UN panel 'rules in Assange's favour' | Hacker News Reader

UN panel 'rules in Assange's favour'

bbc.co.uk

189 pointsp01926385 comments

There seems to be some ridiculously large misconceptions here regarding these two things:

1. Assange is not violating any Swedish laws or policies by staying in the embassy and avoiding extradition, he has no obligation to return to Sweden and every right not to.

2. Assanges presence in Sweden is not required by Swedish policies or laws, Swedish courts already called out the prosecutor for not accepting his statements from the embassy.

The duty of the prosecutor also seems to need clarifying, some people here seem to think that the prosecutor has no obligation to agree to interview Assange in the embassy. This is absolutely not true.

Do you not think that the victims(although not entirely applicable here) are OK with the prosecutor indefinitely delaying the case until the crimes expire just because she is too arrogant to pick up the phone and ring up Assange or buy a 30 euro plane ticket to London?

Another thing worth noting is that many people seem to think UK is a particularly easy country to extradite people from, this isn't exactly true. See Gary McKinnon and Lauri Love.

Sweden has a history of just handing people over to the CIA.

Also worth noting is that Assange has said repeatedly that he would leave the embassy if he is given written assurance that he won't be extradited to the US.

I don't think anyone could guarantee that. What if he was extradited to Australia and then Australia gave him up?

It's possible to extradite people only following an agreement about their treatment post-extradition. For example the receiving party could agree to not further extradite them. This kind of agreement happens fairly often. A common example is extraditions to the US from EU countries. Following a 1989 decision of the European Court of Human Rights [1], EU countries cannot extradite suspects to the US if they would face the death penalty in the US. Therefore in every extradition from the EU to the US involving a potentially capital crime, the US first signs a waiver agreeing not to seek the death penalty in the case.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soering_v_United_Kingdom

However I'm not sure an agreement is required and (I believe) agreements are usually only made concerning laws or punishments that are not applicable in the pre-extradition country. Therefore if Sweden and the USA can agree that breaching national security secrets is a crime in the USA and Sweden recognize a similar crime (which I'm sure they do), and the USA agree not to kill Assange I don't see any reason why they couldn't extradite.

His terms probably include that the country promises not to agree to any extraditions unless the extraditing country also agrees to the terms of not sending him to the US and not allowing further extraditions without the same promise.

IE, Sweden would not give him to Australia unless Australia also agreed to not let him be extradited to the US or any country that does not promise to maintain the promise.

Nobody in Sweden can do this. The Swedish government constitutionally cannot do this, despite Assange's requests, given the separation between government and judiciary. The Judiciary cannot provide a guarantee because they are obliged to follow due process for each and every request for extradition they receive, and until they receive one they cannot rule on any extradition.

Er, why not? The judiciary aren't the ones that decide on if Assange gets extradited, where'd you get that idea from?

From where did you get the idea that the Swedish government can't do this?

He is, however, violating the conditions of his bail in the UK and I don't really see why we should offer any special dispensation just because he's been "hiding out" for a long time[1].

Anyone violating bail should expect to spend the rest of their life under threat of arrest and not assume they can make it go away by hiding out for a few years.

[1] it'd be nice if we put some political pressure on Sweden to resolve the issue remotely but that's neither here nor there.

And be on the receiving end of any fees incurred as a result of their bail violation.

Nonsense. A gov't can foolishly decide to waste inordinate resources as a punitive measure.

>He is, however, violating the conditions of his bail in the UK and I don't really see why we should offer any special dispensation just because he's been "hiding out" for a long time.

He is violating his bail conditions in the UK but I don't see how that's relevant here. Assanges goal isn't avoiding arrest, but extradition.

>Anyone violating bail should expect to spend the rest of their life under threat of arrest and not assume they can make it go away by hiding out for a few years.

I'm not entirely sure about the UK system on this but in most countries crimes expire.

Sweden has a history of just handing people over to the CIA.

I wouldn't doubt this -- but if you can provide a quick recap for those not familiar with this side history, that would be most helpful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...

Perfect - thanks.

I think the key issue is that the Swedish prosecutor (until recently) made no effort to question him in the embassy.

Given how badly the US wants Assange, and how we know they treat people like him, it is completely understandable that he wouldn't want to leave the embassy. Therefore it is hard to understand why the Swedish prosecutor was content to sit on her backside when it's in everyone's (not least the alleged victims) interest to move the case forward.

Pretty much every "why don't they do this" argument in this case usually forgets the Swedish law aspect.

For example , I think here the questioning was more of a "placing under arrest" (there was something about how the questioning is mandatory before officially declaring someone a suspect). And the questioning needed to happen in Sweden for some constitutional thing?

So I don't remember the Swedish law stuff too sell either but there were legal barriers to questioning in the embassy

Not to mention that the whole "This is to bring him to the US" thing ignores that:

- extradition from the UK to the US requires going through UK courts

-Extradition from the UK to the US through Sweden requires goig through Swedish AND UK courts. Its strictly harder

"But they'll kidnap him or something": is Sweden easier to be kidnapped him from?

The whole Swedish side of the story is bizarre but any argument about US influence in the prosecution seems to not make any sense except if to commit character attacks. Because it made US extradition harder, not easier

> "But they'll kidnap him or something": is Sweden easier to be kidnapped him from?

Yes. Sweden has a history of just handing people over to the CIA.

Because the UK stands up to the USA all the time?

Ecuador, si. UK, not so much.

An embassy is usually considered sovereign territory. In other words, the Equadorian embassy is geographically located in the UK, but it isn't a part of the UK.

I am not a lawyer, but I find this little area of law interesting so I looked it up. Here's what I found... That statement is commonly believed, but it's sort of functionality true, not literally true.

Embassies are still part of the host country, but generally (a) police/military of the host country cannot enter without permission of the Ambassador and (b) most employees who came from the mission country hold a diplomatic passport or have (some) diplomatic immunity by treaty, making them immune to prosecution, and (c) some laws of the host country apply to the embassy employees or operate on the embassy functions, but this would be moreso about procedure and secrecy than mundane daily life laws.

There may be exceptions to the above in treaties. In the UK there are exceptions to getting permission to entering an embassy (legal exceptions -- obviously the political fallout would be up for debate).

If two people making a visa application got into a fight in line, resulting in major injury, the Ambassador would probably just call the local police and have them dealt with locally, because the host country's laws still apply. However if one of the guards shot a local troublemaker who appeared to be a security threat, the Ambassador might simply do nothing, resulting in the guard not being able to be arrested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_mission#Extraterrit...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_immunity

US Marine Security Guards carry a certain level of diplomatic immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Security_Guard#Responsi...

So, is this incorrect or am I just misunderstanding it? I intended my original statement in the context of functional truth, because the ownership of the actual landmass doesn't seem to matter when we are discussing a legal/political issue.

"While diplomatic spaces remain the territory of the host state, an embassy or consulate represents a sovereign state. International rules do not allow representatives of the host country to enter an embassy without permission --even to put out a fire -- and designate an attack on an embassy as an attack on the country it represents."

http://diplomacy.state.gov/discoverdiplomacy/diplomacy101/pl...

Edit: I think it should have been pretty obvious that I wasn't claiming that it actually is one of the United States, only that it represents a sovereign state.

You mean the United States consist of 200 states? ;-)

No, the embassy is no sovereign state. As your source clearly says it represents a sovereign state.

Just as Marissa Mayer is not Yahoo, but certainly represents Yahoo from time to time. And if she were ever invited back to Google for a nice cup of tea, Yahoo still wouldn't be owner of the Google's cafeteria, just because she represents Yahoo and happens to occupy a chair there.

