I’m less concerned with what he’s afraid of than whether these women get justice. Every man charged with sexual assault is afraid of being brought to trial and possibly justice.
Of course. If the Swedish authorities lay charges, he should face a trial in Sweden.
But, as I’ve said upthread, I don’t believe that the Swedish allegations have much to do with recent events.
Ecuador gave him up to curry favour with the USA, and an American prison is where he’s most probably headed. And it is because he embarrassed the empire, not because of anything else.
He claimed to be hiding from a sealed US indictment, and it is very likely that such an indictment did exist. American political and military leadership were openly calling for his imprisonment and/or death at the time.
However, he was also sheltering from the Swedish rape allegations. Which, to be clear, are allegations that I believe are most likely true.
Assange is a misogynistic douche. But that isn’t why the USA wants to punish him.
I suspect that the Swedes might just reopen and if they do, press for dibs. That’s up to the UK of course. Bringing in the Saudis is completely missing the point.
That’s entirely true and I’d much rather him go to sweden to face rape charges instead of to the US.
Or be in breach of the extradition treaty with the UK. Im not sure thats really gonna bother them much.
But still, now that he has been convicted of breaching his bail in the UK, they do have quite a lot of time for considering which charges the US DoJ wish to open with. Im sure they will give it plenty of thought.
Countries can’t prosecute people in other countries in any meaningful way without the co-operation of the two governments, as there needs to be a way to enforce the verdict of the court.
The US isn’t trying to prosecute Assange in absentia in Britain. They want to extradite him back to the UK. Otherwise they could have tried him in absentia in Ecuador (in the embassy.)
If the North Koreans wanted to prosecute an American journalist in San Francisco, they would be more likely to go and spray nerve gas on him.