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Non-Binding Resolution: EU States Should Protect Snowden
The New York Times reports that the European Parliament has voted to adopt "a nonbinding but nonetheless forceful resolution" urging the EU's member nations to recognize Edward Snowden as a whistleblower, rather than aid in prosecuting him on behalf of the United States government. From the article:
Whether to grant Mr. Snowden asylum remains a decision for the individual European governments, and thus far, none have done so.
Still, the resolution was the strongest statement of support seen for Mr. Snowden from the European Parliament. At the same time, the close vote — 285 to 281 — suggested the extent to which some European lawmakers are wary of alienating the United States. ...
The resolution calls on European Union members to "drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties."
Also at Wired, USA Today and many others; Snowden himself has tweeted happily about the news.
The European Parliament is a next to useless organization. They should be more concerned with the flood of refugees into Europe than the fate of one idiot.
Happy to see common sense, perhaps struggling, but still win. It's long overdue for Europe to stand up to the crumbling US.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
No, he needs to come back and stand trial, and only punished if that is what the court decides.
(which it shouldn't, but that's not my decision)
Of course it would be a fair trial. And the trial would fairly convict him of exactly the crimes he committed. The reason he's elsewhere is that he knows a fair trial would result in a long prison sentence - exactly in keeping with the consequences to which he agreed when he decided to get into the sensitive work he betrayed.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There is no such thing as a fair trial when the prosecution can use any number of trump cards to ensure things go their way.
The big one being the State Secrets Privilege. Since all of the evidence is classified ( and the majority of it at Secret / TS level ) there is no way on the planet the intelligence community is going to allow that material to be presented in a courtroom. If you're unable to use any of the smoking gun evidence you've collected in your defense, I'm curious how you would consider the trial to be a fair one ?
To wit:
The state secrets privilege is an evidentiary rule created by United States legal precedent. Application of the privilege results in exclusion of evidence from a legal case based solely on affidavits submitted by the government stating that court proceedings might disclose sensitive information which might endanger national security.
People in the EU may have a problem with the place, but it is specifically for holding illegal combatants captured in the field by the military who are not POWs under the Geneva Convention. It's not a gulag or a concentration camp for political prisoners.
Uhm, that's exactly what it is, which is why people in the EU have problems with it. Kidnapping people from the soil of sovereign countries and then holding them without due process for indefinite time without trial, oversight by third parties (e.g. Red Cross), way to appeal the imprisonment or access to a lawyer on some remote military base is the hallmark of injustice. It couldn't possibly get worse -- well, it could, if you additionally hold some of them in cages and torture them with sleep deprivation and waterboarding.
If you can't see the atrocity of this then I feel very, very sorry for you.