Assange fled Sweden and was happy to walk around the UK, and cooperate with the UK authorities until he lost his appeal. Assange was happy to stay in the UK, even though the UK does whatever the USA wants.

> Extradition from the UK to the US through Sweden requires goig through Swedish AND UK courts. Its strictly harder

Once he's in Sweden, how does a UK court have any jurisdiction? Anyway, the UK already wants to arrest him and hand him over to Sweden, given that they've been staking out the embassy for several years now.

Imagine if the London police had've spent all those staff-hours chasing domestic rapists. I reckon they would have nabbed at least one that they wouldn't have otherwise, which would bring them up to the same level of arrestees detained as all this effort spent on one guy (who hasn't even been found guilty in any court yet).

The idea that "they wouldn't do it; it's all too politically hard" discounts all the resources they've already spent because of politics.

> Once he's in Sweden, how does a UK court have any jurisdiction?

It's in the extradition treaties. If the person has already been extradited from another country, that country also needs to give permission for any onward extradition.

But do they need permission from the courts, or from the home secretary? Theresa May will do whatever the US tells her to, it's not like Assange is the cause célèbre that McKinnon was.

That doesn't matter, that's the point.

Having the Swedish government and Theresa May assent to an extradition can never be easier than having only the Swedish government assenting to it.

Even if she really did "whatever the US tells her to" Assange wouldn't lose the smallest thing.

Except that Assange was/is in the UK, so the UK courts and Theresa May would both have to agree to extradite him to the US - which is quite likely harder than getting the Swedish government and Theresa May assent to an extradition.

Perhaps UK previously unofficially declined to extradite Assange?

>So I don't remember the Swedish law stuff too sell either but there were legal barriers to questioning in the embassy

This is absolutely not true and the Swedish supreme court called the prosecutor out for their bullshit.

> I think here the questioning was more of a "placing under arrest" (there was something about how the questioning is mandatory before officially declaring someone a suspect).

The point is that after questioning, they have to make a decision whether to charge him. Either way, this would have moved the case forward.

>And the questioning needed to happen in Sweden for some constitutional thing?

Not true. As shown by the fact that they a) question other suspects abroad and b) have now agreed to have him questioned in the embassy after all.

> "But they'll kidnap him or something": is Sweden easier to be kidnapped him from?

It's not that many years ago that Swedish police cooperated in illegally black-bagging two asylum seekers and illegally handed them over to the CIA who shipped them off to Egypt - the regime they'd fleed - where they were promptly tortured by Mubaraks secret police.

If Swedish police was willing to effectively kidnap political asylum seekers and hand them off to a foreign government, in violation of Swedish law and international treaties, and not punish anyone for it, why should Assange trust them?

We know that CIA rendition flights continued for years after the above became publicly known and the Swedish government promised rendition flights would end. We know this because of Wikileaks documents. So why should Assange trust the Swedish and US governments not to conspire?

Whether or not there actually is some conspiracy (I don't believe there is), Assange has plenty of reasons to be paranoid about it.

Wait till you hear what the UK does to terrorists. The current legal justification for Guantanomo Bay style torture is based of a case that the UK won.

Got a citation/link?

Probably referring to the British torture of dissidents in Northern Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_techniques

Thanks for that. Although the links says it was found to not be torture.

This is meta, but I think comments like these should be banned from HN, because they demonstrate a lack of willingness to seek out an answer on one's own, implying (in my opinion) an adversarial model of the conversational exchange.

If `gadders` really wanted to get to the truth of the situation, it would be easy enough to make a few google searches, and if those really came up empty, post a comment asking for a citation with notes of which google searches failed, to help future information-seekers.

Waiting for the other party to deliver a citation on a platter puts the exchange on hold until that point, and wrongly allocates karma to intellectual laziness as people see the seemingly-reasonable request for a source and second the notion.

These comments certainly add no useful information, and they detract from the conversation by making it more adversarial.

The same is true of comments that make a claim that isn't already widely known. It would not be easy for a non-UK resident to know what to look for in this case.

> These comments certainly add no useful information

It did though, someone else came in to link the requested reference. As an American I knew nothing of the "Five Techniques" and learned something new today as a direct result of that comment.

If you make a statement of fact you have an obligation to back it up with references. It makes perfect sense then that statements without references can and should be challenged to provide them.

I don't agree. The request for more information should not be disdained. It was neither dismissive nor unprofessional.

Asking for facts/figures is not adversarial.

> Waiting for the other party to deliver a citation on a platter puts the exchange on hold until that point,

which is why if you're making a non-trivial claim, the claimant should take an extra minute to paste his source.

Even though I was the one to provide the source, I still upvoted this comment.

While I was aware of the five techniques, I literally googled "uk torture" and that was pretty much the first link I got.

If you really want sources, I think doing a quick google search before asking for them is a good idea. Not that you shouldn't ask for them, but doing even a single search before that doesn't take more than 10 seconds.

Why would the CIA want Assange? It's unlikely that he has any information they want -- certainly he has no information about ongoing terrorist operations -- and at this point it's unlikely that he has any information they don't want exposed.

(The Justice Department might want to prosecute him though, but now even that has very limited upside.)

There is a Grand Jury investigation. "might" is not the right word to use.

To punish him

I suspect this is what will come out in the decision tomorrow. It's not about whether Assange is using asylum to dodge being questioned after the case was reopened after political interference (as has been claimed), but whether the countries involved were doing what is required to bring the matter to a legal conclusion or whether they are using the stalemate to effectively keep Assange where he is because it suits political interests.

Moreover, they will have looked into whether his human rights have been violated. I suspect that they will have formally found that Assange's right to enjoy asylum, which was granted by Ecuador, has been violated and whether appropriate accommodations have been made to ensure that Assange's medical and other human rights have been violated.

The UK has consistently said they would arrest Assange even if he came out of the embassy for medical reasons, effectively denying him the right to asylum in the event of a medical emergency.

I can't see how the UN could set any other precedent here. Regardless of the merits or lack thereof of the Swedish case, the UK and Sweden have allegedly conspired to violate Assange's rights and there appears to be ample reason to suspect that based on leaked documentation to date.

You gotta wonder why he'd flee from Sweden (not a NATO member) to the UK (NATO co-founder). If I was afraid of the US grabbing me, I wouldn't go to the UK.

I think if I wanted to throw myself to the mercy of the court, I'd probably choose a British one.

He didn't flee. In fact, before he left Sweden he askes the authorities if they had any objections of him leaving. They did not.

So why go to the UK at all in the first place?

The weather? The beer? Work? No reason in particular?

I'm just flabbergasted at how much the UK has spent on the operation: Last October, Scotland Yard said it would no longer station officers outside the Ecuador embassy following an operation which it said had cost £12.6m. But it said "a number of overt and covert tactics to arrest him" would still be deployed.

Just shows you how must the State values its secrets. And Assange was right, knowledge is power and with that power you can disrupt the existing power structures. And in the end make the world into a better place.

Why?

He's a high-profile fugitive who is evading arrest for alleged sexual offences against women in a member state in Europe.

That's the official version indeed.

One charge was dropped, and it was for molestation and they ran out of time on that one. The rape charge is from a women who continued to sleep with after the alleged rape, according to Assange for a week. Not particularly serious charges, in my opinion.

So, if they are not serious charges he should have his day in court and get it over with.

And, don't tell me the ridiculous story about how if he went to Sweden he'd be extradited to the US. He was in the UK, you think we aren't buddy-buddy with the US and would have handed him over?

