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Assange's Lawyers: Follow Swedish Law, Interrogate Him In the UK
concertina226 writes "Lawyers representing Julian Assange have demanded that he be questioned in London over rape and sexual molestation allegations. 'Prosecutor Marianne Ny must ... start treating him as everybody else who is under suspicion. Assuming that the prosecutor does not have a prejudiced opinion regarding the question of guilt, and is prepared to treat the different versions objectively, it is obvious that an interrogation with Julian Assange would benefit everybody, including the injured parties,' the lawyers wrote."
Yes, but the reason he's there is that the UK seemed to be about to extradite him to Sweden. He was quite happy living in the UK so long as it didn't mean going to Sweden.
It's the fatal flaw in dear old Julian's argument: He's worried about the Americans getting hold of him, so he'd rather stay in the UK where extradition to the US is easy, rather than go to Sweden where extradition to the US is much harder. Or maybe there's another reason....
What that other reason is is hard to tell, exactly. It might be that he is genuinely guilty-as-not-yet-charged in Sweden. Or it could just as easily be that he has an enormous ego, a superiority complex and a highly-developed paranoia that makes him see persecution in everything, whether it looks plausible to a sane person or not.
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Assange's resistance to extradition to Sweden is I think because he believes he is more vulnerable to extradition lock away in a Swedish Jail, not because the extradition process is easier from there to the US than the UK, just that he won't be able to skip bail and the country locked away in a jail. EAW extradition proceedings from the UK to Sweden were in motion, he was out on bail when he skipped off into the Ecudorian embassy. If he had been charged in Sweden for rape, combined with the obvious flight risk someone like Assange represents, bail would have been very very high or not available. Assange's thinking is it would be at that point that the US would start extradition proceedings.
An interesting point here is it is implicit that Assange will not stand and fight any extradition proceedings if he can skip the country. It is a strategy that has left him imprisoned in an embassy in London. Also it has effectively accomplished what the authorities of many countries wanted to achieve, he is trapped, with a progressively smaller political voice.
So you're saying his request to be treated like everybody else is actually a request to be treated different from everybody else?
No
It isn't.
And why should Sweden be more likely to hand his as over to the US when the UK has much tighter bonds across the pond??
I call bullshit. /C
It would be easier for the US to get him extradited from the UK than from Sweden. Our extradition treaty with the US has far fewer safeguards than does Sweden's. And Sweden wouldn't be able extradite him to the US anyway without him going back to the UK first. I don't see why he can't go to Sweden to face questioning. He seems to have a case to answer, as well he would if the allegations against him were made in the UK (not that this matters legally for a European Arrest Warrant to be valid, but it makes a difference morally).
There may very well be good reason for JA to not want being extradited to Sweden, but there may be other reasons than discussed previously here that explain why the Swedish authorities are acting the way they are.
One reason is that the prosecutor in charge of the case may have found herself a useful tool that she can use to further her own ambitions in something completely unrelated: she is known to be a feminist and has stated in at least one interview that it must be possible to punish men even after a court has found them to be innocent. She is also a member of the same political party as one of the (possible) victims. Which just happens to be the same political party to which the defense attorney belongs! My conclusion is that the suspicion of internal politics cannot be put to rest until more evidence appears.
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Just to point out a few strange facts in this sordid case:
- JA found out he was wanted for questioning not by being told be the authorities, but by being told be the media. I cannot remember another case where this has happened.
- the prosecutors office called a press conference to announce JA was wanted for questioning. I have never heard of them doing anything similar in any other case.
- the two (possible) victims of rape have the same lawyer. Also this is a first: it does not matter how many victims are involved in a court case, they get their own lawyer and do not share this lawyer with anybody else involved in the same case.
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Full disclosure: I live in Sweden and it is my personal opinion that the prosecutor handling this case at the moment is doing so for personal reasons and should be removed from her position.
It seems that every time Assange comes up I have to paste this, so here goes. From the English High Court judgment, he is accused of 4 offences, as follows:
So what he is is alleged to have done (whether or not he did so) is definitely rape under both Swedish and English law.