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Assange Could Face Execution Or Guantanamo Bay
An anonymous reader writes "WikiLeaker-in-chief Julian Assange faces the real danger of being executed or languishing in the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay if, as a result of his extradition to Sweden, he ends up in the hands of the Americans, his lawyers argue. In a skeleton summary of Assange's defence, posted online, Assange's lawyers argue that it is likely that the US would seek his extradition 'and/or illegal rendition' from Sweden. In the United States 'there will be a real risk of him being detained at Guantánamo Bay or elsewhere,' his lawyers write."
Of course his attorneys are doing whatever they can to prevent him shipping out. Is this news?
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
Maybe I'm missing something, but last I knew "We don't like him" wasn't a valid reason for shipping to Gitmo or executions (not that there always is a valid reason, but still...). Assange isn't a US citizen, so that throws treason out the window, so what's the justification?
Yup, it's 2011. So why does feel so much like 1984?
I'm not saying it's good that America does these things. I have a tremendous sense of schadenfreude about the American government feeling some pain for its indefinite detention and torturing. As an American, I'm disgusted that my government has betrayed our ideals, but I also know that as one person I'm very unlikely to effect change. Maybe Assange can take our government to task more effecitively than any normal American citizen could.
With the way Sweden made their rape laws, he is lucky that they don't have a death penalty for men saying hello to women first.
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I hope if that man ends up on American soil that the citizens of this country (US) riot and raise fucking hell. What our government plans to do is wrong, it's illegal, and they know it. So does every citizen and every member of the press.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
In related news, the Guardian has in-depth coverage of his extradition hearing, including a list of legal arguments he's making and how the death threats he's received from US politicians are particularly worrying in light of the shooting in Arizona. Also, the right-wing blogger behind JulianAssangeMustDie.com has been exposed. The domain was registered by Melissa Clouthier.
Yeah, because it is impossible that the US would keep someone locked up at gitmo for years without any chance of ever getting a proper trial or even hearing what the hell you are accused of.
That would never happen.
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While I believe that Wikileaks is likely some form of an intel operation/possible manipulation in and of itself to some degree, I still support the concept behind Wikileaks.
Unfortunately I think that this statement by his lawyers may be correct. It's sad, but America is no longer the beacon of hope and freedom for the world that it once was - it's a bloated, corrupted, fading superpower. In a way we're the world's largest banana republic. It makes me very sad, because I love my country - but loving your country doesn't mean shying away from criticizing the government or exposing it's misdeeds - in fact, it means the opposite. This nation was supposedly founded on dissent and the rights of man, and to hear those in power try spin the law (including the Constitution) to suit their twisted needs is sickening.
The fact that this argument cannot be dismissed as ridiculous, hyperbolic poppycock is testament to how far the United States has fallen in the world's estimation.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
his stunts cause real harm to people the world over
Really? Last I heard there wasn't a single person they could prove was harmed by the wikileaks releases.
Of course the US is seeking to extradite him, to put him on trial for spying and other damages
None of which they can prove, and releasing the documents isn't illegal under US law. So what reason do they have to extradite him? Not saying it won't happen, just that it's ridiculous.
Assange is being accused of "sex by surprise", which is a Swedish law that states that you need explicit permission to engage in consensual relations each time it happens, no matter what happens before or after. In his case, the woman he "attacked" made him breakfast after her "rape", and they continued their relationship for weeks, until she met a different woman who had also slept with him (after acting like a virtual stalker towards him).
It was only after they compared notes, that they approached Assange and asked him to get a STD test. He refused, and they spoke to the police.
Initially prosecutors declined to take this case, but then the whole Wikileaks scandal broke, and a different prosecutor (from a different area of the country) was assigned to the case, and tried to peruse it.
Assange repeatedly tried to speak to this prosecutor, but she apparently did not want to speak to him. Eventually, he was told he was free to leave the country, which he did.
Now we learn that at least one of the women supposedly who accused him of this is not cooperating with the prosecutors.
I'm not sure what to call any of this, and I'm completely torn about whether Wikileaks is good or bad, but this sure as hell isn't any normal kind of rape accusation to me. The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
Yep. I'm hope people in the US get the message that the rest of the world no longer thinks of us a country of laws.
