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Ecuador Grants Asylum To Julian Assange
Several readers have submitted news that as expected, Ecuador is formally accepting Julian Assange's request for political asylum. paulmac84 writes "The Guardian are live blogging the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister's announcement that Ecuador is to grant asylum to Julian Assange. In the announcement Minister Patino said, 'We can state that there is a risk that he will be persecuted politically... We trust the UK will offer the necessary guarantees so that both governments can act adequately and properly respect international rights and the right of asylum. We also trust the excellent relationship the two countries have will continue.' The Guardian also carries a translated copy of the letter the UK sent to Ecuador regarding the threat to 'storm' the Ecuadorian embassy."
Also at Reuters.
Re entering the embassy:
So yes, they are saying as openly as diplomatic-speak goes, that they are prepared to enter Ecuador embassy even by force and take Assange.
There was an English translation of the press conference available.
It's now in this NYTimes article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/world/americas/ecuador-to-let-assange-stay-in-its-embassy.html?pagewanted=all
technically not a shill, but he is a US operative that is unquestionable.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Check out his homepage. On it he says:
"... I also serve as an Information Warfare Officer in the United States Navy Fleet Cyber Command/US Tenth Fleet. I have a master's degree in Information Warfare...."
http://das.doit.wisc.edu/
If you think he isn't biased, and possibly being paid for his post, you are crazy.
Now, please, get off my lawn!
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Stripping the embassy privileges would mean they could go in and fetch him. This would be in accordance with conventions, but would cause serious diplomatic fallout.
The next option is to claim that the embassy is already in violation of the conventions, since it harbors criminals. You just can't do that forever and still follow the conventions. What the UK would do here is then to throw out an ambassador or like the above, strip the diplomatic privileges alltogether from the embassy. This too would cause serious diplomatic fallout.
The simplest option is to simply wait until he leaves the embassy, and just stop the car. The Vienna convention is quite clear on the fact that you can stop/search a diplomatic vehicle if there is a suspected crime. So the whole "sneak assange out to the airport in an embassy car" does not seem like a watertight plan. Even simpler, you could just block any way a car could leave the embassy, forcing people to walk from the embassy thereby letting him be arrested without having to search a car. In any case, I bet he will be extradited to sweden sooner or later. I'm also quite sure that once there, he will be questioned and released quickly (so quickly that the swedish authorities can claim not to know his whereabouts when the US asks, thereby avoiding a diplomatic problem between sweden and the US). There was a political scandal with the CIA smuggling suspected terrorists from Sweden to an egyptian CIA run prison where they were tortured, and no politician in Sweden will want to be involved in anything related to extradictions and the US again. At this point it is merely a question of prestige for the swedish legal authorities.
It's easy to tell:
http://das.doit.wisc.edu/
He has a post in Information Warfare in the US Navy. He prepared a large document smearing a country and managed to get first post. The evidence really is rather damning.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Can people PLEASE stop spreading this ridiculous lie. The U.K. High Court properly held that what he is charged with qualifies as rape under U.K. law, and that it carries a maximum penalty of 4 years in Sweden. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_11_11_assange.pdf
The description of the alleged unlawful conduct includes sex with a woman who was asleep, thus unable to consent, which was aggravated by his knowledge that she didn't want to have sex without a condom. The other conduct described might be considered trivial by some, but this act qualifies as rape in most civilized countries.
Of course, it's possible none of that conduct occurred. Under the EU extradition system, it's not the U.K.'s job - either the government's or the courts' - to decide whether he's guilty.
... to work out that there is definetely something fishy going on with the whole extradition story.
To begin with when both woman when to the police station to "report" Assange what they stated was NOT that they were raped but instead that he REFUSED to use a condom and they wanted to confirm with the police if they had the power to force him to take a STD test. Pure and simple! Now the police officer that took their statements called the prosecutor and, given the nature of the inquire, it already starts to sound a bit fishy. When the woman were told that they will issue an arrest warrant for Assange one of them REFUSED to continue with the statements and also even REFUSED to sign what had already been said. It sounds to me that it's pretty obvious that the public prosecutor that was called from that police station informed "someone" that they might had something on Assange.
There is so much to this it's hard to consolidate in a short coment but I would suggest watching this documentary on the subject:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2012/07/19/3549280.htm
I don't buy for a second that the woman were raped. And given all the evidence already presented in Sweden I don't think anyone does. The question has got to be related to something else, not even Kadafi had a RED Notice put on him, not even the Syrian president, it's an orange notice, but hey, he refused to use a condom, that's seems justified!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_raid
"Why would the UK or Sweden "guarantee" that he won't be extradited? If the US has not requested it, and a court has not ruled, then no guarantee could be made."
