(2016) SWEDEN VS. ASSANGE – HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES. By Prof Marcello Ferrada de Noli

SWEDEN VS. ASSANGE – HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES

Author: Marcello Ferrada de Noli

Year: 2014, 2016

ISBN 978-91-981615-1-9

 

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Foreword by Andrew Kreig*

*Washington-based attorney, author  and historian.

Executive Director of the Justice Integrity Project, Washington DC

 

“A distinguished European human rights advocate is relentlessly exposing abuses by mainstream Swedish news organizations covering the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Dr. Marcello Ferrada de Noli is a medical school professor who splits his time between Sweden and Italy after surviving politically motivated torture decades ago in Chile. He was imprisoned in Quiriquina Island Camp, after resisting Pinochet’s Military Junta, and he was himself a whistleblower upon the Russel Tribunal in Rome in 1974, on the crimes perpetrated by the Junta.

As Swedish authorities push for a secret trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the noted human rights activist has repeatedly challenged the oft-praised fairness of his nation’s legal system and its media coverage. His columns have shown how Sweden’s major broadcasters and newspapers support their government’s campaign against Assange.

Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli has worked almost tirelessly in his spare time to expose what he regards as complacency among his fellow Swedes regarding the human rights abuses in his nation’s all-out effort to capture Assange, ostensibly because of sex allegations filed by a politically connected lawyer. For Ferrada de Noli, however, the irregularities in the unprecedented Interpol manhunt to capture Assange for another round of questioning are already shocking. The case is so unusual that the doctor has published on his Professors blogg website since 2010 over 150 investigative commentaries.

Ferrada de Noli, right, argues that massive irregularities by Swedish authorities and structural flaws within the nation’s legal system are the true cause of the global scrutiny of Sweden for due process violations in the heavy-handed Swedish investigation of Assange for potential rape charges under an expansive legal definition. Several of Dr. Ferrada de Noli’s columns examine the motives and sensationalistic tactics of state-owned Swedish National Television in its documentary-sendings on Assange. Similarly, he published a column concluding that a “scoop” by the country’s right-wing tabloid Expessen was to obscure the close working relationship between it and authorities prosecuting Assange. Overall, the professor characterizes the news coverage as anti-Assange and pro-prosecution despite the broadcasters’ ostensible professional neutrality. Meanwhile, cables released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks are creating worldwide headlines as the week begins. The cables show that the United States has been secretly funding anti-government efforts in Syria for years, helping threaten the current government.

Ferrada-Noli’s extensive columns on these topics have drawn several times on the work of the Justice Integrity Project. The first time was our revelation in December in cooperation with Alabama legal affairs commentator Roger Shuler that Karl Rove lists himself as an advisor to Sweden’s governing Moderate Party, which has its roots in the nation’s conservative movement. Rove also has prominent ties within Sweden’s communications sector (including its leading public relations company and think tank) and called for Assange’s execution on Aug. 7 on Fox News, shortly before Assange’s trip to Sweden.

Additionally, our Justice Integrity Project broke the story that one of two name partners in the law firm seeking to question Assange is a former Swedish minister of justice [Thomas Bodström] who was implicated in Sweden’s 2001 cooperation with CIA-orchestrated rendition of two asylum-seekers from Sweden to their native Egypt for torture.

Far beyond our contributions, Ferrada-Noli has republished and otherwise defended the work of the best-selling American author and prominent feminist Naomi Wolf, who has been attacked in certain Swedish and feminist circles for raising questions about political motivations for Assange’s prosecution. Wolf has written, for example, that she has never seen during her lifelong pro-feminist efforts any parallel to Sweden’s all-out investigation of such suspicions. Those suspicions have not yet resulted in any formal charges despite the vast expense to all involved and Assange’s fears that his work and perhaps life are endangered.

We see evidence also that the trans-Atlantic campaign against WikiLeaks-type disclosures is not just by governments but also by also by traditional media threatened by increased public access to unfiltered source documents.

Those on the outside can only raise questions about due process procedures and other normal professional standards in law and journalism. Ultimately, however, human rights in Sweden require its own professionals to take the lead as exemplified by Prof. Ferrada de Noli.

The professor holds a Ph.D. in psychiatry from the Karolinska Institutet and he is a Professor Emeritus in Public Health Sciences, Epidemiology, and of International Health; he was formerly a research fellow in social medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Andrew Kreig, Washington DC”

With Julian Assange  and human-rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson, in London

 

 

 

By June 13th 2012, Professors Blogg had published 150 articles in contribution to the cause of justice for the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and had registered over 300,000 pageviews  (N= 300,574 by the 13th of May 2:40 PM). Read the Stats reports here