The UK or the Swedish government could easily determine his guilt or innocence -- as in questioning him in the embassy and he's said more than once he's willing, if that's really all they wanted to do instead of waste millions of dollars watching him. The burden of proof is never on the accused to prove his innocence. It's after all only an accusation.

If they want to bring formal charges in court and send him a summons and try him in abstention they can do that too. It's just funny how they have played the game while claiming b/s like you are claiming.

edit because of rate limit to the person below:

If he has no guilty mind then why should he be willing to be arrested? In fact if he's afraid they will do to him what they did to Chelsea Manning, then he's perfectly in his right mind to attempt to avoid extradition by whatever means necessary.

If a totalitarian government is pursuing you because you stole their secrets and exposed them to the public, and they have already imprisoned one of your partners for life in inhumane conditions. Why should you comply with that request?

You seem to think Assange gets to make the rules and choose how he gets treated. There's a European arrest warrant, the UK needs to arrest him and he needs to go to Sweden.

Assange is playing by the rules and that's why he's in the Embassy. He's following the rules to the book and so are the authorities.

Why should they, well if they wish to bring justice and save money they should do it. Because if they do not, then the time expires which for the rape warrant is in 4 years. And justice will not be done.

Skipping bail when the Supreme Court rules against you is not "playing by the rules" by any definition.

Of course it is. 'The rules' include things like "committing rape can cause rape allegations", "proving a rape allegation false causes criminal proceedings against the accuser", "skipping bail causes the authorities to pursue", "breaking/revoking diplomatic status damages foreign relations", etc.

The whole point of 'the rules' is that they apply to criminals; the only way to force something on criminals (or anyone) is to make them unavoidable, i.e. make it impossible to not play by the rules.

It's not like a game of chess, where the rules don't account for the use of tanks; or DRM, where "the rules" only apply to those with legal copies. It's more like Nomic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic), where the rules allow the rules to change. The difference is that Nomic's initial set of rules require unanimous agreement to rule changes (so any unfortunate consequences are ultimately a player's 'own fault' for agreeing to something long ago); the real world's initial rules were natural selection, which is a horrific way to live.

You've a pretty unusual idea of the meaning of rules. We're talking about a legal process. The rules are the laws of England and Sweden.

The UK is not, however, compelled to use this extraordinary level of resources on a single person. As we can clearly see since it has been drastically scaled back. The only reason for this kind of resource usage was because of Assange's profile.

Only rules Assange has violated are UK rules, for which he may face repercussions in the UK. Not Sweden.

Assange has unquestionably been playing by the Swedish rules, as has been confirmed by the Swedish supreme court.

Assange has no duty to return to Sweden, but the prosecutor does have a duty to give him a chance to respond to the allegations against him.

Why should he be allowed to dictate the terms of his questioning? Nobody else would get that treatment, so why should he?

Because the alternative is no questioning. The Swedish prosecutor has, by refusing to arrange to question him in London when it became clear she was unlikely to get him to Sweden, effectively denied justice both to Assange and to the women in question.

The only person who has denied justice to Assange and the women is Julian Assange, when he skipped bail.

Because he has a right to respond to the allegations against him, and being in Sweden isn't necessary (neither from a legal nor a practical point of view) for that.

>Nobody else would get that treatment, so why should he?

Except the 44 people that did, you should do a little research before making such statements in the future.

Yes, he has a right to respond to the allegations. But he doesn't have a right to dictate terms on how that should happen. The Swedish authorities may decide to grant him that request, but he doesn't have the right to demand it. It's breathtakingly arrogant of him to suggest that he can. He has exercised his right to challenge the EAW and lost comprehensively.

Assange isn't breaking any Swedish rules or laws by not showing up in Sweden (he did however violate his UK bail).

I'm not sure what makes you think that he deserves the special treatment that he's currently receiving, it is common practice for Swedish authorities to interview people abroad (44 times in the UK!).

>But he doesn't have a right to dictate terms on how that should happen

Of course he does, he has an irrevocable right to defend himself against the allegations against him. His behaviour does not take that right away from him, nor can the Swedish prosecutor dictate the terms of that. Especially after the Swedish supreme court sided with Assange here.

It's also worth noting that the prosecutors duty isn't to Assange, but to the legal system. The goal of the legal system is to find whether or not Assange is guilty, not to punish him. By refusing to interview Assange in the embassy the prosecutor has betrayed the court system and breached her duty.

He's not willing to be arrested in the Ecuadorean embassy which - as ruled by a UK court more informed on Swedish legal processes than you are - is the purpose of the formal questioning process the Swedish government wishes to undertake. Assange's position is broadly equivalent to a fugitive insisting that the state's unwillingness to mail him his Miranda rights proves that it's them and not him trying to evade justice.

Strangely, I have never heard it suggested that it represents a major failing of judicial systems for not trying and convicting other alleged rapists whilst they're on the run. The point of a trial, is after all to ensure that criminals are not only fairly treated, but also given the legally mandated punishment.

The Swedish prosecutor has been heavily criticised in Sweden for the failure to interview him, and finally did agree to negotiate terms to question him in the embassy, so clearly they can. They just didn't want to.

Clearly it's possible for the Swedish prosecutor to find a means to interview him in the embassy. They could use the telephone. They could use a videoconferencing system. They could get on a plane.

Why should they?

They have a valid arrest warrant for a fugitive. Their usual process is for the fugitive to be brought to a convenient location in Sweden for questioning. Why does this fugitive have the right to insist a public servant comes to see them? (Assange's fears about extradition to the US aren't relevant to the Swedish prosecutor if they aren't intending to do that).

If I were a prosecutor dealing with a busy case load I might well do the same: especially when I can leave the whole mess for the UK to deal with!

>Why should they?

Because, as confirmed by the Swedish supreme court, that's their fucking job.

> They have a valid arrest warrant for a fugitive. Their usual process is for the fugitive to be brought to a convenient location in Sweden for questioning.

This is not true

>Why does this fugitive have the right to insist a public servant comes to see them?

Why does anyone have a right to due process? Assange has every right to respond to the Swedish enquiry from the UK, but the prosecutor has not allowed him to make his statement on the accusations against him.

>fugitive

What are you smoking? Assange is not a fugitive in Sweden, the only country that could consider him a fugitive is the UK.

>If I were a prosecutor dealing with a busy case load I might well do the same: especially when I can leave the whole mess for the UK to deal with!

But in Sweden you can't, as the courts have confirmed. This is like locking someone up in jail until trial and refusing to interview them because you're busy.

> Why should they?

Because it quickly became clear that the alternative was not to be able to interview him, and they have a legal duty to seek justice. Justice has not gotten done by refusing their best opportunity to interview him.

> Their usual process is for the fugitive to be brought to a convenient location in Sweden for questioning.

Yet they deviate from this regularly, and actually did so in another case during Assange's extradition hearings.

So assume they finally hammer out terms with Ecuador so they can interview him. Let's assume the outcome of the interview is that the prosecutor formally charges him. (as everybody expects, because there's been no suggestion Assange has cast iron evidence that could radically change the prosecution's view that it's worth bringing to trial) What happens then? Are we genuinely expecting him to walk out accompanied by a couple of police officers and get on a plane to face trial in Sweden? Or do we expect him to stay put, perhaps issuing new legal challenges claiming there were elements of the questioning process that weren't conducted under Swedish law and so the original warrant is now invalid...

Regardless of whether one of five Swedish Supreme court justices chose to write a dissenting opinion criticising Ms Ny's handling of the case, do we really think that the questioning in the embassy is going mean Assange suddenly stops doing everything in his power to avoid standing trial in Sweden?

> The point of a trial, is after all to ensure that criminals are not only fairly treated, but also given the legally mandated punishment.

