The rape allegation being completely fabricated, what is the basis for that claim?

– I am glad you are asking the question because sometimes I am quoted in a very sensationalist way. It is very important that my complete and precise position is reflected. I never said that everything has been fabricated. I base myself on the sms messages sent by the women. I received the write out of the text messages that she supposedly sent during the interviews. I mean this is her words, that she said…

Supposedly…

– Yes, obviously, she has been quoted as saying in the text messages the police has fabricated this allegation. This is the only one I refer to when i say fabricated. Obviously I have submitted this to the Swedish government and I said, what is your position, with regard to that and the Swedish government has simply refused to engage in a dialogue.

– Now the other thing is, I have questioned the fact whether it is possible that these text messages don’t exist. I have a letter that has been sent by Marianne Ny, the prosecutor at the time, where she sent the letter to court, and request to the court, not to give the original letter to the Assange’s lawyers, arguing that Assange’s lawyers already had access to these sms messages and had been able to copy them for two hours at the police station. At least she confirms that these text messages exist, and that they have been copied by the lawyers.

– It is true that they have not been made available to the public. But as I do, I am mandated to collect information and to transmit allegations to the government. And the government is called on by the UN to respond and explain these things.

– Now obviously if the government doesn’t respond. that is not a very good sign. But I think what is very important is that the word fabricated is taken directly from the text messages that have been quoted and not contradicted. The wider context of the case is also very important in supporting that this assumption is correct.

According to my sources there are no other sources for these sms quotes than the defense of Assange.

– Yes, the government has refused to make the text messages available, the government has them in their possession, they have refused to make them available. They confirm that Assange’s defense have been able to see the sms messages and to copy them, that is confirmed, and it is true, they are the source of the precise text.

They have leaked what they wanted to leak so to speak?

– Yes exactly: This is what has been submitted to me, could you please explain what your position is. And that is where obviously it becomes very difficult when the government simply refuses to respond.

One thing about the claim that you are now making is that they have responded, I have read the letter, and they are stating a very basic fact for the Swedish legal system, and this is that politicians have no possibility to influence what the legal authorities should and should not do in criminal cases?

– My mandate covers 192 states, and I have never asked the government to interfere with the judiciary. My counterpart as the special rapporteur is always the minister of foreign affairs, of the UN member states. If I go to Saudi Arabia and I intervene because of a corporal punishment, the corporal punishment has been imposed by the court, not by the government, but I have to go through the government and say that Saudi Arabia has ratified this convention and this violates the convention. I don’t ask the government to interfere with the court, the government has then to transmit my complaint to the court and the court then has to respond to me as the United nations representative.

– This is the same in Sweden. If I cannot intervene in judicial proceedings, then most of the torture cases are committed by prosecutors that are part of the judicial or the judicial police or they have imposed death penalties so this is an absolutely normal proceeding for my mandate. I am not asking the government to interfere in a judicial proceeding, I am asking them to transmit my concerns to the judiciary and then to relay back to me as I am mandated to do.

You still said that the government refused to release those text messages?

– I mean the government as a whole. There are three branches of government, the judicial, the parliament and the government. Whichever branch who is in charge has refused to cooperate.

This might contribute to confusion…

– I clarified precisely this in the beginning of my letter. (The one that has not been answered.)

Police, prosecutor, they are not commenting any more. Did you ever get in touch with the legal team of the accusors?

– What I have to do, my obligation is to go through the minister of foreign affairs, so I am actually not allowed to directly write to the prosecutor, it is the minister of foreign affairs that has to make the contact. And that is what they refuse to do.

You talked to the legal team of Assange, so I wonder if you also talked to or tried to get in contact with the legal team of the women?

– I understand the question, the mechanism works like this, I can only become active if I receive a request, and that request was from Assange’s legal team. As a torture rapporteur I can only address my concerns to the government, I am not allowed to contact the individual party. So I was not able to reach out to the women myself. I can say that one of the women has contacted me. And I was very grateful. Because she contacted me I was able to correspond with her. But I am not authorized to interfere in the sense that I do my on detective work, basically in the territory of Sweden or start to contact the prosecution team. That is why I have to go through the government.

– And my complaint really is about how the government has dealt with this case. It is not for me to pass judgement in a criminal case, to say if mr Assange is guilty or innocent. I am only mandated to comment on what the government has done, all governmental authorities, which includes the courts, judiciary, the parliament and yes, the executive government.

In interviews with you that have received a lot of attention, you say that you have taken part of all documents, and that since you speak Swedish you have been able to corroborate your claims. What do you mean by all?