This is pretty thin. It's not clear that Assange could be vulnerable to criminal charges of say, treason, in the US since he is not a citizen of, nor loyal to, the US. WikiLeaks does not have servers in the US. Moreover the 'figures' that the lawyers cites as saying Assange should be executed have no actual authority in the US. They cite Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, neither of whom hold political office and (I'm guessing - and hoping) will not have any official political power in the near future.
This is Assange's own lawyers trying to prevent extradition to Sweden, which has actually filed criminal charges against him. I'm all for what Assange does, but this is exceedingly unlikely to come to pass.
Why don't we start with his own admission of people getting killed in Kenya because of his actions?
The US Attorney General has said he's looking into him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/world/16wiki.html
This is not FUD
Not just in the world's estimation, but also in its own citizens' estimation.
Sounds like the rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic. Reminds me of the SNL skits where Assange reminds people that no matter how he dies, even if it's decades from now and peacefully in his sleep, "it was murder!".
I'm a bit confused.
Are you saying we shouldn't be worried about Sweden getting mixed up in "extraordinary rendition" (ie kidnapping) because they were caught doing it?
Personally I take the opposite lesson...they've demonstrated they will do it. They may have learned their lesson... or perhaps the only lesson learned was to try harder so as not to get caught next time.
Your argument is that because Sweden has illegally rendered people before that they will not do so again?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Assange is being accused of "sex by surprise" [...]
No he's not. This "sex by surprise" stuff is some shit his lawyers made up. Do your fucking research before running off your mouth.
Are you adequate?
More here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden
No offense to those who died. The people rising up violently as a result to finding out about massive corruption in their own government, in my opinion, cannot be the fault of the group who revealed the corruption.
If massive amounts of corruption that we know exist were finally brought to light in the US and the result was an armed uprising of citizens opposed to that corruption, I could not possibly blame who revealed the corruption as the cause of the violence.
As a famous saying, don't blame the messenger. This is not a situation of supposedly revealed anonymous sources and putting secret operations in jeopardy or anything of the sort. This is a case of people revolting to massive corruption.
I do not condone the violence, I mourn for those who died. However, even though the violence was a result of the release, I believe it is very important that people know of corruption in their government. If Assange had leaked some document showing corruption being perpetrated by Obama, or proving that he wasn't born in Hawaii and the result was a violent protest or uprising. I believe that Tea Party members would be calling Assange a hero for revealing the information and not blame him for the violence. Food for thought.
If memory serves me right, both the UK and Sweden are members of the Council of Europe, as well as signatories of the European Agreement on Human Rights. Now, the agreement expressly forbids extradition if there's a chance of capital punishment in the recipient country. Which means that Assange cannot be legally turned over to US custody, since Gitmo violates the human rights treaties massively, and execution ... well, we all know the deal.
So the only recourse left for the US is kidnapping by CIA, but that's going to get them in a sticky situation too, even if it won't submit to the International Court of Justice's authority.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Not that it has ever happened before, but since anything negative said about the USA is automatically believed and embraced I think we can all agree his best defense is that if he is sent to the USA he will likely be dipped in peanut butter, and dropped in a pen full of grizzly bears. Cuz, we do that sorta thing. ;-)
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
That's pretty funny. If the US wanted him "renditioned", they would have had him already from the UK. He's much more likely to be safe from US rendition in Sweden.
Really?
From cable 07STOCKHOLM506:
"Swedish military and civilian intelligence organizations are strong and reliable partners on a range of
key issues[...]. Due to domestic political considerations, the extent of this cooperation in not widely known within the Swedish government and it would be useful to acknowledge this cooperation privately, as
public mention of the cooperation would open up the government to domestic criticism."
> This is so much hyperbole it is not even funny.
Right, because we've never executed people for this sort of thing before. And, even though we'd put innocent US citizens in Gitmo, there's no way we'd do that to someone who isn't even a US national, neatly sidestepping all that "fair trial" nonsense by labeling him as some kind of "enemy combatant" or whatever.
And, even though we have politicians calling for Julian Assange to be assassinated, there's no way that anyone would ever even think of taking them seriously. Ever.
That's total hyperbole, right? Nobody here is that crazy... right?
So if you had hard evidence that, for instance, the government did 9/11 (And I don't believe it did at all, just using this as an example), and I mean hard evidence as in tape recordings of the President giving the "go ahead" for the operation - you'd sit on it and say that you have no right to release private information?
The way democracy works, any efforts by a ruling party to prevent fair, honest elections - ie, election fraud - is the most important kind of public information.