I think you mean "alleged criminals" and "sentence dictated by law".

I like how you call it a ridiculous story while it's actually very credible and probable.

That's exactly the problem here, he hasn't been allowed his day in court.

According to the Swedish supreme court being in Sweden isn't a requirement for that, no matter his behaviour he should be allowed his day in court.

That behaviour includes refusing to personally come to Sweden, he has every right to do that. The only thing he has violated during the entire extradition process is his bail.

One would expect that £12.6m would be spent for similar fugitives who are evading arrest for alleged sexual offences against women. Right?

Oh, - it's because he is "high-profile" that makes him special. So it's not about the alleged crime at all? It's due to wikileaks after all!

There is something illogical here, I think.

To be fair it's high profile because it's known where he is and that he's attempting to avoid capture. Not because he's from wikileaks and he might get extradited, those merely gave him the celebrity clout to pull the stunt in the first place.

If they actually gave up and he popped up in Ecuador and he's suddenly like 'haha, the british police, usually bunch of pricks', it would be embarrassing for the whole of the UK.

So it's a bit of a catch-22 position.

EDIT: Whoops, wrote wikipedia instead of wikileaks

FWIW, that ignorant bit of Wikipedia vs Wikileaks confusion has resulted in causing harm to people affiliated with Wikipedia when US customs officers have suffered from it.

Honest typo rather than ignorance.

My elderly father the other day told me that he thought the work I was doing with Wikimedia was related to "that wikileaks fella". Of course I corrected him, but I'm a little bit more accepting of the mistake!

What association does he have with Wikipedia?

You realize that "wiki" refers to a type of CMS software, like a blog or web forum, correct?

Yes.

WikiLeaks. Not Wikipedia. Very different things.

He isn't high profile because of his alleged crime though.

The amount of money they spend guarding the embassy is ridicules. A similar spending would have been accepted if it was just some random guy. The British public should furious about wasting £12.6 million trying to catch a guy that many not be guilty, or may only be guilty of something that's only rape in the Swedish sense.

Don't get me wrong, if guilty then I don't care who he is. In that case he should be punished. It's just that I don't think Sweden should be allowed to hand him over to the US afterwards.

Still the amount of money wasted trying to catch him should say something about why the UK police wants him. You simply don't spend that kind of money trying to catch a person, just so you can question him.

Uh, what's rape in the Swedish sense?

Everyone consented to sex, but he said he used a condom and didn't.

Meaning everyone did not consent to sex.

no, not all. she consented, but was surprised that he didn't use a condom. which could be legally interpreted as mutilation or rape in sweden. she didn't interpret it as rape at all

It's not a crime to be sleazy in the US. Ask the Donald.

She consented, but was surprised that he didn't use a condom.

A spin-free version of the events would be:

"She consented to intercourse with a condom, which Assange initially used -- but then he took it off without telling her."

Meaning Assange subject her to unprotected sex, without her consent.

According to Swedish law, yes. Not necessarily according to the law in other countries. That's why it was called out that he may have committed Sweden's definition of rape.

Rape is a legal concept, but in a larger sense it is a moral concept. This concept does not change from nation-state to nation-state and even if no country in the world defined this behavior as legal rape, it is still rape. For centuries, marital rape was not considered legally rape (it is still quite difficult to prosecute); rape that begins after sex is initiated is still not considered rape in the United States (courts have acquitted in recognition of some absurd "right to finish"); rape of men by women is still not considered rape by the FBI.

All of these legalities are irrelevant. Assange committed rape, and would have committed rape in any country. Nation-states do not define rape; moral people recognize it.

Well fortunately/unfortunately the police do not camp outside of an embassy for years waiting to arrest someone and send them to another country for questioning because they may have broken a moral concept. They do that when there are laws being broken. So in this situation, all that matters is the law.

The question was "what is rape in the Swedish sense, and how is it different from rape anywhere else". The answer is, this type of sexual misconduct is considered rape in Sweden and not in many other places. Nation-states define laws, which is what the legal system is based off, so it doesn't matter what moral people recognize. It wouldn't have been legally rape in some other countries, and that's the answer to the question.

>So in this situation, all that matters is the law.

This is literally never true.

>The question was "what is rape in the Swedish sense, and how is it different from rape anywhere else".

The question I responded to was "did everyone consent to sex." That is not true regardless of what legalese you wrap it in.

It only proves that the allegations are false in my opinion. I think he's weird and don't follow him or wiki leaks but the fact the UK is so insistent on arresting him instead of questioning him and deciding to file charges or not only proves his theory that they want to eventually send him to the United States.

IMO

He's subject to a European Arrest Warrant. It's not the UK police's job to question him. The procedure in an EAW is that the receiving country checks that the warrant is valid (which is procedural, and doesn't assess the merits of the case). If it is, then they arrest the suspect and hand him over to the requesting country. Julian Assange had every opportunity to argue against this, and was able to take it all the way to the UK Supreme Court. They ruled against him, which is when he skipped bail.

But isn't the fact that they obsess over catching him when he leaves the embassy, over of a claim of sexual molestation that even the "victim" doesn't really support, to the tune of 12 million pounds, a hint that maybe it's not really about this case alone?

Another hint is that Roman Polanski lives openly in France despite being convicted of drugging and raping a child but somehow Assange is much of Europe's priority...

It doesn't surprise me that European countries that are all bound by the ECHR (among other things) would take extradition requests from each other more seriously than they would a request from the US. The fact that they won't render Polanski to the US cuts against Assange's argument.

I've never understood why Polanski is still in Europe. I get why Poland and France won't extradite him, but all the other European countries he set foot into. Including my own.

Would you care to substantiate this idea that the district court which rejected the US extradition request simply "didn't take the request seriously"? Being that this is an incredibly insulting accusation to make about the Polish legal system?

Had you bothered researched the matter a second or two (before making up a condescending opinion about it) you would have readily found the basis on which that court made the decision that it did. A very specific, and universally understood (and generally accepted) basis, in fact.

I don't think there's any productive discussion to have about the Polanski case, but if you're referring to the most recent hearing (I've linked to it below), I think it's contemptible.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/world/europe/roman-polansk...

They would call it "due process." As an American, you're welcome to find that contemptible, if you like. But either way, I don't think the Europeans would particularly care.

He was convicted of a heinous, drug-assisted rape of a child, one he surely committed (he does not contest the victim's story). He's had his due process. What he doesn't like is the outcome.

He was convicted of the drug-assisted rape of a child ...

No, he was charged with "drug-assisted rape", but not convicted.

In fact, he wasn't "convicted" of anything; as part of a deal with the judge, he plead guilty to a related, but different charge ("unlawful intercourse with a minor").

But that's OK. Go on living in this emotionally-driven, fact- and reality-divorced haze if you want to...

Drug-assisted rape, unlawful intercourse with a minor, potato, po-tah-to, let's call this whole part of the thread off.

Drug-assisted rape, unlawful intercourse with a minor

So now you're basically implying that I was using that phrase to somehow obfuscate or water down what Polanski actually did.

That goes beyond any disagreement -- that's just slimy.

A guilty plea counts as a conviction.

It "counts" the same for sentencing purposes, but they're still different things (and the distinction does matter).

For example, a conviction can be appealed but a guilty plea cannot.

I'm not, the UK is a country with the rule of law. Assange is probably the most high-profile fugitive in the UK.

When those two prisoners escaped from prison in upstate new york,it cost new york 23 million dollars to find them [1] (and they were only fugitives for less than a month).

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/ny-prison-escape-manhunt-cost-state...

