Assange reasserts innocence on rape claim
By Lloyd Jones, AAP London Correspondent
November 12, 2015, 11:16 am
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been asked bluntly at a Cambridge University debating forum, "Why did you rape those women?"
Speaking by video link on Wednesday from his Ecuadorian embassy refuge in London, he replied that no woman had alleged rape against him and he'd been cleared by Sweden's chief investigator.
The 44-year-old Australian is wanted for questioning by Swedish authorities over a suspected rape in 2010, an allegation he has consistently denied.
Three cases of alleged sexual assault against Assange were dropped earlier this year because a Swedish statute of limitations had lapsed, but the rape allegation remains.
In response to the rape question at the Cambridge Union forum on Wednesday, Assange said he was surprised he didn't get a "trigger warning", but he said "no woman has alleged rape against me".
He went on to say that "formally I have already been cleared by the chief investigator" in Sweden and the woman involved had said "the police made it up and she was railroaded".
But Swedish investigators still want to question Assange about the rape allegation and have been in talks with Ecuadorian officials to do so inside the embassy.
Assange fled to the embassy in June 2012 after he lost a legal battle in the UK against extradition to Sweden.
Ecuador granted Assange asylum after he said he feared extradition to the US, where he is wanted in connection with WikiLeaks' publication of top secret diplomatic cables.
Assange's address on Wednesday night was closed to journalists, but extracts were released in a Cambridge Union press statement after the event.
In response to a question about his homeland, Assange said "Australia is a great country in many respects", but he was disappointed it "has become a Pacific theatre aircraft carrier for the United States".
A key theme of his 20-minute address was that "freedom of expression is being wound back because of its success".
Assange took a swipe at Western media outlets, saying they served the agendas of the people who owned them.
But he said the situation was changing because "the internet is allowing the hoi polloi to publish".
During his address, Assange played footage of a US Apache gunship crew mowing down Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad suburb in July 2007, footage that was cut during his address to the Oxford Union in 2013.
Assange on Wednesday mocked that union for claiming at the time the footage was edited because the copyright belonged to the US government.
The Cambridge Union debate was controversial with the debating society's women's officer, Helen Dallas, resigning over the invitation to Assange to appear.
His address went ahead after 77 per cent of members voted in favour of it.
Union president Oliver Mosley told AAP the resignation was "a great shame" but asking the membership for their view was the best solution.