– I speak enough Swedish that I can read the original police documents, again, what is available to me. There are certainly more documents that I have not access to. But the ones I have access to those I have read. Certainly not all documents in this case, but those that are in the public sphere, that have been made available to me.

One document that is available on the prosecutor’s site on internet and that is also grounds for the decision that Assange was to be extradited for questioning is the judgement of february 2011, when his lawyer Björn Hurtig was found to not have given correct evidence… Have you been aware of this all the time?

– Not all the time, I have been gradually more and more, I have had to find my own way through these documents and I am aware of that. It does weaken some of the arguments against the prosecution. But I don’t think it removes my findings. It does weaken some of the points that have been made. The claim that the prosecution never tried to contact him. That argument is certainly weakened by this document. You are absolutely right about that. Even if this is true which I think we can presume. Having worked myself in criminal court, it would be extremely long for a first questioning of a subject who is not even a Swede or a resident in Sweden.

That would have been the second questioning, the first strengthened the case against him, and he was suspected on the stronger of two levels of suspicion, and there were three different levels of courts who have made the conclusion that there is a strong probability that Assange did commit those crimes, how do you comment on that?

– The first thing that is important is he has been questioned with regards to the second woman. And that is an allegation where I always said I am not in a position to confirm or deny whether that happened obviously, I am not excluding there was a sexual offense there, but this particular allegation was never referred to as a rape by the woman or by the prosecution. And that was what I specifically clarified to some of the concerns that were voiced to my intervention. That is really important to me.

– The rape allegation was from the first woman, the second woman, what he was also questioned about, was about ofredande, it is a sexual offense, it was never considered rape. And I never said that this was fabricated, because I have no indication that it was fabricated. My feeling is that this was instrumentalised and not in the interest of the women because they even let it expire in the end without taking the apropriate steps for investigation.

Well in their view Assange was staying away from justice, have you ever considered that this claim could be true? One of the claims is that there was no DNA on the condom, an explicit detail you bring forward, in the public eye. Still you are aware that the prosecution was never able to confront him with the all the evidence. You make rather strong conclusions based on facts that have been flourishing around in the groups supporting Assange and that have been dismissed by the courts who have had access to evidence they and the women wanted to try in due process. Now we know this will never happen, and now you say they have been part of a conspiracy.

– When I look at how the prosecution behaved in this case, I have never seen that happen in a developed country. It was extremely inefficient and extremely contradictory, and there are indications, quite strong indications, that have never been contradicted, such as these text messages, no one has ever contradicted them. The question of the DNA, it is not an allegation, it is an observation, I just quote the report.

Do you think that the documents you have constitute all the evidence that were the basis of the decisions of the courts in Sweden?

– Not necesseraly, but I am mandated to transmit allegations to the states, knowing that these are only allegations and that this is not necessarily the whole picture. Now the states are called to complete that picture in responding and I am talking of all the branches of the government, and I have fairly good experience with how states react when they are acting in good faith. Democratic states such as Sweden and Britain and Germany and other states in Europe, when they are acting in good faith I always get a detailed response. I never get this typ of response ”oh, we don’t want to deal with this” or ”you’re addressing yourself to the wrong branch of government”. They know exactly that they can transmit this to the court and get response from the prosecution. I have plenty of examples of the responses of democratic states to my interventions. This type of response that I got from Sweden and Britain in this case is typical for states that are well aware of that something is not right with their conduct.

– It is a puzzle piece, I don’t have a 100 percent evidence of everything. But when consistent violations of due process occur in various jurisdictions over ten years – it is not only my mandate, it is also the detention working group, international mechanisms that are mandated – when a state consistently refuses to cooperate with these mechanisms that is not a good sign, it does not give you the confidence that there may be a lawful explanation to this.

Some may perhaps think that what the victims of sexual offenses have gone through, like the smear campaign from Assange and his lawyers, can also be something that could amount to a form of psychological torture. What are their rights? Your statements have been used by prominent professionals to say the allegations are now indeed proved, by the credibility of your office. Going out with this, you are in a way contributing to the smear campaign that have been used against these two women for so long. But you say you couldn’t even try to get their version…

– Now I am in correspondence with one of them. My job is not to investigate these women. I have never accused them of being part of a conspiracy. I am honestly of the opinion that they have been instrumentalized by the state. If they have not received justice, and mr Assange has not received justice, and the public has not received truth and justice, it is because the state has not done its job. I am not the only one saying that. You have Anne Ramberg saying the same thing. She was a very prominent secretary general of the Swedish Bar Association. She agrees with my assessments. She wrote a simliar text when I had not visited him yet.