For those wondering: the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is a panel currently consisting of one individual each from South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Benin, and Ukraine.

Its charter gives it no legal power; it is like a version of Amnesty International housed in the UN.

> Its charter gives it no legal power; it is like a version of Amnesty International housed in the UN.

This detail is strangely absent from all the existing coverage of this story.

Legal power aside, is there some larger process at play that requires them to side with Assange? Or is this just a play for a Pyrrhic victory?

It is like a version of Amnesty International housed in the UN.

As comparisons go, this is quite specious.

To wit: it is quite misleading to suggest that an entity specifically chartered by the UN (to present its findings to the UN) is somehow comparable to an independent NGO that happens to share office space in the same building.

Well then, we disagree.

There is something curious about the conclusion that surrounding a person for the purpose of lawfully detaining them amounts to unlawful detention.

Hasn't that been a traditional method of catching a suspect? "Come out with your hands up, we have you surrounded!"

Perhaps there is something significant in the fact that Assange is in the Ecuadorian Embassy. We'll have to wait for the reasons to be published.

  Perhaps there is something significant in the fact that    
  Assange is in the Ecuadorian Embassy

There is no secret in that. It's an embassy and sovereign territory of the Ecuadorians. No government in their right mind would trespass.

> No government in their right mind would trespass.

What about forcing down a presidential plane (of a nearby country)? Would a government in their right mind do that?

Once a hegemonic country's closest-held secrets are involved, all bets seem to be off.

I'm actually a bit surprised that Britain didn't stage some kind of covert snatch from the Ecuadorian embassy after all these years (at the behest of the US).

I'm actually a bit surprised that Britain didn't raid the Ecuadorian embassy after all these years (at the behest of the US).

While we're speculating: Could this mean that the US doesn't want Assange anymore?

It's not a binary thing. The US will put a certain value on getting Assange and that will determine the extent to which they'd be willing to expend resources (including diplomatic capital) on doing so.

I think the value of catching Assange probably dropped a lot post-Snowden though. He's probably more famous, and more importantly he proves that Assange isn't a one-off.

Having Assange holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy and letting the Swedish thing stew and continue to tarnish his reputation is probably just as good for them.

Don't be fooled. Both Assange and Snowden would endure the worst treatment a human being can endure if the US had their way. Just because they don't appear to be willing to do everything to get at them does not mean that if these people fell in their lap that they wouldn't commit unspeakable atrocities.

If the US weren't the global hegemon then our actions would resemble those of a rogue state. However, if we weren't a global hegemon, it would be unlikely that the US would be in a position to take these same actions.

Not in the UK. Under the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, diplomatic status can be revoked and the police could enter the embassy. (Doing so would be pretty foolish, since it would make UK embassies around the world unsafe, but the law is there). It is certainly not "sovereign territory" .. that's a myth.

Diplomatic status can be revoked in probably every country.

Generally that involves declaring them a persona non grata and expelling them.

Under the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987

Note that Part 1(1)(4) states[0]:

"The Secretary of State shall only give or withdraw consent or withdraw acceptance if he is satisfied that to do so is permissible under international law."

So it's not like they can do this willy-nilly. Under that act, there has to be a reason permissible under international law to revoke the consulate land, and it's a complete revocation of the land rights, requiring a new application by the foreign state to re-establish the consulate.

[0] - http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1987/46

Very true, but the UK wrote a letter to Ecuador claiming (maybe not correctly) that keeping Assange was not in the spirit of the Vienna Convention. Source: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/aug/15/uk-arrest-julia...

I think you're right about the embassy bit. It wouldn't surprise me if the UN decision doesn't make any noise about the European Arrest Warrant or any of the the charges agains Assange. I'm guessing that they will state that since he has requested and received asylum by the Ecuador government, the UK should let him go there. This makes some sense from a general perspective as well. If someone applies and gets asylum at an embassy somewhere, the UN may not want to set the precedent that the host nation could block it by not allowing the person to leave the country.

I find it a bit humorous though, that Assange said he would honor the UN panels decision just moments before that decision is leaked to the press. Funny how he didn't make that promise when he first applied for the ruling...

Self-preservation is a hell of a drug. I can't bring myself to blame him for hedging his bets.

I agree. I don't think it's to do with the embassy though. I think it's that they're forcing him to remain in conditions detrimental to his health. In a typical situation like this if the person they were trying to arrest was in danger the police could storm the building.

> they're forcing him to remain in ...

Technically, they are not forcing him at all.

But practically they are, there's nothing preventing the .se prosecutor from interviewing Assange in the embassy.

Edit: I wouldn't mind if the downvoter explained why they did so, I can't fathom that anyone familiar with the case would think I am wrong. Even the Swedish supreme court agrees with me.

Maybe not but when you believe you're facing extradition to a country that supports the death penalty you don't really have much choice.

Assange would not face the death penalty, unless he voluntarily travelled to the US. Most extradition agreements prevent that.

You know that US had in the past kidnapped people multiple times right? And sometimes they ended in torture chambers.

Also, Chelsea Manning stupidly believed that there would be fair treatment in the US, and ended in solitary confinement for life.

Also, Denmark admitted that the US planes parked there are CIA planes that are waiting to kidnap Edward Snowden in case he go Denmark, Sweden or Norway.

What makes you think, that Assange is immune from that treatment? The CIA planes are already there! If Assange go to Sweden, the US can kidnap him very easily, Denmark+Sweden authorizing it or not, and historically they have authorized quite frequently (maybe every single time).

I have no doubt Assange would end up in similar conditions as Manning, but I don't believe there is any chance he'd be executed.

I feel the same way - but if I were in Assange's position, however little the risk is of execution, I wouldn't take a gamble.

Chelsea Manning stupidly believed ...

This is a pretty nasty (and inaccurate) thing to say about what motivated Chelsea to make the decisions she did that eventually led to her arrest.

Those Oregon protestors should try that. "We're being illegally detained, because we'll be arrested if we leave!"

I think you're missing the whole point.

The Swedish prosecutor has failed to her their duty (as confirmed by the Swedish supreme court) to in refusing to accept Assanges statement from the UK/Ecuadorian embassy.

Had the prosecutor done her job Assanges case would have already gone through the courts, but now he has been unnecessarily detained (essentially in investigative custody, by whom isn't relevant here) for several years.

Edit: I'm not sure why this is getting downvotes, Sweden has already admitted that there's no need to have Assange in Sweden unless he's sentenced. Therefore forcing Assange to stay in the Embassy under the threat of (unnecessary) extradition to Sweden can undoubtedly be considered detainment.

Had the prosecutor done their job Assange would've been charged, got his trial and potentially (very likely, considering the evidence) found not guilty.

Of course, a guilty sentence would completely change the situation.

That isn't the case he ran before the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention though.[1]

Judging from his written submissions, he says that the UK has caused him to face "an impossible dilemma", namely, choosing between confinement in the embassy or giving up his (inalienable) right to non-refoulement as a refugee. Apparently the WGAD has previously held that putting someone in that position involves unlawful detention. So it turns out that is the significance of the fact he is in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

[1] https://justice4assange.com/IMG/pdf/assange-wgad.pdf

It was one of the main points of the UN working group.

Imagine how many people could be educated with the money that governments spend on activities like this, I doubt it will ever happen but until we stop the mostly needless wastage of throwing money at bureaucratic political games we'll never get off this rock. You know who's being punished when that money is being spent? The public, not Assange, not Wikileaks, not any governments - it's the public.

Politics aside, there is no human reason why informed, intelligent people could not speak and asses him within the embassy, then give the same treatment to those making claims and present their findings accordingly, it's only the totalitarian inhuman systems of political practise that have prevented sound, logical reasoning to take place.

