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Julian Assange To Be Extradited To Sweden
An anonymous reader writes "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has lost his challenge against extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault. The 39-year-old Australian computer expert, who has infuriated the US government by releasing thousands of secret diplomatic cables on his website, is wanted in relation to claims made by two WikiLeaks volunteers last August."
So those women are guilty until proven innocent? Assange is innocent until proven guilty at least under US law but this seems like mindless hero worship at this point.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
However the safest place for Assange to resist extradition is the country where he is a citizen, especially as there is a political divide in government about whether wikileaks is a good or bad thing. The underdog, the battler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aussie_battler is very big in Australian culture and Julian versus the whole US government would be extremely popular, especially after http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hew_Raymond_Griffiths and that took more than three years without much public sympathy (and not after being lied into a war in Iraq), something which those diplomatic would have likely exposed.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
No, it wasn't a chance. Fame tends to both make people stupid and attract parasitic people. Assange got a lot of fame, very quick, and it's both made him stupid and the target of opportunists. I don't see any reason to believe the US government is involved. Why should they? The best way they can discredit wikileaks is by letting Assange continue to self-destruct.
I support the concept of wikileaks. I hope they survive their arrogant twit of a spokesman.
I was under the impression that Sweden gave him permission to leave the country. How could he skip town if they let him leave?
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Incorrect. There were several exemptions made to ex post facto laws, even ones which led to eventual punishment, all on different grounds, and its hard to imagine "national security" couldn't be one of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_States
It doesn't matter whether Assange thinks he might be victimized by the USA or not.
What matters is that significant voices in USA politics have been publicly calling for the USA government to go after Assange. His lawyers have introduced that as evidence. The British court system has to accept that evidence or reject it on some evidentiary basis; it cannot be rejected because it sounds too far-fetched to be true.
I think the action of this lower court is appropriate. Since it knows that Assange has the means and the desire to appeal, it has taken this route to kick a thorny set of legal questions up the stairs, where a court with more appropriate authority can rule on the amount of risk that McCain, Palin, Beck, Limbaugh and others represent to Assange's rights under British law.
The same applies to whether the arguments that: 1) he should not be extradited before he is charged with a crime, and 2) that he should not be extradited for behavior that is not recognized as criminal in any EU country other than Sweden. These are all heady matters that deserve the attention of a higher court, and the appropriate way to make that happen is through appeal.
Will