Arrest of Wikileaks' main man raises hard questions

Some people dismiss the allegations against Julian Assange as trivial. I find that hard to tolerate – any act of making someone do something sexual that they didn't want to do is not trivial. The idea that he is wanted over a broken condom exists only in the minds of commentators who have lost themselves in rhetoric.

On the other hand, we should be clear that he has not been charged with rape. He has not been charged, in fact, with anything. He was wanted for questioning. There is some confusion about what this is in relation to, but this is for a good reason: Swedish law is not as forthcoming as ours about the details of sexual crime allegations.

This has led to unfortunate speculation, but it is pretty clear that the allegations do not amount to rape in Swedish law. Then again, it seems that rape in Swedish law is defined exclusively as sexual assault with violence. If rumours are to be believed –and I should emphasise the 'if' – the main allegation concerns him continuing to have sex even though he knew a condom had broken.

To my mind, yes, that is morally a form of rape. A lesser form perhaps, not quite up there with sex obtained by threats or by drugging someone or taking advantage of their being too drunk to know what they are doing, but still a form of making someone do something sexually that they didn't want to do.

Whether it is something you could conceivably get a criminal conviction for is another question. So it's true that some circumstances of this investigation look peculiar. But if the Swedish authorities really are pursuing him with an unusual level of diligence, one can hope this is because it's unusual to have such allegations made against someone so in the public eye. Perhaps they have some other charge it is possible to apply.

Not anything too serious, for preference. Firstly on general principles of course – one hopes nothing too bad actually happened. But also because Assange is running a pretty important organisation, and while Wikileaks may be able to get by without him in the short term it does presumably benefit from his leadership.

Whatever you think of some of the decisions they have taken about what to release to the media, it does nothing illegal itself. If anyone is committing any crime – and again, that is another very big if and another difficult moral question – it is the insiders who leaked the material. Oh, and any American who reads it even after it's been published. Somewhat ludicrously, that is illegal under US law. So the Airforce has blocked its personnel from accessing the websites of The Guardian, students have been warned that reading the cables could damage their careers. It seems to me that if Wikileaks is bringing about this sort of imbecilic institutional reaction, it is definitely doing something right.

But as I say, I hope Assange is guilty of something. Why? Because the alternative – that sexual crime charges have been falsified against him in order to suppress a threat to US interests – would mean that what's left of Western civilisation would not be worth pissing on if it were on fire.