If the evidence clearly states that he directly hurt other human beings then he should face punishment for that in the country that he is a citizen of, if it is unclear he should be presumed innocent until proven guilty but still investigated transparently and humanely.

With regards to assisting parts of Wikileaks - he was part of a large community of people (remember, we're humans and we want to get along for the most part) that exposed corruption and wrongdoing by people and governments in positions of power. If you have to break a law to prove that laws have been broken both parties must be treated with the same scrutiny - end of story.

Edit: I'd like to add that if the sexual assault claims were true he should be treated as a mental patient that committed a crime rather than a criminal with malicious intent of direct wrong doing. You can't heal, or change people with punishment - humans are adaptive, complex organisms that need quality education, therapy, social training and reflection and then they need to play a part in the community to help prevent such things from happening again. If you think about the money that's been spent with regards to the alleged sexual crimes alone - with those millions of dollars just think about how many people that could help, not just with education but also improving mental health, support networks and so forth that can make a difference not just to 1-3 people but thousands of people. The value of where our money has been spent on this is clearly very poor.

I do feel for Assange. Hi is in a bad situation, but personally so do I not see how his voluntary attempt to evade a legal arrest order is detention. Hi is accused of a serious crime and the Swedish authorities must investigate it.

The whole situation has nothing to do with the alleged crimes - he would be out of jail by now if he was even convicted. It is all about if he is to be extradited to the USA or not. If Sweden says they won't send him to the USA then he will walk out today.

> If Sweden says they won't send him to the USA

So the catch-22 is that he says he is happy to go to Sweden in case he is given guarantees of not being extradited, but no such guarantee is possible under Swedish law.

What swedish authorities could (and should) do in this situation is just make some really broad statements about how even though they have agreements with the USA, no one would ever be extradited from Sweden to any country in case they risked facing the death penalty and/or are whistle blowers.

As a European country Sweden does not extradite in case the extradited person faces the death penalty.

Sweden has done some questionable extraditions in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...

The previous "CIA scandal" is still very well remembered here, and is just another reason that it won't be repeated. The political fallout would be massive.

If it happened right now, it'd be forgotten amongst the migrant crisis. Assange is soap opera. Migrant crisis is literally at doorsteps, and has Sweden closing borders.

Like the political fallout of downing the presidential plane of an other nation, breaking the standing rules of immunity and inviolability. No nation, especially three of the largest nations in Europe at the same time, would ever dare to do that.

Political fallout from actions taken in the war against whistleblowers has so far been quite minimal.

I'm not entirely sure why that's relevant, it only protects Assange from being executed.

What Swedish authorities should do is just interview him remotely and then decide whether to prosecute. Case closed.

Didn't they come to the embassy a few weeks ago to interview him?

Few weeks ago is also when UN announced the decision to state parties.

They agreed to do an interview at the embassy, then the embassy declined.

That's a rather incomplete summary of the story, if you are interested in the topic you should make sure to read the various reports about this whole affair.

Is Julian Assange a whistle blower or a reporter on whistleblowers?

A whistleblower is a reporter.

When I hear the term "whistleblower" I assume the person works inside the organisation on whom they are 'blowing the whistle'.

And the US would just say "we won't execute Assange"

"...we'll just lock him up with convicted gang members and rapists."

> no one would ever be extradited from Sweden to any country in case they risked facing the death penalty and/or are whistle blowers.

Capital punishment is against the European Convention of Human Rights. No EU (well Council of Europe) country is legally allowed extradite anyone where they would face the death penalty. That's been the law for years. There has never been any question of Assange being extradited and executed, because you can't extradite someone in that case.

Cripes, even Russia has stopped capital punishment because of the ECHR.

Portugal, a member of the EU has an extradition treaty with India, where criminals can be killed by the state. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-Portugal-sign...

Abu Salem was actually extradited from Portugal to India before this treaty existed

That's not a refutation of what he said.

EU countries also extradite to the US. But only after the US assure that in the specific case the death penalty will be neither sought nor imposed.

A quote from the link:

> The treaty with Portugal comes after India accepted its two main conditions that the extradited person would not face either a death sentence or life imprisonment beyond 25 years.

They're not supposed to be extradited if they will be tortured either, but prolonged solitary detention is not considered torture for reasons of political convenience. (No one wants to call the U.S. out on their extensive ongoing humans rights violations.)

Even Russia has stopped capital punishment.

That is, claimed to stop:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky

This isn't about the death penalty. The US would probably guarantee that Assange will not be sentenced to death, then they can put him into solitary confinement for the rest of his life.

> but no such guarantee is possible under Swedish law.

There is no legal impediment to for the Swedish government preventing them from refusing extradition. What makes you think there is?

> If Sweden says they won't send him to the USA then he will walk out today.

Can the US President give a guarantee that the Supreme Court will decide a case in a certain manner? Because that's what that means.

Sweden is a country with laws, and an independent judiciary. Sweden has extradition treaty with the US (as do many people). If the USA follows a procedure, then the Swedish courts must hand someone over (and vice versa). That's what the (Swedish) law says. You're asking the Swedish government to guarantee that the Swedish courts won't decide a particular case in a particular manner.

Extradition is a political process, not a judicial one. It is the U.S. Department of State that decides who gets extradited from the U.S.A., for example. If they want you extradited you're gone, if they don't you aren't.

In Sweden it's the Government (prime minister, effectively) that decides, not any court.

The idea that there's some sort of independent, non-partisan process for extraditions is completely, totally false. It is entirely political.

In Sweden it's the Government (prime minister, effectively) that decides, not any court.

Only in one direction. If the Supreme Court blocks an extradition as illegal under Swedish law then the Government cannot overrule that judgement (though I suppose they could change the law and ask the country to refile the extradition request). They can however refuse to extradite someone even if the courts rule the extradition legal.

Every government can deny an extradition for political or human rights reasons.

And it would be an absurd and a clear indication of lack of any kind of independence if they could not.

>You're asking the Swedish government to guarantee that the Swedish courts won't decide a particular case in a particular manner.

I am not asking for anything, but as others have pointed out it is totally within the Swedish governments prerogative to deny the extradition of Assange to the USA. If they were truly interested in the Swedish case they wanted to question him about they would have come out and said this long ago.

If Julian has committed a crime in Sweden then let him be tried and sentenced in Sweden, but when the USA treats people like Chelsea Manning was/is treated then I think Julian has a point.

As an Australian I am most disappointed in how the Australian government has failed Julian. They should be pushing for a resolution of the whole situation yet they have basically washed their hands of him. No matter what he has done he is still an Australian in trouble overseas and the Australian government should be helping.

The exact same thing is true of Roman Polanski, who long ago would have been free in the US had he not fled his sentence after being convicted. The only reason Polanski still has detention in the US hanging over his head is that he evaded the sentence.

I used to think that Polanski’s case was rather open and shut (what he did was not excusable in any way), but the way the judge behaved in his case was rather disturbing.

From what I understand he is accused of having sex without a condom. Girl objected to not using condom but not to having sex. Still, she went with it without being forced physically.

The argument is that it is a pretense to have him detained by US-controlled country to get him sent to US without proper judicial procedure.

Basically, both UK and Sweden said it can't rule out that he is sent over to US if he's detained for this unrelated "crime".

It was a bit more complicated than that. The allegations were of what would definitely be considered statutory rape under swedish law (and probably the laws of most similar countries including the US).

I made a swedish to english translation of the actual allegation (as in the actual case file), the original can be found here, naturally it's in swedish: http://www.magasinetparagraf.se/bilden/forundersokningen-avs....

