 in his blog “Bodströmsamhället” (“Society according to Bodström”) that it is his very legal firm who represent the plaintiff against the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (“Det är vår advokatbyrå genom Claes Borgström som är målsägandebiträde“).
“Bodström & Borgström” stands for a) Thomas Bodström, most known internationally for his involvement in the secret collaboration by the Swedish government with the CIA regarding, among other things, the illegal extradition of political prisoners from Swedish territory to be send to torture elsewhere via CIA rendition-flights. In Sweden, he his most known for his staunch support to any legislation which have entailed infringement-risks to the private integrity of us citizens, such as the infamous Surveillance Law (FRA lagen) of 2008 devised in Sweden at the behest of US interests. The transparency principle advocated by Wikileaks represents the antithesis of such FRA-legislation. Also in this context, Thomas Bordström is a senior figure in the Social Democratic organization “Bröderskap” (the afore mentioned Brotherhood), whose political secretary at the time of the “accusations” against Julian Assange in August 2010 was Anna Ardin, the main accuser. b) The late Claes Borgström, the government-appointed Gender Equality Ombudsman of Sweden, who left the Socialdemocratic Party for considering it not being enough radical feminist. During a meeting called by The Women-Lobby aimed to analyze the notorious anti-Assange campaign #Prataomdet (Talk about), Claes Borgström acknowledged there very distinctly: “This is absolutely a political issue” (“Det här är absolut en politisk fråga“).
Geopolitically contexted, the request for the prosecution of Assange was made by the US military. It was a request put forward to all the countries with military forces under US command in the invasion of Afghanistan. But only Sweden complied. This below was reported by Greenwald & Gallagher in “Snowden Documents Reveal Covert Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks and Its Supporters” (The Intercept, 18 Feb 2014):