Julian Assange’s sexual assault accuser is ‘glad’ to be free

Swedish human rights activist Anna Ardin is happy that Julian Assange is free.

But the allegations she has made about him suggest that she has every reason not to wish him well.

She is one of two women who accused the WikiLeaks founder of sexual assault 14 years ago.

The allegations – which Assange has always denied – were explosive and made headlines around the world, setting off a chain of events that saw him attempt to avoid extradition to Sweden by seeking asylum in a London embassy for seven years.

In 2019, Swedish authorities closed their investigation into Assange and withdrew their extradition request, but he spent the next five years in a British prison fighting extradition to the United States, where he was charged with massive leaks of classified information.

These include US military footage showing the killing of Iraqi civilians, as well as documents suggesting that the US military killed hundreds of Afghan civilians in unreported incidents.

Assange was eventually released last monthafter an agreement with the USA.

Ardin is extremely proud of Assange’s work for WikiLeaks and insists that he should never have been put behind bars for it.

“We have the right to be informed about the wars being fought in our name,” she says.

“I am truly happy for him and his family that they can be together. The punishment he received was very disproportionate.”

During a Zoom conversation with Ardin in Stockholm, it quickly becomes clear that she has no problem distinguishing the two Assanges in her mind – the visionary activist and the man who, in her opinion, does not treat women well.

She tries to portray him neither as a hero nor as a monster, but as a complicated man.

The 45-year-old activist is also a Christian deacon who believes in forgiveness, and she uses the words “truth” and “transparency” repeatedly throughout the interview. This perhaps explains why she is in awe of what WikiLeaks has achieved, while also bitterly disappointed that the assault allegations she made against Assange were never formally investigated.

Ardin describes her encounter with Assange in her book “No Heroes, No Monsters: What I Learned Being The Most Hated Woman On The Internet.”

In 2010, just three weeks after the release of the Afghan war recordsshe invited him to Stockholm to attend a seminar organized by the religious wing of the Swedish Social Democrats.

Since Assange did not want to stay in a hotel for security reasons and Ardin would be away, she offered him her apartment. However, she returned early.

After spending the evening discussing politics and human rights, they ended up having, as she describes it, unpleasant sex during which she says he humiliated her.

Ardin says she agreed to have sex with Assange as long as he used a condom, but the condom broke and he continued.

Ardin suspects that he broke it on purpose. If this were the case, he would probably have committed a criminal offence under Swedish law.

Ardin later wrote that she heard from another woman who attended the seminar, identified in the legal documents as SW, that Assange had penetrated her without her consent while she was sleeping.

In a 2016 statement to Swedish prosecutors, Assange insisted that his sexual relationship with SW was entirely consensual and that in text messages seen by his lawyers, she had told a friend that she was “half asleep”.

Both women filed a police report – Ardin’s case was classified as alleged sexual misconduct, SW’s case as alleged rape.

The reports reached the press and triggered a series of extraordinary events.

Assange denied the allegations and suggested that it was a US setup. WikiLeaks had just leaked 76,000 US military documents – which attracted massive worldwide attention and critical scrutiny of US foreign policy.

On August 21, 2010, WikiLeaks tweeted: “We were warned that ‘dirty tricks’ were coming. Now we’re seeing the first one.”

The next day, another post followed: “Remember: US intelligence was already planning to destroy WikiLeaks in 2008.”

Assange’s British lawyer Mark Stephens claimed that a “honey trap” had snapped shut and “dark forces” were at work.

An uproar broke out on social media, which Ardin describes as “hell.” She tells me that at one point she was forced to leave Sweden because of the harassment and death threats.

“I couldn’t work. My life passed me by for two years.”

To this day, many believe Ardin is part of a US conspiracy and her allegations are false. Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, a longtime supporter of Assange, last week called her claims “mud” and “innuendo.”

No evidence has ever been found linking Ardin to US intelligence. While she acknowledges that the narratives spread by Assange had some semblance of credibility because he had “collaborated with the Pentagon”, she says the claims are nothing but “lies” and a “smear campaign”.

Months after the incidents, an international arrest warrant was issued against Assange, who was in London at the time.

In December 2010 he admitted to the BBC that it was “unlikely” that he had been part of a classic honey trap, but he denied any wrongdoing.

Assange was convinced that if he went to Sweden he would be extradited to the US – where he feared the death penalty. In 2012 he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Sweden refused to guarantee that he would not be extradited to the United States, but said any move in that direction would must also be approved by Great BritainBoth countries also stated that they would not extradite him if they feared he might face the death penalty.

In 2015, the Swedish public prosecutor’s office closed the investigation into Ardin’s allegations because time had run out.

In 2019, prosecutors discontinued its investigation into SW’s allegationsand said the evidence was “significantly weakened by the long period of time since the events in question”.

At that time, Assange was already in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison. He was facing extradition to the USA on espionage charges. If convicted, he could have faced a prison sentence of 170 years.

In 2024, Assange was finally released after agreeing to plead guilty to a single count under the U.S. Espionage Act.

Ardin still wishes he had been brought to justice for the alleged attack on her. “But he won’t. So I have to let it go.”

She says some of her doubters don’t take her seriously because they don’t think the details of her experience or her reaction are dramatic enough.

She says that it is assumed that sexual assaults are always brutal, involve a lot of violence and severely traumatize the victim. If that doesn’t happen, you can’t be a real victim or a real perpetrator.

But that does not reflect what Ardin describes as the reality of her experience. She stresses that this does not make the situation any less serious or unacceptable.

She accuses many of Assange’s supporters – and journalists – of seeking a “one-sided portrayal” that makes him a hero and her an evil CIA agent.

“I think the problem we have is that we have to have these heroes who are flawless… I don’t think there are heroes outside of fairy tales.”

Ardin says it was never her intention to write Assange off as a one-dimensional villain who needs to be “expelled from society.”

Perpetrators are viewed as “monsters who are completely different from all other men,” she says. And that means that “the system continues to run,” because “normal” men do not know that they too can be prone to violence – and therefore do not question themselves.

“I want him to be seen as a normal guy. That’s what normal guys do sometimes. They push other people’s boundaries.”

She believes that progressive movements often have trouble criticizing their leaders because they fear that any criticism will delegitimize the whole thing. “You can’t be a leader and at the same time abuse the people who are active in your movement, because then the movement will not survive.”

People should not get away with sex crimes or other crimes just because they have influence, she adds.

The BBC has asked Assange’s lawyers for comment on the allegations repeated by Ardin in our interview with her, but they said he was “unable to respond”.

I ask what justice would have looked like for them at the end of this saga.

Ardin tells me that she is only interested in finding out the truth, as she calls it. She is less interested in punishment.

“Justice for me would have been transparency. I was not happy that he was locked up because he was locked up for the wrong reason.”

Ardin is a left-wing Christian who places great value on reconciliation and transformation.

For this to be possible, however, perpetrators must admit their actions and make a serious commitment to change, she says.

After all this reflection, I wonder what she would say to Assange if she were face to face with him now.

Ardin tells me that she would push him to work on himself.

She would demand that he admit that he “had no right to do what he did to me, and that he has no right to do that to other women either.”

“He has to admit that to himself… He has to think about what he has done.”

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