Here's my translation of the accusation (to the best of my ability):

Sexual Assault

They were sitting in bed talking and he took off her clothes. They had sex again and she realised that he had only put the condom over the tip of his penis, but she let it pass.

They went to sleep and she awoke with the sensation of him entering her. She immediately asked 'Are you wearing anything?' and he replied 'You'.

She told him 'You better not have HIV' and he replied 'Of course not'. She felt it was too late, he was already in her so she let him continue, she was too tired to tell him once more, she had been nagging him about using a condom all night.

She never had unprotected sex before. He said he wanted to come inside her, he did not say when he would but he did. A lot leaked out of her afterwards.

She told him 'What if I get pregnant?'. He answered that Sweden is a good place to have kids. She jokingly told him that if she became pregnant he would have to pay her student loans.

On the train to Enköping he had told her that he had slept in Anna Ardins bed after a party. She asked if he had sex with Anna but he said Anna liked girls, that she was a lesbian.

Now she knows that he did the same thing with Anna. She asked him about how many he has had sex with, he responded that he didn't keep count. He said that he had HIV tested himself 3 months earlier and that he had sex with a woman after that and that she was tested and not positive.

She said sarcastic things to him in a joking tone, she believes that she was trying to de-dramatize what had happened, he in turn did not seem to care. When he was told the size of her student loans he said that if he was to pay her loans then she would have to give birth to a baby.

They joked that the child would be named Afghanistan. He also said that he ought to keep abortion-pills with him that would in reality be sugar-pills.

His phone rang and he had a meeting with Aftonbladet (swedish newspaper) on tuesday at 12. She explained that he would not make it to that meeting, so he pushed his whole schedule ahead by one hour.

After that he rode a bicycle with her on the back down to the train station. She paid his ticket to Stockholm. Before they separated he told her to keep her phone on. She asked if he was going to call and he said he would.

She took the bike home, showered and changed sheets. Since she didn't make it in time for work she called in sick and stayed home. She wanted to clean up and wash everything. There was semen on the sheets and she thought it was disgusting. She also went by the drugstore and bought 'dagenefterpiller' (abortion pills).

After she had discussed with her friends she realized that she had been the victim of a crime. She went to Danderyd hospital and from there to Södersjukhuset (another hospital). There she was examined and also tested using a so called 'rape-kit'.

edit: the old link s no longer working, here is a working one (again it's in swedish):

http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/docs/memoria.pdf

Abortion pills is not the correct translation of "dagenefterpiller". A literally translation from Swedish to English would be the day-after-pill, but the correct English term would be the morning-after pill, which has the technical name emergency postcoital contraception.

Abortion pills is used to trigger an abortion, or to use the other common term, induced miscarriage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_contraception

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_abortion

Thanks for the correction, I'm not really well-versed in that area (should have asked the missus!)

Tack!

The UK High court judgement lays out the charges as well:

1. Unlawful coercion

On 13-14 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [AA] in Stockholm. Assange, by using violence. forced the injured party to endure his restricting her freedom of movement. The violence consisted in a firm hold of the injured party's arms and a forceful spreading of her legs whilst lying on top of her and with his body weight preventing her from moving or shifting.

2. Sexual molestation

On 13-14 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [AA] in Stockholm, Assange deliberately molested the injured party by acting in a manner designed to violate her sexual integrity. Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her without her knowledge.

3. Sexual molestation

On 18 August 2010 or on any of the days before or after that date, in the home of the injured party [AA] in Stockholm, Assange deliberately molested the injured party by acting in a manner designed to violate her sexual integrity i.e. lying next to her and pressing his naked, erect penis to her body.

4. Rape

On 17 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [SW] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep. was in a helpless state.

It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange. who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used. still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party's sexual integrity." http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html

The problem is that he cannot clear himself from rape allegations without risking being extradited to US. Neither Sweden nor UK can't guarantee that he isn't extradited. There is in fact good probability that he will be.

Can you expect somebody to hand himself voluntarily to US "judicial" system when it is known that he has bleak chances of having proper case in US court, that US routinely ignores human rights in such cases?

> Neither Sweden nor UK can't guarantee that he isn't extradited.

Can the US President give a guarantee that the Supreme Court will decide a case in a certain manner? Can the UK Prime Minister guarantee that a court case in the UK will end a certain way? Because that's what that means.

Sweden is a country with laws, and an independent judiciary. Sweden has extradition treaty with the US (as do many countries). If the USA follows a procedure, then the Swedish courts must hand someone over (and vice versa). That's what the (Swedish) law says. You're asking the Swedish government to guarantee that the Swedish courts won't decide a particular case in a particular manner.

This is entirely false, as extradition is a political process, not a judicial one. In the U.S., the Department of State decides whether someone will be extradited. In Sweden, it's the Government (effectively, the prime minister for a case like Assange's).

Extradition treaties require that the act be a crime in both countries. Assanges lawyers argued in the UK courts that what he was wanted for wouldn't be a crime in the UK. They lost. The courts found that those acts would be illegal in the UK.

You don't have to be forced physically for it to count as rape/sexual assault as far as I am aware. Not objecting is the same as saying no effectively. You need active positive consent to be safe. If I'm wrong please correct me but from what I've read this seems to be the way it works.

It depends on the country. The broad concept that consent is required is something that most countries agree upon, but the fine details of what exactly constitutes consent vary.

In Canada, for example, it is illegal to kiss your sleeping wife, because (a) a kiss is a sexual act, (b) there is no de minimis exception to sexual assault, and (c) even if your wife explicitly consented in advance to being kissed while asleep, that consent ended when she fell asleep (in spite of that being the precise circumstance to which she wished to consent). (R v JA)

As another example, a man who lies about using birth control is committing a sexual assault, while a woman who lies about using birth control is not; the supreme court took the view that the possibility of becoming a mother is harmful, while the possibility of becoming a father is not. (R. v. Hutchinson)

As far as I'm aware, no other legal jurisdiction has followed Canada's example in either of these contexts.

   it is illegal to kiss your sleeping wife
   a man who lies about using birth control

Aren't you a Canadian citizen? What are you doing to fight such insane laws?

Yes, I am a Canadian. I'm not doing anything to actively fight these laws, but I do try to educate people when the opportunity arises; the first step to fixing bad law is to make people aware of the problems.

Thank you.

It might be interesting to reflect on the social conditions that must have prevailed for judges to believe that this is a defensible judgement. Legal decisions usually reflect the prevailing mores in the social milieu of judges (= upper middle class).

If you become a father, won't you be obliged to pay child support? That's a long term drain on your resources you might not be ready for and that would be unfair if the woman lied to you about birth control.

In the view of the Supreme Court of Canada, being required to pay child support to a child you never wished to father, does not constitute "harm".

It may be worth noting here that child support is considered to be something to which the child is entitled, regardless of to whom the money is in fact paid; there have been cases where rapists have received court-ordered child support payments from their victims.

> It may be worth noting here that child support is considered to be something to which the child is entitled

That's only half true. The truth is that the father is entitled to pay, in the "best interests of the child". But there is no requirement in law or in practice that the mother actually spends the money on the child. Or even that she's accountable to the the father (who typically has legal rights over the child), for how any of the money is spent.

It is unfair, but you are still liable for child support. The argument is that the child is your responsibility - if you don't want to risk having a child, don't have sex.

Women have been known to take sperm from a used condom and impregnate themselves. If that happened to you, you would still be liable for child support.

> if you don't want to risk having a child, don't have sex.

... which applies only to one sex. Women can have an abortion, and choose to not be a parent. Men can't. That doesn't sound like equality to me.

