Julian Assange in Stockholm in August 2010, before he was accused of rape. Photograph: Scanpix Sweden/Reuters
Since Julian Assange was first accused of sex crimes against two Swedish women in August, his defenders have asserted his innocence and dismissed the allegations as malicious, or trumped up, or part of a politically driven conspiracy.
To his powerful critics, however, the rape charges have become elided with what they consider his other crimes, including accusations of espionage, for which a number of US political figures have already called for his execution.
But if the WikiLeaks controversy has seemed ferocious in its intensity to date, the fact that Assange is tonight in custody as an accused rapist means that the political, technological and moral culture wars that have been skirmishing for months around the website have reached a new pitch of vitriol, in which conspiracy theories, slander and misogyny have become every bit as central to the debate as high-minded principles of justice or freedom of information.
Certainly there are some, not only in the Australian's legal team, who argue that a rape accusation based on the details of the allegations in the public domain – some of them placed there by the women themselves – would be highly unlikely to come to court in this country. Others counter, however, that even those who support Assange or the principle of free speech must let the law decide on serious criminal accusations.
Two women who say they are victims of serious sex crimes find themselves key players in a very ugly reputational slanging match. Named in court only as Miss A and Miss W, their identities have nonetheless been circulating widely online since very soon after the attacks. And with Assange's arrest, parts of the internet have declared open season on the two women, vowing to enlist an army of tech-savvy research assistants skilled in squirrelling out information that others might wish to keep hidden — described with ill-disguised glee today by one blogger as "the First World Infowar"...
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Esther Addley @'The Guardian'
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