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Documents in Assange rape probe leak onto the net

He who lives by the sword, and all of that ...

It has to be the most ironic twist ever to befall Julian Assange, crusader for a cause he calls “radical transparency.” A hundred pages of official documents in an investigation that the WikiLeaks founder sexually molested two Swedish women have been leaked onto the net.

According to Wired.com, which broke the story, the documents appear to consist of pretrial discovery material that Swedish prosecutors provided to one of Assange's attorneys. They were anonymously posted here, links for which quietly circulated on Swedish message boards and blogs over recent days. (The file was removed shortly after this article was published.)

According to Juha Saarinen writing for Wired.com, the documents' most explosive allegations were already reported in late December by The Guardian. Saarinen writes:

The file relates how Assange’s separate sexual encounters with two women in Sweden last year led to the criminal investigation, telling the story through police interviews with the two alleged victims, and with friends to whom they’d confided. There is nothing in the extensive details to support Assange’s past assertions that the Swedish criminal probe is part of [a] “dirty tricks” campaign against WikiLeaks.

Still, the documents provide plenty of salacious details concerning Assange's personal hygiene and sexual performance, and are said to come from two women who hosted Assange during a 10-day visit to Stockholm in August.

Beyond that, they're a poignant reminder to Assange, whose WikiLeaks had no compunction about publishing the private documents belonging to Sarah Palin and countless others, that transparency is a double-edged sword. ®

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