LONDON — The U.S. government is doing all it can to silence the WikiLeaks organization, including starving it of funds by getting PayPal, Visa and MasterCard to freeze its accounts. But has it also persuaded the Swedes to accuse Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, of raping two women, in order to shut him up?
Or more subtly, as some of Assange's supporters allege, is Washington using the rape charges to get Assange extradited from Britain to Sweden, from where it hopes to extradite him to the United States to face espionage charges?
The latter accusation is nonsense, because it would be far easier for the U.S. to extradite Assange from Britain than from Sweden. Under a 2003 U.S.-U.K. agreement, the U.S. no longer has to provide prima facie evidence that an offense has been committed — usually in the form of witness statements — when requesting the extradition of an accused person from Britain.