Assange Says Harrods Assisting Metro Police in 'Round-the-Clock Vigil'

The Daily Mail reports that Julian Assange seems to have yet another foe (or at least friend of a foe) watching persistently while he stays put in the Ecuadorean embassy in London: Harrod's Department Store. The Metro Police, according to Assange, have developed a relationship with the store, and are using that relationship to facilitate their full-time observation of his roosting place in the embassy. When the founder of Wikileaks says, "We have obtained documents from Harrods [saying that] police have people stationed 24 hours a day in some of the opposing buildings Harrods controls," it seems likely that those documents actually exist.

Comments

What is UNUSUAL

[Anonymous Coward]

..is the effort they spend for Jesus Assange. They must be really scared of the truth.

Re:What is UNUSUAL

[Anonymous Coward]

girls?

Two grown women who lied. and admitted that they lied.
If I were one of their fathers, I'd be on Jule's side.

Re:What is UNUSUAL

[Calibax]

Both the women in question are adults and both have said that they do not wish Assange to be prosecuted. After the original complaint was filed, Assange was told he could leave Sweden, and so he went to the UK.

Then a Swedish prosecutor decided to reopen the case (exactly why has never been fully explained) and she wants him back in Sweden. For some reason it wasn't sufficient to interview him by phone or Skype, or by traveling to the UK. The prosecutor wants him in Sweden, to the point of issuing a European arrest warrant - not because he's been charged with anything, just because she wants to talk to him.

The whole thing seems quite strange. Sweden and the UK seem to be treating this as a major incident, even though the complainants have no interest in pursuing the case. In fact, the UK is complaining about the very high cost of watching the Ecuadorean embassy, which they reckon is over 15 million pounds so far.

Re:What is UNUSUAL

[Anonymous Coward]

You surely remember how Europe wasn't too afraid to cause a 'major diplomatic scandal' in a similar case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

Yes? And?

[Frosty Piss]

This is a suprise? People should be outraged? Not so much.

Adds he's paranoia got the best of him years ago. Not his well founded paranoia about the USA Three Letter Agencies, but his paranoia about his place of power in The Cult of Assange.

Most of his personal issues could have been resolved years ago, his current situation are of his own making.

He needs to fly to Sweeden and take care of his personal business, you know: "man up".

The chances of him being extradited to the U.S. are slim to none at this point.

Re:Yes? And?

[Anonymous Coward]

He *is* paranoid. Every country has security protecting foreign embassy's in their capital. It's considered polite in the diplomatic circuit for the host country to provide 24/7 security to the parameter of an embassy. Nobody cares about Julian Assange and nobody cares about Ecuador. Sweden doesn't even care about him anymore since he is past the statute of limitations there. He's just trying to drum up the tin foil hatters and manufacture some sort of crisis since he is having difficulty getting headlines for himself lately.

Re:Yes? And?

[NicBenjamin]

Assange's problem is he had no fucking clue how Sweden worked.

Their entire system of government is designed to set up a relatively reasonable set of rules. These rules are rigorously enforced, generally by some body that includes multiple people who all come from different interest groups/parties/institutions/etc. so that no one individual can get around the rules. Since the punishment for breaking the rules tends to be quite light (rape tops at 10 years, for example, so Assange will like spend more time in the Ecuadorian Embassy avoiding Prosecution then he would have in Swedish prison), it's unheard of for them to grant an exception.

Since Assange is accused by two living, breathing Swedish citizens they have to investigate. Since his statements to the police were a de facto confession to some of the charges, they have to try him this is the rule. They cannot say whether they'll agree to the extradition request, because they have not seen it and the rule is you don't pre-agree or pre-disagree with extradition requests. All they can do is guarantee that they won't let the US Execute him, because the rule is they don't give up people who might face the death penalty.

And yet friend Julian insists that he be treated super-special, that the Swedish government violate the rule and pre-judge an Extradition Request it may never receive; and in Sweden your justification for requesting special treatment has to be a wee bit more concrete then "A guy who committed a different crime then I;d be accused, in a Justice System that's completely separate from the one I'd be tried in got a really really long sentence and that sucks."

Re:Yes? And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Assange wasn't going to prison in Sweden, he was going directly to Gitmo, without trial, or habeus.

Re:Yes? And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they aren't trying to get him there for a trial, they are trying to get him there for QUESTIONING, which they very easily could do over the phone, skype or send a person to him to question him, which they have done for others in the past. They just refuse to do it for him and insist he come where he can be arrested and sent elsewhere.

How your post got modded as insightful when it isn't is pretty insightful in itself as to how misinformed people can be.

And yes, they can agree not to extradite him to the US should they attempt to do so. Something they refused to do. The main thing Assange is guilty of at this point is pissing off the US leaders by airing their dirty laundry as even the girls he is accused of raping had dropped it and said they didn't want him charged and it seems very likely that they were trumped up charges just to get him there to begin with.

Re:Yes? And?

[SuricouRaven]

Cold Fjord has attacked me! I declare him an enemy combatant. Can I murder him legally now?

This is why I made the comment about the uniform. Your view worked very well in conventional wars of the past, when you knew who you were fighting. Modern wars are messy. Insurgent groups do not wear uniforms - they dress as civilians and disappear into the population. Even entire armies can be denied - look at Russia's recent invasion of Crimea, spearheaded by troops who wore uniforms without insignia and which Russia denies even exist.

It's one thing to declare on the battlefield that anyone pointing a gun at you is probably the enemy and should be immediately shot. There isn't really any other option then. But it's another matter entirely to systematically disappear people into a secret prison and declare that they have no legal rights. If you resort to that, you'll be sure to catch a lot of innocent civilians who just had the misfortune to get caught up events.

What did he expect?

[Brett Buck]

Of course they are using local resources to keep an eye on him. He's a criminal hiding in an embassy, they aren't just going to forget about it.

Re:What did he expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a criminal

When was he convicted?

Drama queen

[AchilleTalon]

Don't we have enough with this drama queen? Let him be forgotten by all of us. He is just trying to keep is popularity indicator to the highest mark he can. That is the only thing he can deal to get some money.