McInnes insists fans got him sent to stand
ABERDEEN boss Derek McInnes revealed his reaction to sectarian chants from Celtic supporters led to his dismissal by referee Craig Thomson in the 3-0 William Hill Scottish Cup semi-final defeat at Hampden Park on Saturday. In the 72nd minute, with the Dons trailing from to goals from James Forrest, Odsonne Edouard and substitute Tom Rogic, and with defender Dominic Ball, midfielder Lewis Ferguson and assistant manager Tony Docherty all sent off, McInnes incurred the ire of Thomson, via the fourth official Nick Walsh, and was sent to the stands. McInnes appeared to gesture to Celtic fans who were singing that he was a ‘sad orange b ***** d’. The Dons boss claimed Ball’s second yellow card for heading Celtic midfielder Ryan Christie in an aerial challenge was harsh, so too Docherty’s dismissal for something said to Thomson at the interval, but admitted Ferguson’s straight red card for a foul on Rogic was correct. Asked if he had reacted to sectarian chanting from the Hoops fans, the former Rangers midfielder said: ‘Well, aye, I let it go the first time. I shouldn’t react, and I was wrong to do so, I should be better than that. ‘I’ll take my punishment, but I’ll be interested to see if everybody gets punished for it, but I shouldn’t have reacted. ‘I’ve heard that song aimed at me 100 times and I’ve never reacted to it before. ‘But I think the frustration from the game played a part in that. ‘The fourth official deemed my reaction a red card offence and, if it is, it is, and I will take my punishment for that. ‘I think it will be in the delegate’s report, which is pleasing and refreshing, because it is not always in a delegate’s report, when you hear sectarian singing. It certainly wasn’t the last time at the [Betfred Cup] final here. ‘But this isn’t my battle, it is for others to condemn. But for my small part in it, I take responsibility for it. I didn’t react the first time, I did the second time.’ Hoops boss Neil Lennon said: ‘I don’t know what Derek got sent off for, but, if that is the case, then there is no place for it. ‘I have ultimate respect for Derek McInnes, I view him as a friend and I think he is a great football manager and, if that is the case, then that is very disappointing, but I don’t know the ins and out of that.’
saying he would eat food with his hands, before holding the plate up and licking it clean. Perhaps more seriously, given legal developments, he accused Assange of having a predatory attitude towards women, recalling how he’d ogled a 14-year-old girl during an outing to a Norfolk café.
He also quoted Assange’s girlfriend at the time, a WikiLeaks activist called Sarah Harrison, who said: ‘He openly chats girls up and has his hand on their a***… and goes nuts if I even talk to another guy.’
Similarly ugly claims about Assange’s alleged misogyny were made at around the same time, by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a WikiLeaks’ staffer who wrote a memoir that later became a film called Fifth Estate, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. DomscheitBerg wrote: ‘His main criterion for a woman was simple. She had to be young, preferably under 22. She was allowed to be intelligent – Julian liked that – but it went without saying that she couldn’t question him.’
(Assange is believed to have at least four children by different women, scattered across the globe, including an estranged 20something son called Daniel who has used Twitter to called him ‘a criminal mastermind with a political vision’.)
Assange’s legal case rumbled on, partly financed by a variety of well-heeled backers, including Leftish film makers Ken Loach and Michael Moore, and documentary maker Jemima Goldsmith, who put up £94,000 (€109,000) for his bail. But it was money they would all, eventually lose, causing several of them (notably Goldsmith) to end their friendships with Assange.
On the night of June 19, 2012, with his legal options running out and his extradition imminent, the WikiLeaks founder turned up at the Ecuadorian embassy on Hans Crescent in Knightsbridge, disguised as a motorbike courier, and claimed asylum.
Initially, Assange was given a small room measuring 15ft by 13ft, one of ten rooms in the embassy, where he slept on an inflatable mattress. But he found the street outside too noisy, so moved to a nearby women’s bathroom, with staff removing a lavatory so that he could fit in.
Eventually, he was given a third room, which became the WikiLeaks office. Gifts from well-wishers included a lamp, to mimic natural light, and a treadmill, supplied by Loach, which he jogged on daily.
He lived mostly off takeaway food, swapping restaurants as he feared he was going to be poisoned.
For the first couple of years, Assange’s stock among so-called ‘influencers’ remained relatively high. He entertained such celebrities as Lady Gaga, American actors John Cusack and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Yoko Ono and her son Sean Lennon, former footballer Eric Cantona, musicians PJ Harvey and Brian Eno and Left-leaning fashion designer Vivienne Westwood.
In 2012, he released a book called Cyberpunks about the future of the internet and guest-starred as himself in the 500th episode of The Simpsons, recording his lines over the telephone.
More recent years saw him forge a bizarre relationship with former Baywatch actress Pamela Anderson, who declared, ‘I think he’s sexy’, but later denied any romantic entanglement.
Opinion began to change roughly two years later, partly due to the growing number of revelations about Assange’s private behaviour and attitudes.
Embassy staff had also begun to tire of their sometimes tricky house guest, with unsourced quotations appearing in print suggesting they were horrified by some aspects of his personal hygiene, and irritated by habits that included skateboarding and playing football in the small corridors.
One visitor recalled: ‘Julian eats everything with his hands and he always wipes his fingers on his pants. I have never seen any pants as greasy as his in my whole life.’
Also upsetting his hosts were Assange’s various romantic entanglements.
‘The Ecuadorians are very Catholic,’ one observer told Vanity Fair magazine at the time, saying they disproved of him sleeping with unmarried women under their roof.
Hostility escalated in 2016, when he played a key role in leaking emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton during the US presidential election campaign.
It was later claimed that he’d secretly met the former Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, several times at the embassy during the period. The revelation horrified many of his former supporters and was deeply uncomfortable for Ecuador, which had been working hard to build relations with the West.
In 2017, Ecuador, elected a new president, Lenin Moreno, who had a less chummy attitude towards Assange than his predecessor, describing him as a ‘hacker’.
The following year, the Latin American country began limiting his access to the internet and issued a raft of ‘house rules’ including instructions for him to ‘conserve the cleanliness and hygiene of the bathroom and other spaces’ and take responsibility for ‘the well-being, food, cleanliness and proper care of your pet’, a cat called Michi, which was poorly house-trained.
Last March, Assange was briefly banned from contact with the outside world (except via his legal team) after he posted a tweet questioning the British claim that Russia was behind the Novichok attack in Salisbury. Then he accused the Ecuadorian government of an ‘extensive spying operation’, claiming they had begun to film and record his daily life using security cameras inside the building.
A New Yorker interviewer captured his growing paranoia, saying he ‘believes he is under surveillance by forces unknown’ and noting: ‘When he conducts interviews or discusses WikiLeaks plans he plays white noise or runs a domestic appliances like a blender to overwhelm any listening devices.’
It further claimed he was suffering bouts of depression, and that his sleep has been disrupted by anxiety, adding: ‘He often stays awake for 18, or 20, or 22 hours, until he collapses from exhaustion.’
In October, Assange sued the government of Ecuador for ‘violating his fundamental rights’.
More recently, associates claimed intimate footage taken inside the building had been improperly leaked and was now being used to blackmail him for $3million.
It was no way to treat a generous host — and just like so many of the former friends he’s fallen out with, they decided to take revenge on their troublesome guest. Now he’s someone else’s problem.