Australia: Dick Smith Takes on Sweden & US Empire

Dick Smith Takes on Sweden & US Empire FREE ASSANGE The Australian Dick Smith threatens US, Sweden over Assange     The Australian     12:00AM July 7, 2016 Matthew Denholm Tasmania correspondent Hobart Wealthy Australian businessman Dick Smith is preparing to stir a diplomatic hornets’ nest, in the hope of securing the freedom of WikiLeaks founder Julian ­Assange. Mr Smith has written to the United States and Swedish ambassadors in Canberra warning their relationship with Australia will suffer unless the four-year legal stand-off over Assange, holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy, is resolved. The outspoken entrepreneur and aviator has visited Mr Assange three times, most recently last month, and revealed he had toyed with the idea of using a helicopter to airlift the Australian from the embassy. He has made a YouTube video attacking the US and Sweden for their role in Mr Assange’s predicament and promised that is only the start of a new and determined campaign to “free” the embattled Australian, with a series of newspaper advertisements to follow. “I’m not going to give up on this — it needs to be resolved one way or the other,” Mr Smith told The Australian. “Julian is an Australian and Australians should be treated fairly. This is only going to get worse and worse for them (Sweden and the US).” Mr Assange moved into the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in June 2012, to avoid extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges, which he denies and claims are politically driven. He was subsequently granted political asylum by ­Ecuador.  [comment:  there are no 'charges' of sexual assault.  Sweden only has police allegations & has not even bothered to interview journalist, Julian Assange, in almost 6 years he has been detained pursuant to European Arrest Warrant (EAW) in Britain. ] Mr Assange claimed that if he was extradited the Swedes would hand him over to the US, to be prosecuted over the WikiLeaks release of classified American documents. Mr Smith believes the subsequent stand-off has taken a toll on Mr Assange and that the US needs to resolve it by declaring emphatically it has no intention of seeking his extradition, and Sweden should send police to interview him in London. “This time I saw him, he looked very white — he hasn’t seen the sun for four years,” Mr Smith said. “This needs to be resolved. “If I found some classified documents, I would give them to our government. But you need people like Assange, because governments don’t always do the right thing. We need whistleblowers.” Mr Smith warned there would be “horrendous” consequences for the Australia-American relationship if Mr Assange was taken into custody by the US, and threatened to target Swedish companies such as Ikea and the Saab aerospace and defence group. In his letter to US Ambassador John Berry, which he also sent to Swedish Ambassador Par Ahlberger, Mr Smith links Sweden’s role in the Assange stand-off to its desire to protect its arms trade, and likens that to the country’s “immoral” conduct during World War II. “Sweden continued to supply iron ore to Germany throughout the Second World War, while young Australians and Americans were being killed trying to defend Europe,” Mr Smith’s letter says. Neither ambassador responded to requests for comment yesterday. Mr Smith said he had a record of helping to secure the release of Australians detained in controversial circumstances, having campaigned for David Hicks, who was released from Guantánamo Bay in 2007, and asylum seeker Peter Qasim, who was freed from detention in 2005. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/dick-smith-threatens-us-sweden-over-assange/news-story/d354600483e11f90a941832f27b567bc Dick Smith Video LINK | Post COMMENT Wow, I'm impressed. Not so impressive is that I'm still awake and playing around online.  I'll lose the plot if I don't sleep.  LOL