I don't really like Assange as a person either, but I wholly support the cause. If the governments "win" and manage to shut down WikiLeaks and silence Assange, what does that say about the free world? The problem with corruption is that almost nobody tries to stand up to it - it's why corruption persists. People are weak and easily bought out by money, or killed. Here's a person and an organisation who are saying "We will not be deterred, or bribed, or bullied - and wherever we get information that governments are lying or trying to hide information from its citizens that harms those citizens - we'll make that information public" and you're siding with the corrupt?
Do you realise how very rare and important it is for people to stand up to corruption? WikiLeaks may not always get it right - they're fallable just like the rest of us - and might release information they shouldn't. But by far they're the lesser of two evils - if you consider their goals an evil at all.
Don't like Assange? Fine. Don't like particular leaks? Fine. Think WikiLeaks is a bad thing for the world? Wrong - bringing corruption to light is one of the most responsible and important things an organisation can do. Especially when it makes them the enemy of every government in the "free world" because it threatens their own corrupt practices.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
It's a good thing you are not a lawyer because a supreme court ruling says that, at least in the case of the pentagon papers, that publishing is not the same as transmitting and that receiving is not the same as gathering. (#793) (#794) Wikileaks does not publish materials they generate or gather themselves (#795) And they don't publish for subscription or otherwise require payment for access to the materials they release. (#797) And for "disclosure" to fit, one would have to have had access to the materials in the course of his/her work. This material was given to Wikileaks and, in truth, cannot be confirmed on its face to be known to be classified in any way. (#798)
This has all be covered in a previous SCOTUS ruling. Is it subject to being presented again? Yes, certainly, if the judges think there are significant differences in this case. But if anything, the newspaper that published the pentagon papers operates as a For Profit organization and Wikileaks does not. This makes them even MORE worthy of protections in my mind.
Except that he is a citizen of a foreign country, and not on American soil, therefore no American law applies to him. That is the only defense he needs, and it is ironclad (that isn't to say the American government will care). I don't know that I agree with his actions, but I for damn sure don't agree with my leaders' responses, and I will be giving them an earful if they pursue this.
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
There are no current formal charges against Assange in Sweden, he is being extradited only for questioning, not to face any current charges. There were charges but they were dropped before he left Sweden.
Now, Assange's attorneys have correctly argued against his extradition to Sweden, on a number of grounds, one of the most correct and crucial being that a local city (Goteborg, or Gothenburg in English) prosecutor (Marianne Ny) cannot petition for an Interpol arrest warrant -- nor extradition order -- it must originate at the highest government level.
Now you ask, but why would the Swedes want to extradite Assange of Wikileaks to Gothenburg? Because that's where Jeppesen Systems AB, the company affiliated with Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, better known as Boeing's "Extreme Rendition Airlines" is located.
Beginning to get the Big Picture, now? Never have so many resources been focused to obtain one individual in the past few decades. And yes, I strongly suspect they've spent far more on tracking and ops in shutting down by Wikileaks (tasked at least three gov't supercomputers to DDoS those Wikileaking sites) and their Wikileaks Task Force at the CIA (WTF). Now why didn't they put as much effort into that fellow, what's his name?
Oh yeah....Osama bin Laden?
Perhaps you might also consider that the reason might not be what you think it is rather than assuming its cause. The US is a convenient scape goat because it's own people are so critical of it's government but there are plenty of nations that like to feed a mythology that diverts attention from their own bad behavior. The US is far far away from being the worst offender in international politics. After all the Russians dumped polonium in a dissidents dinner in a foreign country and the Mossad strangled a guy in his own hotel room, even with the illegal renditions and using predator drones in extra judicial killings I personally don't consider that in the same league.
Yes and after being caught beating some kid to a bloody pulp for no reason can I claim I'm still a good person because I'm far far away from being the worst offender in the country what with some guy who fed bleech to his victims before raping them to death.
Being able to point to groups that are worse doesn't make your own any better.
The US is supposed to be a civilized western nation,
When it tortures people: That there exist countries which torture people more does not make it any better.
When it interns people without trial: the fact there exist countries which intern people more and for longer doesn't make it ok .
When it abducts innocent people from around the world for the aforementioned internment and torture it doesn't make it ok just because some other nations have done the same in the past.
Like it or not the US has got a reputation for torturing people not because of some smoke and mirrors show but simply because it's been torturing people.
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