– I am not claiming that the women were part of a conspiracy, and if someone takes my statements to do that, that is a different thing. I have always made very clear that I am looking at the state, and I think the state has abused these women too. Because maybe something happened, and then they could have acted much more efficiently and clarify this. My impression is that they have instrumentalized this intentionally to keep Assange where they wanted him to be, and the British wanted him to be and the Americans wanted him to be.

– And if they had wanted to give justice to the women, they would have behaved absolutely differently. Because there is correspondence between the British and the Swedish prosecution where the British tell the Swedes not to come to London not to question him in London and not to get cold feet when they wanted to close the proceeding. They say we are not treating this as a normal extradition case, there is plenty of indications that something not right, but that is not only against Assange it is also against these women because the case expired. They could have easily have questioned assange on this case when he was still in Sweden. They could have questioned him on video link. They didn’t.

You say that could have easily been done but this has also been a question of debate.

– There is no dispute about that…

His own lawyer couldn’t reach him. If he wanted to be free from the case and be cuestioned before he left the country, maybe he should have stayed in contact with his lawyer?

– But even the prosecution says they didn’t try until 21 september, three weeks after they reopened the investigation, you know when you are a prosecutor and you have a case like this, let us say of a celebrity or a famous, well known person, who is visiting the country, you are not going to wait for three weeks with questioning him. That is simply not done in a country that is well organized.

Does that mean that Assange was not escaping justice, when he didn’t show up before he left?

– I have no indication to say that he escaped justice. I only see that the prosecution didn’t try to question him for three weeks that the phone call happened on the 15th of september, he is free to leave the country for short. He offered to come back on the 8th of October but the prosecution said it was too late. I don’t think anyone questions that he offered som dates.

The only source for this is Assanges defense…

– No that is the statement of the prosecutor herself. I think it is the statement of facts of February 2011.

I wondered if you had ever given any thought to the fact that some of the flaws of the initial proceedings have been detrimental to the women, but still you are saying things about how the complainants should have acted, in order for there to be credibility to their stories, that one of them had common political interests with her legal council, police and friends with one of them, and the same political agenda of the prosecutor and a former minister in Sweden…

– You are right, and I have tried to not put that too much into the forefront but in her case I have to say that there are several indicators that her behavior is very strange, how it changed if that allegation of hers was really genuin. I tried not to, because I didn’t want to focus on the women too much because it is not my job to do that.

But still you do it very much…

– I can’t avoid it completely when you have someone who on the day of the alleged event she is sending social media messages that she is spending this great time with Assange and his whole group and witnesses say that they at that time offered for Assange to come and live with them and she actually refused that. That is a bit strange. Those are messages that are then deleted. that is really strange, that doesn’t really ad up. Her questioning takes place the day after the publication of these headlines, not before.

– It does raise questions. I cannot avoid it completely because it is part of the landscape. But I am trying not to draw definite conclusions from that, but to ask questions.

What you are actually doing, is giving more strong support for a mythology that has been going on since the beginning of this case and that could be viewed as victim blaming. What do you base your view about what is strange and not on. Have you not come across witnesses who are in shock, who are behaving irrationally who have not realized they have been subject to a crime until later, or other quite common things that victims go through, is this not also part of your expertise?

– It is not that type of pattern though that you are describing. I know, I have done a whole report on domestic violence and I am absolutely aware of how difficult it can be particularly in a family context but also other contexts for women children and sometimes also male victims to come forward. But you rarely have a victim actually being enthusiastic about the perpetrator and so radically changing the behavior.

– I am saying again that these are indicators that somehow the credibility of this allegation is not as strong as it could be. But again. You see, I don’t have to go to the bottom with this, what I have to go to the bottom with is how the state behaved with this, and there we se a sustained and systematic refusal from the state to cooperate and provide the information that they are called to provide to clarify these things. These things ad up to each other.

– I have been talking to A and also explained to her look I am not a 100 percent fault proof. I have to base myself on the evidence that have been made available to me. If you can present me with evidence that can convince me otherwise, I am more than ready to acknowledge that I got it wrong. Because I am acting in good faith based on the evidence that have been made available to me. I have no stakes personally in this case, apart from that I really do require that states respect the rule of law. That is not what I see in this case. I don’t think the women are the cause of this at all. I think they are just as much the victim of this as mr Assange. And even if the allegations are true, I think that both sides have been victimized by the state in this case, even if all of it is true.

