You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Anyway, Sweden’s per-capita incarceration rate is a fraction of the incarceration rate in Assange’s home country of Australia, which in turn has a fraction of the incarceration rate in the United States. So it’s not like Sweden is infamous for throwing defendants in the gulag and throwing away the key.
I don’t know Sweden too well, I just was over there for business and holidays a couple of times. However Mr. Melzer claims to be fluent in Swedish, so I take it he knows a thing or two about Sweden that I don’t. He could still be wrong, of course.
But assuming it is like you say, then why did Sweden not guarantee that he would not be extradited to the U.S?
At that time, one certain vice president called Assange a “high-tech” terrorist, so what did he know what kind of charges the US of A would eventually bring forward against him?
If the argument is that it was somehow noble for someone to run from sexual assault charges - you’re on the wrong side. And likely a fan boy.
Yes, if Assange ever did anything good for the world it was in spite of his character, not because of it.
Seriously- we’re in the age of HIV and supposed empowerment of women. If you decide to have unprotected sex against her wishes and possibly expose her to disease and pregnancy- you’re despicable.
So many guys want to argue that rape by deception is not a big deal, one wonders what their motivations are.
I don’t even know what that phrase means.
I think that the assertion that he faces torture and/or a fixed trial relies on conspiracies. This is the federal court system we’re talking about, not some podunk local court in Mississippi.
Why Sweden? Why only Sweden? If the goal was to smear him and get him extradited to the US, why not have women come forward in every country he’s ever been to?
It’s also that Assange is sufficiently notorious that he can’t really be simply disappeared like some random nobody from a country whose name ends in “stan”. If he gets on a plane in London and doesn’t show up in, say, New York eight hours later, people will be asking questions, and while the USA doesn’t seem to be quite what it used to be, it’s still not Saudi Arabia or North Korea as far as the rule of law is concerned. “Oh, we stashed him in a classified location and there may eventually be a secret trial, move on, nothing to see here” is probably not going to cut it.
In any case, the worst punishment for someone like Assange is obscurity. The clever thing for the US to say at this point would be “F… this, we’re no longer interested in the douchebag”. That would be a short-term relief to him but likely also a long-term blow to the overinflated ego. OTOH, prosecuting him will be spinning the wheels of justice but will probably not be worth it in the end, and will just give him more notoriety, which nobody (except Assange himself) needs or wants.
The experience of Manning shows that it being a federal matter doesn’t rule out such things.
While I think he should have faced the charges, it is disingenuous to pretend that there was no reason to avoid facing them beyond the usual avoiding penalty. The entire planet knew that every major political figure in the US was calling for his extradition.
On the one hand: unfuck that guy! (@Melizmatic). On the other hand, fuck that overreaching, fascist noise, USA. The dissonance on this one is high.
He clearly stated that he would face those potential US charges if Manning was released. And lied. He’s shown that he wouldn’t have stayed and faced the charges regardless of whether there were any other possible charges anywhere.
It’s not in his character. And I’m not being disingenuous- this is my true opinion of him. I don’t see why you could possibly have a different one given his behavior.
So tell me - what evidence do you that he would have submitted himself to trial?
Manning pleaded guilty to some charges, was tried and found guilty of some other charges and was found innocent of some other charges in a military court. I personally agree that the sentencing and her subsequent treatment were unnecessarily harsh, but that does not amount to an unfair trial or torture.
If you are talking about her contempt of court charges, the court does have the power to compel testimony and impose punishment for refusing to provide testimony. Again, the court was quite harsh on her, but not in the kangaroo court sense.
The charges against Assange (whether one believes that he is guilty or not) are legitimate charges (in the sense that they are based on US law, are not purely political in nature (i.e. not political crimes, though some may argue that the prosecution is political) and can be factually proven or disproven in a court of law based on evidence and argumentation).
Assange didn’t commit any criminal acts in the USA. He is not from the USA. I don’t agree that charges applied by US authorities should necessarily apply to anybody, anywhere.
US authorities could, for example, take exception to code I publish and demand my extradition.
And what’s more, China is trying this exact same BS right now by declaring all anti-Chinese speech in Hong Kong is subject to extradition and trial, extending to any shore and naming US senators. On the one hand: please take Ted Cruz and turn him into a footrest, oh pretty please! On the other hand, fuck you, China, you giant pile of feces! Get off my lawn! Same shit right here with this extradition attempt. It’s BS. Send him back to Sweden. Let them handle this two bit rapist.
EXACTLY this, right here. Well said!
It’s not OK to wave your hands and make laws vanish for convenience, even if it’s to punish an obvious bad guy. And if you think that’s just defending or excusing a sleazy probable-rapist, well, that’s on you, but I say that makes you no better than any unthinking “law and order” Trumplet.
He incited agent(s) (Manning gave him the war crimes tapes on her own, but Assange incited her to get the diplomatic cables) to commit crimes for him in the US. You can’t hire a hitman from the safety of another country and expect to escape charges just because you never personally entered that country.
By your reasoning, none of the Russian hackers who helped Wikileaks hand the election to Trump should or could face charges in the US.
The charges that we are talking about in Assange’s case are totally different from anti-Chinese speech. In extradition cases, the person has to be charged with a crime that is ALSO considered a crime in the country that the person is to be extradited from (and they cannot be explicitly political crimes like “being anti-government”). That is how international law (in the form of extradition treaties) works.
Mr. Assange is accused of espionage and receiving stolen government property. These are crimes in the UK. Whether or not you think that Assange committed espionage or received stolen government property, the US prosecutors did not pull these charges out of their asses. Mr. Assange did do something and whether or not what he did amounts to espionage, etc. is for a court of law in the US to decide. The UK court has only to decide whether the extradition request has merit under extradition treaties, which it clearly does.
No, I don’t, but you conveniently cut out the part where I stated that he should have returned to Sweden for the investigation.
Yes, that’s why I stated that even if he would have been convicted he would have been out of prison before he got out of that embassy.
Sweden has an independent judical system, ministers are not allowed to interfere in individual cases (“ministerstyre”), and certainly not give some sort of blanket pardon before the case is heard or USA has even asked for an extradition. The key hurdle for USA would be to prove that Assange had done anything that would be considered a crime in Sweden and that he would be granted a fair trial.
Here is a suspected spy that has managed to live quite openly in Sweden despite being wanted in USA:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/woman-indicted-in-cuba-spy-case-is-in-sweden-and-out-of-us-reach/2013/04/25/de27da3c-ade7-11e2-8bf6-e70cb6ae066e_story.html
