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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."
He's not lost yet, he will be appealing against extradition.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12564865
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
I'd like to use this opportunity to say how much I love my government, my politicians, the corporations within it, the aristocrats, the bureaucrats, the wealthy and everyone else in power. I wish you all success and long, healthy lives. I would never go so far as to even so much as *voice* dissent, much less act out against or for anything. I love you all and consider myself gloriously privileged to live in this country. Most importantly, I enjoy having access to my bank account, medical records, medical services, government services, utility services, my reputation, my property, my family and friends, and continuing to actually exist and not be abducted and disappeared overnight. I promise my sincere obedience in the hope to retain all of these things, which I know come only *with* said obedience and may be withdrawn from my life at your leisure, if I ever make any untoward movements or noises. Bless you all and may you continue to live long and rewarding lives.
...who has infuriated the US government by releasing thousands of secret diplomatic cables on his website...
Maybe so, but I think he did more for moving the Arab World towards Democracy than the US ever did.
I mean think about this: food prices are going through the roof and people see, thanks to WikiLeaks, that their "leaders" are living high on the hog at their expense. I think they've seen (I hope) that their leaders played them for chumps by blaming the US for all their problems and at the same time, taking billions in foreign "aid" for the US so that the despots can fight against terrorism - our retarded Government actually believed that only the despots could fight against terrorism.
And I think the leaks have shown that some of their "revolutionary leaders" who are "standing up to" the US are nothing but liars and cheats.
If the charges are true, I would expect Assange to pay and if they are made up for whatever reason - government intrigue or for attention whoring - I hope that he is exonerated and the people behind the ruse are exposed and punished.
I also wondered about this - maybe its something to do with the informal arrangement between the US and Sweden that he leaked before.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8202745/WikiLeaks-Swedish-government-hid-anti-terror-operations-with-America-from-Parliament.html
(sorry for linking to telegraph - came up first on google and I'm lazy!)
D
Wikileaks popularized leaks, as Napster did p2p. Legal or not to authorities, the people have approved and adopted it, and it cannot be squashed so easily, short of a legal massacre. There is no going back, the genie is out of the bottle, the cat out of the bag, change is here, either side with progress and change, or with the establishment and status quo. Assange being prosecuted and imprisoned will encourage people, release him and the same will happen.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Actually you are way off base. UK has a storied history of standing against US extradition requests. Sweden not so much. Swedish prosecutors have also substantiated Assange's claim by stating that they would extradite to a foreign nation for a greater crime. Thirdly, although Sweden has very strict rape laws, CONVICTION rates are the lowest in the world. So in conclusion, You have spewed forth words masquerading as facts. You fool no one but yourself. Good luck with your delusions.
It's all about buying time for the United States to attempt to push the SHIELD bill through Congress. Right now, Assange is an Australian Citizen who has committed no crime in the United States or in the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth of Nations. While in Sweden, Assange will be incarcerated or on bail while he awaits and undergoes trial, a process which could take years. This means that Assange will not be able to leave Sweden for a country which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States while undergoing trial in Sweden: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition#Extradition_treaties_or_agreements for a list of them. This would give the United States time either pass the bill, or find *something* they can stick on Assange. (While Assange is no mobster, remember that they got Capone on tax evasion. The powers that be don't always care about *how* you become guilty, just that you are.)
I'm sure they would have preferred to keep him in the UK - they are the provincial spear carrier of the United States, to use Chomsky's words -, but he committed no crime there, and they are trying to make this look as "legal" as possible. The last thing they want to do is make a huge scene over this, or make a martyr out of Assange through "unjust law" (although that still may happen) and spawn copycats. Thus the die down in press on Assange since his first denial of bond; until now of course.
Don't be surprised if the next thing you see on FOX News is Glenn Beck extolling the virtues of the SHIELD Act, while on CNN you have a "balanced debate" about "national security" and the "continuing need" for "tighter safeguards against terrorism".
Won't matter. This whole play was written before he even met those women in Sweden.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Sweden also has strict laws against extralegal renditions to countries that torture prisoners, but that didn't help the guy who found himself in Egypt after getting booked by Happy Fun Fun Charter Tours.
This isn't about 'what is likely' to happen... Sure it's unlikely that Sweden will send him off to the US against local laws, what does matter is that the court must be convinced there is no chance at all it will happen. Not just that it isn't likely for some reason like "he's white, not brown like that other guy". Precedent says Sweden is willing to break the law to appease the US, and this seems like a prime candidate for that happening again.
Also it should be obvious why the UK and Australia would want Sweden to do the rendition, as such an action would cause huge political problems. Better to have little Sweden do the dirty work.
- These characters were randomly selected.
The UK does not extradite if they believe the person may be executed.
This is what Assange is fighting for, claiming that Sweden will extradite him to the us, where he will be executed. Therefore by proxy, The UK has gone against their policy.
In addition to the issue with death penalty crimes, Sweden also can't turn him over to the US without the UK's approval anyway, under European Union laws (Various extradition rules under the European Arrest Warrant acts).
If the UK wouldn't extradite him to the US directly, there's really no reason to believe that Sweden would somehow have the power to do anything, since the UK has a veto on any surrender of him to a third party (at least, a non-EU third party) by Sweden.
