Assange: Guilty? Innocent? "Foreign Spy"? CIA Operative?

Tomorrow the 14th, Julian Assange has a hearing about why he's been in lockup in the UK for the last couple days.
Al Jazeera English has his lawyer talking about a few things that are worth noting. According to him:

from zdistrict.com

-the Swedish prosecutor who had Assange detained won't tell him what the evidence against him is, and won't come to talk to him. He has a right to both those things happening both under Swedish law, and UK law.


-he isn't actually charged with anything yet


-the penalty for espionage in the US is still death


-Russia and China have accused him of being a CIA operative.

    This entire Assange-In-Prison arm of the Wikileaks scandal and attendant fuck-uppery has been something I've been researching madly, but not posting a lot about. Why? Well frankly, because it's messy, and it makes me very angry.

   I take allegations of sexual crime of any kind very seriously. I also refuse to draw conclusions about someone's guilt or innocence with the ridiculously minuscule amount of information that's reliably available.

    If he did commit a crime, then he's a jerk, but it has nothing to do with Wikileaks, the cables, or the underlying threat to free press.

    If he didn't commit a crime, then the entire Swedish, American and International justice system has abandoned due process for a witch-hunt spurred by Yank politicians having a temper tantrum at their public embarrassment--and it's double-plus-worse, because they've devalued the severity of sex crime allegations by using them as holding charges.

    It's probably a little bit of both (as the laws governing sex crimes in Sweden are really, really different than they are here in Canada and most of the West), which is unimaginably worse. The women who are wrapped up in this have unfairly been subjected to intense scrutiny for the timing of their allegations, which no one bringing legitimate sex crime charges deserves. Assange has been denied a charge, a view of the evidence against him, and (unremarkably for holding charges) has been denied bail. The whole thing really, really smells of smear campaign--which is bad in all kinds of ways, even for the people orchestrating it.

    Watch this space; After the hearing, I'll have things to say.

...Oh and sidenote: CIA Operative? Really, Russia? Really?