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Cables Show US Seeks Assange
prakslash writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that diplomatic cables they obtained show the U.S. investigation into possible criminal conduct by Julian Assange has been ongoing for more than a year, despite denials by the U.S. State Department and the Australian Foreign Minister. Further, the Australian diplomats expect that the U.S. will seek to extradite Assange to the U.S. on charges including espionage and conspiracy relating to the release of classified information by WikiLeaks."
Firing squad is reserved for soliders. Hermann Goering requested death by firing squad, but they said no, you're too scummy to die like a soldier... so he suicided with cyanide instead.
Assange would be considered a spy so they'd probably hang him, like they did the Rosenbergs.
Except that they don't have much of a case against him, so they're probably just taking a wait-and-see attitude. If they have anything even remotely concrete to charge him with, they would've done it by now and extradited him from Britain already. It would be easier to get him from Britain which is a US lapdog, than Sweden, which is not so much.
However, the Australian embassy in Washington reported in February that “the US investigation into possible criminal conduct by Mr Assange has been ongoing for more than a year”....
The released diplomatic cables also show that the Australian government considers the prospect of extradition sufficiently likely that, on direction from Canberra, Mr Beazley sought high level US advice on “the direction and likely outcome of the investigation” and “reiterated our request for early advice of any decision to indict or seek extradition of Mr Assange”.
So, in other words, asking for advanced warning if the US does even make plans to request extradition equates to "US intends to chase Assange"? Really? I mean I have no doubt that if the US thought it could bring charges against him that didn't possibly fall under First Amendment protection, it probably would, but that is the evidence you have? The Australian embassy asking for advanced warning? That's not evidence. That's barely above speculation. Actually, no, it is speculation.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Under Swedish law, they cannot file formal charges in Sweden until they interview him. Whether or not that interview strictly needs to take place in Sweden is an open question - I've seen some lawyers claim it must, I've seen other lawyers claim there's no such law, but I've yet to see anything remotely like a definitive answer, either in the wording of the law, or specific precedents where it's been done before.
Though even if it isn't required to happen in Sweden, I would say that it's unwise to set a precedent in which you allow a suspect in a criminal matter to dictate the terms under which he'll agree to an interview about the charges. In any other situation, if a judge says, "return here for an interview," and the suspect says "yeah, no thanks, but you can totally send someone over here for a chat," the suspect will get slapped with contempt of court sanctions... allowing a suspect to undermine judicial authority like that (essentially, thumbing his nose at the Swedish legal system and saying "fuck off") can have other long-range implications that Sweden may not be willing to bear the cost of.
Anyone who is surprised by this (or who thinks that Sweden is not a part of it) is simply not paying attention.
But, but ... the Swedish prosecutor has gone on record saying specifically that Sweden won't extradite Assange for torture or the death penalty.
Seriously, though, I hear Julian is going to be out front on Sunday. It would be quite an art project if two hundred other young clean-shaven thin white men with white wigs, white button-down shirts, gray wool pants, black dress shoes and socks, and Guy Fawkes masks all swarmed him and then got into passing cars.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The question is answered in the second paragraph of your link:
"Two judges sitting in London allowed an appeal against extradition by fugitive Shawn Sullivan, 43, after the American authorities refused to give an assurance that he would not be placed on a controversial sex offenders treatment programme in Minnesota."
Presumably, Sweden was able to provide sufficient guarantees to satisfy the UK that the Swedish government would not place Mr. Assange in a controversial sex offenders treatment program in Minnesota.
Add to that the fact that Sweden and UK are both signatories to the EAW framework as EU members, which streamlines the process for extradition between two EU member states, while the US hasn't yet been admitted to the EU, and you've got a fairly clear picture of why the UK would extradite Assange to Sweden, but decline to extradite Mr. Sullivan to the US.
I don't understand how you think that most news orgainzations are just parroting the White House. The Obama administration regularly gets nocked by the mainstream press. Yes there are solidly liberal-leaning outlets out there (MSNBC being the largest), but that is not the mainstream press.
Fox News is the only news organization (that I am aware of) that has actually gone to court and testified under oath that their producers deliberatly wanted to lie to their viewers:
http://www.relfe.com/media_can_legally_lie.html
And it has been repeadly shown in studies that people who rely on Fox News have many of the important facts wrong about major events (e.g.: http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/final.pdf), in most cases doing worse than people who did not regularly watch any news.
If people are getting their news only from sources that are openly (or near-openly) slanting their news, what hope does Democracy have? I will take an incompotent press (e.g.: much of mainstream media) long before I will accept one that is deliberatly biased.
I personally listen to NPR's news programs (very good, and very balanced), and leven that out with the Economist and an ocassional German news magazine. The Economist has a bit of an over-focus on pro-buisness, but they do try to be fair, and the German magazines often have a very different perspective than either the US or Brittish take.
IF Mr. Assange can be shown to have *solicited* the data from PFC Manning, then the charge is espionage, which IS a crime in the United States, regardless of where you happen to be sitting when you're collecting your data.
Just because it's a crime in the United States doesn't mean the US has jurisdiction over a foreigner on foreign soil. Possession of cannabis is a crime in the US. Are we going to start extraditing potheads from the Netherlands?
If you are not in a country, or a citizen of the country you are not obligated to obey that country's laws. Period.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
His crime? Journalism.
That all depends on his role. Stealing the cables is illegal, but publishing them isn't. That, in short, is why Bradley Manning is in jail, and the editor of the New York Times is not. The question is, which role did Assange play?
If Bradley Manning planned the theft of the cables himself and then handed it off to Wikileaks, Assange is in the clear, just like the New York Times. But if Assange and Manning had a dialogue, and Assange guided or helped Manning in any way, Assange is guilty of espionage.
I think that if the U.S. had a strong case, Assange wouldn't be hanging out in the Ecuadorian embassy, instead the British would have rounded him up and sent him off the the U.S. for trial a long time ago. But Assange isn't stupid or complacent, he's smart and paranoid. So he did one of two things. Either (a) he helped Manning, but he did so in a way that was completely untraceable, or (b) he was smart about it, and said "whoa, hey dude, happy to help distribute this stuff but I'm not going to be involved in stealing anything."
I'd bet that Assange kept his hands clean. He's expecting the U.S. to come after him, and so if someone approaches him about the possibility of stealing American intelligence, he'll suspect a trap. Even once he's satisfied that it's not a trap, he'd see the risks posed by direct involvement. Another thing to keep in mind is that the U.S. has been leaning on Manning for a long time. You can bet the interrogators and prosecutors have told him that if he implicates Assange, they can get him a better deal. So Manning has told them Assange isn't involved- and either he's steel-willed and won't break, or he's being honest. Either way, the U.S. is screwed.
I'm saying if Assange offered any technical advice to Manning on how to secretly transfer information in order to hide Mannings involvement, that could fall under the area of conspiracy.
By that logic, notice on Wikileak's homepage suggesting the use of GnuPG/PGP would create a conspiracy. I think the US' authorities are out of control and desperately need to be taught a lesson in civility.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Yes it is. Among other things, he is a accused of having non-consensual sex with a sleeping woman. That is considered rape in the US, Australia, and all of the EU
And in the right context its also considered a good way to wake up in all of those same jurisdictions... either that or my wife and I have occasionally raped each other. /sarcasm
Its not like she got drunk, crashed on someones bed at a party, and woke up to him having sex with her. Context should matter. Intent should matter.
The context is they'd already had consensual sex and were sleeping together. On top of that we have no physical evidence that it even occurred except that she said so.
So we're going to internationally extradite him on something that a lot of people are dubious is even really criminal, and which likely would be utterly impossible to prove in court.