You do know that the US has a similar extradition treaty with the UK? If the US really wanted him they could just go after him in Britain.
After the fiasco of the Enron three being extradited to Texas and charged for crimes done in the UK against a UK bank then sentenced to jail over something that isn't even a crime in the UK, it is not likely to happen again. It is also worth noting that it is a staggeringly unfair, one-way extradition policy set up by a previous government and is likely to be repealed if challenged, especially in another political farce, double-dipped with political corruption like this whole Assange business is.
No charges have actually been raised against him. The UK judge ignored that awkward point, as did you.
Or they could argue that he continued publishing the material by keeping the cablegate website online. You know, making an end-run around the constitution has never been problematic for the government...
Palm trees and 8
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
In addition to the issue with death penalty crimes, Sweden also can't legally turn him over to the US without the UK's approval anyway, under European Union laws (Various extradition rules under the European Arrest Warrant acts).
FTFY. If Sweden puts him on a flight to the USA then it wouldn't do a whole lot of good if the UK complained about it -- which on current showing they'd be unlikely to do anyway.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The US Constitution does not permit **any** ex post facto laws. Therefore nothing Assange has done to date is actionable under the SHIELD Act.
If Assange is smart, he'll publicly retire from Wikileaks now. Once he's gone, he won't have any links to it that would make it worthwhile to extradite him because a federal judge would just laugh at the DoJ if they actually try to prosecute him under the SHIELD Act for anything he's done so far.
Yup. It's one of many relics from Tony Blair's policy of doing anything for the U.S. in the hopes of receiving the diplomatic equivalent of pity sex.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_Act_2003
Treason in all but name.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
The guy deserves to be extradited.
You based this on what, exactly? Something you read in the papers, or have you seen actual "evidence"? For some small reason, I believe it's the former.. can't pin down why though.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
You're assuming of course that Sweden will follow the letter of the law.
It's perfectly possible Sweden will just ignore it's obligations and ship him to the US anyway. Why? Because a nice lucrative deal for their corporations in the US will be worth far more to them than a bit of fall out in Europe which will result in perhaps a few bullish exchanges, and then will be quickly forgotten.
That's really all the US has to offer Sweden- something to make it worthwhile for them, and as Sweden is such a small country, it's not too hard to do something that'll make a big impact. A $20bn trade deal might not be enough to sway countries like the UK or Germany into dodging their international obligations, but to Sweden it would've been enough to completely negate their annual economic contraction during the recent financial turmoil and then given them some growth on top.
I was under the impression that Sweden gave him permission to leave the country. How could he skip town if they let him leave?
:(){
it's just one guy. wikileaks is larger than one man. assange knows this. you should know it to
it's a failure of most people that we get all caught up in the personalities, and forget the principles. it's true of anything political
say the USA lock assange up for the rest of his life. and? will that stop wikileaks? will that stop people from using wikileaks or bringing material to wikileaks? will that stop other wikileaks-like projects?
whatever!
the IDEA matters, the PERSON is irrelevant. assange would be the first to say this to you. they can do anything they want to him, they haven't destroyed his fame, and what made his name, and the idea he started
you can assassinate a man. you can smear his good name. but you can't stop HIS IDEA
THAT'S what is important
one man is brought down, but the cause continues unabated. i'm not afraid, are you afraid? i'm angered, are you angered?
so stop freaking out over the personality, focus on the principles. nothing's changed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If the EU citizens really believe the US sucks that bad, then maybe it truly is time for the US to withdraw from Europe, and return to an 1800s-style neutral policy.
Maybe. Or maybe the US could just stop being international thugs, and then maybe EU citizens might stop taking such a jaundiced view of them. Worth a try.
The definition of rape in Sweden is a lot more liberal than in the UK (or US, for that matter). I think the charge is something along the lines of "having sex without a barrier protection method on the assumption that the parties involved do not sleep around and then subsequently finding out that at least one does sleep around, thus increasing the risk of STDs to the injured party".
It's not, and it's not. Assange has been charged with rape, and the allegations include the use of force to overcome resistance.
Basically, Assange's lawyers have made up a lot of shit about this case, and people like you are eating it up.
Oddly, I wasn't aware that you could be extradited from the UK to face a charge for something that isn't illegal in the UK - I think they're trying (and succeeding, so far) to peg it onto a "sexual assault" charge
Again, your whole premise here is false.
Are you adequate?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/meet-the-people-who-want-julian-assange-whacked.ars
http://news.change.org/stories/brits-arrest-assange-us-politicians-seek-to-hang-him
http://www.tomchambless.com/2010/12/01/fox-analyst-mike-huckabee-wants-to-execute-julian-assange-but-let-murderers-go-free/
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/julian-assange-pentagon-072910
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
You presented a very specific list of acts your government needs to commit before you concede that it may rightfully scare people. I will instead offer "a German citizen who was kidnapped in Former Yugoslavic Republic of Macedonia, flown to Afghanistan, interrogated and tortured by the CIA for several months as a part of the War on Terror, and then released". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaled_al-Masri
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns