WikiLeaks’s Swedish co-ordinator, who worked closely with Mr Assange for months, said in an exclusive interview that he repeatedly begged his boss to have the test, both to head off the possible police investigation and for Mr Assange’s own peace of mind, given his promiscuous sex life.
Allegations: Julian Assange is accused of rape by two women in Sweden
Celebrity support: Jemima Khan contributed to Mr Assange's £240,000 bail
‘The two women told me, that if he goes to the clinic for an HIV test, then we won’t go to the police,’ said Mr Assange’s colleague, who wishes to remain anonymous because he is a witness in the case brought by Swedish prosecutors, which led to Mr Assange spending nine days in Wandsworth Prison pending extradition.
‘I became the middleman in these negotiations,’ he added.
‘I felt that if Julian had agreed to have the HIV test, they would have dropped it. I told him, “Just do it, and anyway, it’s good for you, because you’re sleeping around”. A lot of women were extremely attracted to Julian, and after a few minutes, they offered themselves to him. From my perspective, they were like groupies with Mick Jagger, and he takes these opportunities.’
The WikiLeaks co-ordinator said he felt certain that the two women – who both allege that Mr Assange forced them to have intercourse during the same week in August without using a condom, against their express wishes – had nothing to do with any supposed American intelligence plot to discredit him, as he has frequently claimed.
‘The CIA is not behind this at all,’ he said. ‘Of course it is a golden opportunity for them. But from the beginning, it was personal.’
He said Mr Assange refused to take the test until it was too late, when all the Swedish clinics had closed for the weekend: ‘Julian said, “I don’t like it when people are blackmailing me, and they are blackmailing me by threatening to go to the police”.’
Mr Assange also told him that he had spoken to one of the alleged victims, known as ‘Ms W’, assuring him that ‘she is fine, she won’t go to the police’. The WikiLeaks co-ordinator knew from his own conversations with Ms W that she was not fine at all, but terrified she had been infected.
Mr Assange’s British lawyer, Mark Stephens, said his client had taken a test for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases at a later date, which showed he was not infected.
‘If it is true that all the women really wanted was for him to be tested, and that this would have stopped the case, then it is very disappointing that it has got so far,’ he said.
Today, The Mail on Sunday publishes unredacted details of the sexual-assault allegations against Mr Assange. They may well dismay his high-profile feminist supporters, such as the American writer Naomi Wolf, who has claimed he is a victim of the ‘international dating police’, and Jemima Khan, who offered to provide one of the sureties that led to his release last week on £240,000 bail.
Our investigation also reveals that:
* In the same week that Mr Assange had sex with Ms A and Ms W, he ended the relationship between a well-known American reporter and his girlfriend by blatantly attempting to seduce her during a dinner at a Stockholm restaurant. Having left the restaurant hand in hand with Mr Assange, the woman did not spend the night at the hotel where she had been sharing a bed with the American.
* Mr Assange has lied about aspects of his work. At a public meeting in London, he falsely claimed that the ‘Climategate’ emails from the University of East Anglia were first published by WikiLeaks. In fact, the emails were published by specialist climate websites in America and Canada – yet Mr Assange spent several minutes lamenting how he had found publishing them morally difficult because they boosted the arguments of global-warming sceptics.
* A senior journalist who worked closely with Mr Assange at the Guardian, and helped broker the deal that saw the paper become one of a handful of media organisations around the world with privileged, early access to successive WikiLeaks documents, has refused to continue dealing with him. It is understood that staff at other organisations, including Der Spiegel in Germany and Al Jazeera television, have also grown unhappy with his methods. One reporter said: ‘He can be extremely dictatorial. I’ve seen this first-hand.’
* Mr Assange has been accused of dishonesty by key colleagues, including Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a German computer specialist who was his closest collaborator for three years until he left WikiLeaks in September.
Mr Domscheit-Berg plans to publish a book about WikiLeaks early next year.
An advance copy of the publicity blurb states: ‘Not only he, but also other close colleagues could no longer put up with Assange’s high-handedness, dishonesty and grave mistakes, and got out.’
Allegations: Ms Wand, left, and Ms A are accusing Mr Assange of forcing them to have sex without using condoms
Up against it: Mr Assange arrives at Beccles police station as stipulated in his bail conditions
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