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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?
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If he's dubbed a terrorist by the US government...
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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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.
Actually, the USG not liking someone is exactly why that person might end up in Gitmo. Circumventing the legal system is what makes Gitmo useful to the government.
I'll believe that when I see it.
Its more likely that nobody will open their mouths, then a bunch of senators will get pizzas delivered to them that they didn't order.
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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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.
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Tell that to all the other non US citizens sitting in gitmo for years without a trial or charge.
He could possibly still be charged on espionage, racketeering and related laws. Treason is actually very limited in the US by the US constitution even if he was a US citizen.
None of those carry a death penalty unless the violation of the laws directly result in someone's death. However, that still shouldn't be much of a concern because the US often agrees not to pursuit the death penalty as a condition to extradite someone from different countries.
What is happening here is little more then then stating a defense to guard against extradition out of England in the first place. They are stating every possible scenario including ones muttered by "prominent figures" who a good portion of the US thinks are crazy, ignorant, or bat-shit stupid. They are even arguing that the prosecutor who issued the warrant didn't even have authority to do so.
There is nothing new or revealing here. His lawyers are simply putting everything possible on the table to show extraditing Assange should not happen. If they don't bring it up in lower courts, they might not be able to in higher ones.
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.
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
"We don't like him" wasn't a valid reason for shipping to Gitmo or executions
Does it matter whether there's a valid reason or not? The way Gitmo is structured, you get sent there by the executive branch without ever receiving trial, and remain there occasionally getting a kangaroo court to say "yeah, keep him locked up" every year or so. There have been innocent people, including some US citizens, subjected to this sort of treatment in a blatant violation of the US Constitution.
Assange has been very clear through all of this that the reason he doesn't trust the US government is precisely because they've shown no inclination to follow their own laws.
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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.
*sigh*
"Charges of espionage" =/= "conviction for espionage."
If he were charged (which he hasn't been), it's likely he would be charged under the Espionage Act. It's also likely that the charges wouldn't stick, and he wouldn't be convicted under that Act, because of the reasons you cite. It hasn't been "proven" that there is no charge of espionage until a court of law throws out the accusation as unfounded.
I've been following this wikileaks stuff from the get go, and I still haven't seen any evidence to suggest that Assange is the target of anything more than an obsessed media and a lot of public outcry by the same stupid pundits that throw up a public outcry over every other damn thing in the news.
I'll grant that the circumstances and nuances of Assange's whole sex-offender case were damn strange, meaning all that stuff involving the case getting dropped, then picked up, then Interpol involvement, etc. But considering that large government bureaucracies, in general, don't often operate efficiently, or, for that matter, even sensibly half the damn time, all that crap could very well be little more than the Swedish justice system panicking over a high profile case and responding to such global scrutiny in the same way that many people would under such a lens: completely uselessly and foolishly.
I'm not saying Assange explicitly is not on some government blacklist somewhere, but I also don't see a lot of convincing evidence that he definitely is the target of anything in particular; other than, you know, some bitter female scorn projected by two young lasses that he fooled about with.
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I'm not saying he's a nice guy or perfect - far from it. But the fact remains that he got a far larger share of the vote than most western leaders, and extremely popular with most of the population, has ploughed money into education and healthcare, and massively improved the lives of the poor.
Again, the US is on dodgy ground to criticise, with elections of presidents on less than half the votes with results determined by dodgy courts, detention without trial in Cuba, the ever-widening poverty gap, the denial of healthcare to the poor... one could go on. Neither system is perfect, but it seems that Chavez is at least helping the poor rather than the rich. And he's not starting wars responsible for the deaths of thousands. All else being equal, that's probably better.
> 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?
The US Government's own report concludes that the vast majority of people in Guantanamo (either historically or now) have no business being there and were or should be released (if they can find somewhere to send them).
Of the 779 people held at Guantanamo since January 2002 only 36 are being held for prosecution and 48 are marked for being held "indefinately". A handful of others have been handed over for prosecution in other countries. By my reckoning that makes at least 85% of detainees held without good, legal reason.
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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.