The defense of the women think they have been victimized by Assange. What is your response to that?

– Well I don’t know. It is possible that they were victimized by him, and that some of my statements are being used in bad faith. It is absolutely possible. It is also possible that I draw some wrong conclusions, but that is why we have a system where I am mandated to submit allegations that are suposed to be allegations and ask things to be clarified.

But you have not even taken into consideration some of the material that is very easily available…

– Like what?

Februari 2011…

– That is a document that was made available to me after I wrote my intervention to the Swedish government. But that is something that they should have made available to me in response to me, ”Dear mr rapporteur…” So this is something I have seen. It does not change my assessment of the Swedish authorities.

Maybe they didn’t take it seriously because of the very far fetching conclusions you are drawing, the conspiracy and so on…

– But I am asking them questions, and it is not only me, I mean they ignored the conclusions of the working group on arbitrary detention. It is not like this is just me. Anne Ramberg is a public authority in Sweden and even before knowing about me she wrote a piece saying this is a very bizarre way of proceeding. So I think we have to look at the big picture. Something is wrong here. It does not mean that mr Assange is innocent, but on the other hand it is not binary, either he is guilty and the Swedish state has committed no fault or in order for Sweden to have made a mistake he has to be innocent, no it can be both, guilty, innocent or somewhere in between, but the Swedish proceedings I am 100 percent convinced they are not in good faith. Because they have refused to give me any explanations.

The pressing question now is about the extradition trial, what do you hope to achieve by saying that the governments are in collusion, do you think that will help him not to be extradited.

– I am not his defense lawyer, as much as I don’t want him to be ill treated I don’t want these women to be ill treated but what I want is that states are held accountable for missconduct. That is why I am so active in this case, it is emblematic in showing how states are enjoying impunity for massive abuse, for the crimes that have been exposed by Wikileaks there has not been a single prosecution. Talking of Sweden, this has nothing to do with Wikileaks.

– I am sure you have heard about the CIA renditions no-one has been prosecuted for this, people have been innocently tortured, there is no follow up. The confidentiality in this case has been breached on the first day. No-one has been prosecuted no-one has even been disciplined in Sweden for this. And it is not just Assange because the name of the women have been out there.

– The war crimes, the collateral murder, no-one has been prosecuted. CIA torture no-one has been prosecuted, but the people who published these things are being prosecuted. And this is to me the big danger of this case.

– Again, I emphasize, I don’t know whether mister Assange is guilty or innocent for the sexual offenses and I don’t want to be seen as claiming that he is innocent. But even if he is guilty these allegations have been abused for other purposes that where convenient for the states. Not for the women but for the states.

If he was guilty and really was trying to stay away, do you think that his rights to not be extradited for exposing state abuse, is that something that should make him immune in the case of sexual offenses?

– No not at all.

Because this will never be tried now, and they are now being tried in a media trial and not being heard. What would you like to say to those who are using your statements to not only accuse the women, but also harass them more again?

– That would be completely the opposite of what I am trying to achieve. My purpose is the rule of law. As I have made very clear, if mr Assange has committed this offense obviously he should respond to that. But there have been very clear possibilities to hold him to account. They have done everything to make it impossible.

– I have worked for the Swiss ministry of foreign affairs. I have worked within the international system for a very long time. When Sweden says ”Oh we cannot guarantee against further extradition” it is simply not true because states do that all the time. You don’t need an extradition request to give a guarantee.

– These types of claims there are a lot of claims that make it impossible but also impossible for mr Assange to come to Sweden because he was rightly suspicious that there was a different purpose behind this. There we have to look simply at what could Sweden have done to prosecute mr Assange, that could give you a long list of things they could have done.

Some say Assange should have stayed in Sweden if he was afraid of extradition because the agreement between UK and US is more generous…

– There is a clause that allows for temporary rendition…

Both Sweden and UK are bound by European convention of human rights…

– Yes but still, remember the CIA rendition.

So you think because of that Assange should escape questioning…

– I am just saying it is a precedent. And from international experience from my own practice I can say where a state refuses to give a guarantee of non extradition to the US, although the US has nothing to do with the Swedish case, I can assure you that there is reason to be suspicious.

Even if you say that breaches happen and that governments do such agreements all the time, do you mean that it is the way it should be?

– In practice it is done all the time, and honestly I have seen many of those cases. This is done all the time that a state where someone risks being subject to torture and there is a clause on non extradition, done all the time.