The UK specifically because it was extraditing him for the claimed rape and has claimed Sweden couldn't then pass him on to a 3rd country without the UK's agreement. It was a bit more explicit than the way I simply worded it, such that the UK wouldn't give a guarantee that Sweden couldn't then just pass him on to the US, which is contrary to what UK officials have claimed in the past about the case.
In the case of Sweden, the guarantee sought was that Sweden wouldn't just pass him on to the US without a separate extradition agreement from the UK. Again, Sweden wouldn't do this, and again, despite the fact Swedish officials have claimed they would need to do this to pass him onto the UK.
Effectively all Ecuador was after is a solid guarantee that the standards of justice in protecting Assange from extradition to the US that both British and Swedish officials had claimed would protect Assange, really would protect him. Neither country was willing to put their money where their mouth is and actually back up their previous claims with a solid guarantee.
So it ties in with your last sentence basically, that it's not so much that both countries wouldn't give some arbitrary guarantee that Assange was safe from US extradition, but instead that both countries wouldn't give a guarantee that Assange would in fact be protected by the proper legal mechanisms both countries previously claimed would protect him. In other words, what was said by officials about protection for Assange from further extradition to the US was in fact likely just a facade.
I don't get why we are so quick to defend people we support otherwise when accused of criminal activities, and be so sure about their innocence. Even nerds can be douchebags.
You're right - we don't really know what happened. Maybe he did it. Maybe he didn't. But the situation that led up to this point is complicated by the fact that the original prosecutor said that whatever Assange is alleged to have done wasn't a crime and he was free to leave Sweden. Also there is the issue of his alleged victim apparently no longer cooperating with the prosecution. There is the issue that she gave consent for him to continue after she asked and he confirmed that he wasn't using a condom. There is the whole issue of Interpol getting involved in what would usually be a non-Interpol matter. There is the issue that, once in Sweden, Assange could be extradited or otherwise renditioned into the hands of the U.S. government - the Swedish government has never denied that it would extradite Assange once he is back in Sweden - isn't that kind of weird? They could've ended this whole thing at any time by announcing that there would be no subsequent extradition to the US government. And yet they haven't done it.
- and if the consent is clearly dependent on condom, you don't have consent if you drop it.
Actually the issue of predicated consent in sexual activity is tricky and controversial - for example, in Israel it is considered rape if a woman thinks a man is Jewish and has sex with the man, but later finds out that he is a non-Jew (eg Sabbar Kashur and an unknown Israeli Air Force officer). A similar issue is prosecutions against HIV carriers who have unprotected sex but don't inform their sexual partner - is this actually rape? Most times the man will be charged with assault, but under some legal systems, yes, that would be considered rape. Is it rape if a man has sex with a woman, then she falls asleep, and he begins to have sex with her again? Technically it may be, as she is unconscious and has not affirmed her consent to sex again, and yet this happens often, even in relationships. Can a man rape his wife? Yes, obviously (though some legal systems would disagree). What about a man who has sex with his sleeping wife? Maybe.
If Sweden was willing to guarantee that Assange wouldn't be extradited afterwards to the US there never would have been an issue. However, they refused this guarantee, so the only option Assange has left is to take up an offer of asylum which was offered to him by the president of Ecuador during a TV interview.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
I can't find data for the whole EU, but http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/EAWreport%202010.pdf/Files/EAWreport%202010.pdf covers EAWs received in 2010 by Ireland. Appendix 3 gives classification by the principle offence, showing 22 out of 373 being sexual offences (the most common is robbery/assault/theft with 138).
Sleep deprivation, tied in a straight jacket, pumped full of drugs...naaah, that's not tortue. Waterboarding is torture, of course only third world banana republics do something like that, right? And why would Assange be afraid of just getting on a plane right? surely that means he's up to something. Welcome to the USSA, where the only free men are the rich men.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The next option is to claim that the embassy is already in violation of the conventions, since it harbors criminals.
Actually, they can't make that claim, because Assange has not been charged with any crime.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Reminds me of that little Cuban boy who was "NOT" seized from his family at gun point by SWAT police...until the photo was released that showed just that.
His family? You mean the deceased mother's 2nd and 3rd relatives and a bunch of right-wing Cuban-American celebrities and politicians? His family was his father (his living and breathing father) to whom the swat team delivered the boy.
His family was his father, who was asking Elian Gonzales (the boy) to be returned to his care. His mother and husband at the time took him out of Cuba in a raft in complete violation of the father's shared custody rights. His family was not the people who held Elian Gonzales (the boy in question) refusing to deliver him to his father just because he didn't want to leave Cuba. It was all political, a disgraceful spectacle that we in Miami had to endure at the hand of those nutjobs.
The swat team had to intervene because the people holding Elian were treating to retaliate with violence. Get your facts straight buddy.