If they give such guarantee then the justice system is approached with a claim that is actually an offense he should extradited for. Shouldn’t the justice system be completely independent?

– In such a case Sweden can just send him back to the UK and it will be done by the UK. I think in a case where mr Assange says I am ready to come to Sweden if you guarantee you will not extradite me to the us for these espionage charges, then I don’t see any reason for Sweden in international practice not to do this except they want to keep a door open to extradite him to the US. I don’t see any basis to legally extradite him.

In this time Assange was considered a hero, people were so proud that he would be putting his servers in Sweden because of the great human rights record and wouldn’t extradite him or prevent him from doing the work of exposing abuse. The only thing that changed about Sweden was the sexual offense allegations. Do you think in this trial now, because of the request from the US, that he will be extradited?

– I don’t know, I have to say. How the British justice system has behaved up until now, I am not confident, I am not optimistic that they will respect international law. I think there is a big risk that he will be extradited, yes. I don’t know, at the first instance level I expect it will just be confirmed the extradition and then they will appeal to the high court, but you never now. The political landscape, Britain having left the EU – I don’t know. He has been prevented from preparing his defense, he has been put in isolation, I don’t know how that is possible in a democracy like Great Britain.

Many of the protests taking place are very focused on this matter, do you think there is a just cause to mix up those two cases?

– There is a connection but I think that the behavior of the Swedish prosecution has enabled this. Made it possible for this to happen, I am convinced by what I have seen so far that this was deliberate by the Swedish prosecution because of the correspondence also with the British prosecution service and so on. But again I am not claiming the women were part of this, I think they were victims of this just as much as Assange.

Why do you think that he didn’t let himself be questioned in Sweden, you say prosecution could easily have made it happen, isn’t that true also for Assange?

– It seems that some of the facts were not correct, but for his lawyer to ask for him to be questioned a couple of days after the investigation had been reopened in the middle of september that is not being rejected by the prosecution. They repeatedly postponed, it is not being denied by the prosecution, it is only those couple of days before he left Sweden Hurtig said he wasn’t contacted by the prosecution and actually he was. That’s were we have a discrepancy, and were I think it is proven that Hurtig did not say the truth.

None of us know the reason for this, maybe it would have been clarified in court, but that will not happen now. It is very clear that you have taken under your wings the rights of mr Assange but I wonder how you think that the women can get free from this one day?

– It is very unorthodox what I say now, but if they want to come forward, and want to give a position that explains these perceived contradictions, I am more than happy to correct my position. I am not here to defend Assange, I am here to protect the prohibition of torture. If I have a reliable source that can explain these things to me, I think they should also make pressure on the Swedish state to say please cooperate with the UN. If we have a clean case why not cooperate with the UN. I have no stakes in this.

Just to clarify, do you think that some of your statements and the letter you have written to Sweden contain more questions than answers.

– Yes, the letters I have written to Sweden, I have put it that these are the allegations submitted to me, that to me appear to contradict the assumption that there is a good faith proceeding. Then I ask the Swedish government to explain these allegations to me, why all of this is legal. So yes, I put this in a question form. Now I also acknowledge that from the way Sweden has not cooperated with my mandate and with other mandates, I have drawn certain conclusions. But I also want to be clear, I am open to receive still now, if Sweden wants to cooperate and provide me with evidence, I am prepared to change my position. I just have to base myself on the information I have and on the cooperation i receive from states.

The only source is the Assange defense team?

– No there are other documents that are in the public sphere, like the police interviews with the women, with Assange, with various other witnesses. There is correspondence between the prosecution in Britain and in Sweden, that has been leaked, there are letters written by the prosecution to the courts in Sweden that I have taken into account, there is the forensic report of the institute of the dna. I don’t have the whole list in my head, everything that is publicly accessible.

But there is information available that you had not taken into account, so the documents you refer to are the ones that have been submitted to you by the legal defense of Assange?

– Well I have myself also searched for other sources. What they have submitted to me is one source, it is not exclusively them. They have submitted some evidence to me with the request to get active. And I have then completed this by conducting my own research as far as I could, asking questions to the governments, visiting Assange, and completing the information as far as I could.

But not with the legal team of the accusers…

– No because I must go through the government, that is my obligation. I have the applicant that send me an application. And I take the evidence they give to me, and i submit it to the governments and they have to respond to me. That is how it work. So they would have to go to the prosecution team and whoever else answers. If the governments don’t cooperate that is a problem.

What you have been doing is part of your role as a UN rapporteur, so I asked your organisation and have learned that you are completely independent and that you have no salary from the UN. So who is paying your wage?

– It is a fair question, not that I am cheap, no no, I am a professor at the university of Glasgow and I am also a human rights chair at the Geneva Academy for Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, so I have two part time academic positions and that is where I earn my money.

So to be really clear it is not Assange-groups who are paying you?

– No please no, of course no. To be honest, when his lawyers contacted me in december 2018 I refused. I declined to get involved. I had this image in my head that I hade picked up in the press and it took me som courage to change my mind. I acknowledge that some of the things I have said, have been quoted and used, we have now had a long time talk, most of my interviews are three and a half minute and it is very difficult to give a fair picture of this.

– If you want to quote me saying I absolutely take no position, because I was not there, I have no presumption of his guilt or innocence, apart from of course formally anyone is innocent until proven guilty. Everyone has to stick to that. But I am not accusing these women of anything. It is very difficult to communicate this. Obviously they are involved and also affected by this whole thing.

Maybe they will be your next case then…

– Oh, I honestly I receive about 15 requests per day, and I can deal with one perhaps on average, in all kinds of cases, I mean they are up on the website. And the Assange case is one that is very prominent, because of the systemic precedent that I see, and it has nothing to do with the sexual allegations, but what is being done to him to make him an example for his publications.

Well I think both of them were quite convinced that this case was now closed, even if you say you are not blaming them, a lot of the foundation for your conclusions, is based on the fact that you do not believe in them.

– Ah, OK I see your point. I think my main point is that I don’t believe the government. In my future communications I think I should be more forceful saying: look I am not making presumptions as to guilt or innocence of Assange in this case, but what I am focusing on is how it has been dealt with by the state. I have maybe not done that sufficiently, maybe I have not been quoted enough because the newspapers may not think that is interesting, but I can insist on that quote more in the future.

And that the full picture is not provided, because there have been three different instances who all came to the same conclusion about the need to pursue the allegation so this is something that have been strengthening the credibility of the women, and you are not referring to that at all…

– Yes, well, what I have been examining is not the credibility of the women or where there is a lack of credibility, the question has been has the right authority issued an arrest warrant, and if that is so, they didn’t even deal with the credibility or not of the allegations, in the UK trial.

Also the UK trial brought up the ruling of the highest and second highest courts in Sweden providing the strong suspicion…

– That there was probable cause.

Yes…

– That is exactly where it would have been very normal for the Swedish state to provide those facts, perhaps on condition of confidentiality. Then the UN rapporteur could say, yes I have seen that and it changes the whole picture. And in the end they came to the conclusion they actually don’t have enough evidence to press charges, so there is actually no evidence there ever was enough evidence. I am painfully aware, having written about domestic violence, I know how difficult it is sometimes to provide evidence even for serious crimes.

And you had no response to your September letter, what do you expect to happen now?

– As with any other state, an abuse of function, a corrupt act in a government is an ex officio offense, so if as UN Rapporteur I come to this conclusion, I suspect this was an abuse of the judicial system, the government doesn’t have to agree with me but at least they have to investigate. Ex officio. In any democracy actually the states should investigate, they may come to the conclusion that it was all correct, but sweep it under the carpet and say the case is now closed, no it isn’t closed because there are serious consequences, there are two women who have never seen a day in court for a case that should have been tried. And we have someone who has been a suspected rapist for ten years and severely prosecuted for other reasons, and this case has enabled this.

– I don’t know what institutions in Sweden can initiate but there should be an investigation. It is not my role, I am a rapporteur, I write reports on the facts I have seen the allegations I have heard, and the conclusions I draw, and it is up to the states to draw the conclusions, but to me, the state has a hugh responsibility. They have all the facts in their hands. They can reveal the truth, what the true purpose of this investigation was, if it was genuin, they can prove it. They have all the evidence, if the real text messages have a different text, they can talk to the women, it can be corrected. They have all the means in their hands to reveal the truth, and if they don’t, I mean it is their responsibility.

You have written a statement, letters, are you also going to write a report based on the answers you got?

– No, in individual cases we have the communications and the responses, and both the communications and responses are collectively submitted to the communications report to the hr council. There is not a separate report.

– This is a very difficult case and it is very difficult to avoid all kinds of different interpretations. I have to say that myself I have gone through an evolution in discovering things and I want to make clear that I remain open to any information that comes. What matters to me is the truth in this and that the states are respecting the law. I have no personal stakes in this, and I have no difficulties in changing my opinion based on new information.