Western courts have held that men have absolute liability for their sperm. This includes the following situations:

* your girlfriend lies about being on the pill

* your girlfriend fishes the condom out of the garbage and impregnates herself

* your girlfriends roommate fishes the condom out of the garbage and impregnates herself

* your girlfriend impregnates herself with the leavings after giving you oral sex

* as an underage boy, you are raped by an adult woman.

The last one is surprising.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-12-22/features/96122...

The judge said "Victims have rights. Here, the victim also has responsibilities."

The admitted and convicted pedophile has full custody of a minor child, and her victim is ordered to pay the criminal money... or go to jail for non-payment of support.

I support equality. I have a hard time finding equality in the court decisions in this area.

That last article seems like a miscarriage of justice, and example of some horrible double standards.

If you feel like kissing your sleeping wife, so you kiss her and she wakes up and sues you for being kissed, then you should be happy. Because you just learned how wrong you were feeling like kissing your sleeping wife and that it's time to move on...

she wakes up and sues you for being kissed

We're not talking lawsuits here. We're talking about criminal law, where there is no requirement for the alleged victim to feel aggrieved or even to consent to the prosecution.

If you kiss your sleeping wife, then mention this fact in passing to a police officer, you could theoretically find yourself being arrested and thrown in jail, since you confessed to a serious crime.

(c) even if your wife explicitly consented in advance to being kissed while asleep, that consent ended when she fell asleep (in spite of that being the precise circumstance to which she wished to consent).

What exactly is the point of such a law?

It's not a (legislated) law, it is case law; i.e. the question was brought before a judge because there was no existing law, and the judge decided that the existing law should be interpreted to include that proscription. The decision can be overturned by a higher court.

The decision can be overturned by a higher court.

There is no higher court than the Supreme Court of Canada.

> Not objecting is the same as saying no effectively. You need active positive consent to be safe.

Very few countries have such laws. In most Western countries sexual intercourse without objection between two adults that are capable of consenting/objecting (no abuse of authority, no threat, no force) will not be regarded as rape.

This would be a very extreme definition of rape, because when you think about it, who would actually commit the rape if both persons did not object? Did both persons rape each other?

Did both persons rape each other?

Legally, yes. The same applies if both persons are too intoxicated to be able to consent; and in some states without "romeo and juliet" laws, if two underage persons have sex.

Of course, it's up to prosecutors in such circumstances to decide whether to prosecute none, one, or both parties...

> You don't have to be forced physically for it to count as rape/sexual assault as far as I am aware.

Modern public opinion != legal opinion. It varies wildly between jurisdictions. And what's on the law books isn't necessarily what's effectively enforced. In some jurisdictions, there is no effective way to prosecute for rape within marriage.

Whereas where I am, it's apparently legally required to continually get positive verbal consent throughout the act (as told to me by a legal student ~2 years ago), though this hasn't been tested in courts, and seems to be written to a fantasy of how humans behave; it doesn't matter how enthusiastic you are about getting consent, if you're not verbalising it constantly, then technically a crime is going on. Tough for you if you are turned off by talking during the act. Of course, take this to court and you're faced with the usual he-said/she-said problem of rape cases.

Legal definitions of rape - the definitions that count - vary considerably.

You can scare quote "crime" all you want, but there is a procedure to establish the accusation would be a crime in the UK, which is required for the EAW. Assange took it all the way to the Supreme Court. He lost every time. I think they know better than you.

He's accused of 4 acts. One is holding someone down and penetrating her. Another is having sex with someone who was asleep.

No, he's accused of rape:

>>One: “The allegation of rape would not be rape under English law”

>>This is flatly untrue. The Assange legal team argued this twice before English courts, and twice the English courts ruled clearly that the allegation would also constitute rape under English law.

http://www.newstatesman.com/david-allen-green/2012/08/legal-...

The problem is that he's also wanted for leaking secret documents (like Snowden), and there's a high chance that the allegations were only intended so he can be arrested in a country that has an extradition policy with the US. He fears for his life, and given the US's "secret" concentration camps (Guantanamo, secret CIA bases, secret planes waiting to move Snowden, etc), I don't blame him.

Strange comment .. He was already arrested in the UK, which has an extremely liberal extradition policy with the US. He spent a week in Wandsworth prison.

Being Commonwealth citizen he can't be extradited from UK (to US). He would have been if he was UK one, though.

However he is fugitive in UK on his right own, skipping bail is no joke.

> Being Commonwealth citizen he can't be extradited from UK (to US)

Source for this claim?

I believe the legal term for that is bollocks. The procedures are here[1]. Note that it forbids extradition if the person would face the death penalty.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/extradition-processes-and-review

Although the death penalty in the US seems to be a very remote possibility, one gathers that the prospect of 45 years in a US jail is not. At present it looks like 45 years in the UK Ecuadorian Embassy: ""We will not allow Mr. Assange safe passage out of the United Kingdom nor is there any legal basis for us to do so," UK Foreign Minister.

Being Commonwealth citizen he can't be extradited from UK (to US).

Yeah... that's not true.

and there's a high chance that the allegations were only intended so he can be arrested in a country that has an extradition policy with the US

After leaving Sweden he spent weeks in the UK though. Plenty of time to arrest and extradit him.

So your logic is that this was all contrived in an effort to get Assange to a country with an extradition treaty in the US, when he was already in Britain? Because Britain is well known for its cold relationship with the US and repeated refusal to extradite people to the US, right?

Not buying it. (Also EU law would prevent Sweden from extraditing him to the US without British consent anyhow. So either Britain is okay with his extradition and there's no need to get him to Sweden, or they're not and there's no point. And that's not even touching on the fact that Sweden couldn't extradite him to the US without an assurance that he could not face execution, which is politically very unlikely to happen. I don't doubt the US would love to grab Assange, but the legal extradition question is a complete red herring.)

Edit: Fix dumb typos, too tired.

In the UK extraditions to the US are generally won or lost in the court of public opinion. It is unlikely that the US would attempt to do this with Assange in the UK as it would immediately turn into a three ring media circus with Assange as ringmaster and would become a very political hot potato.

Much better to do it in a country with a Byzantine legal system, a foreign language and less developed media. Especially one that has been tame in past.

See Gary McKinnon as an example of a high profile extradition attempt from the UK.

Why did he flee to the UK? The UK co-founded NATO with the USA. Sweden isn't in NATO.

If it was just for the alleged rape in Sweden then it wouldn't make any sense to hide in the embassy for almost 4 years now, since it is very likely that he would have spent less time in prison in Sweden for this crime.

It's the Supermax prison treatment including solitary confinement for life that he fears in the US.

You just have to look at how they treated Manning.

In face of that risk it certainly would feel like detention to me. Imagine someone would threaten to lock you up for life in solitary confinement and possibly even torture you on top of that if you ever left the room you are sitting in right now.

Wouldn't that feel like detention? Yes, because it is. That threat alone significantly restricts your freedom.

Serious crime? Are you out of your mind? His "crime" would be no crime at all in every other country. Only in Sweden a prosecutor is allowed to call that a possible rape. The "victims" did not so. It's entirely a political theatre. See e.g. http://assangerape.tumblr.com/ or https://justice4assange.com/Assange-Case-Fact-Checker.html

You might want to find some sources that seem slightly more credible. One is an obviously biased website and the other is a Tumblr...

Aren't people who are biased towards a cause a good source if you are looking for reasons why people believe that cause? A neutral third party wouldn't have a strong opinion, so they'd be less motivated to do their research since the issue wouldn't matter to them as much.

Many people are motivated to perform thorough and high-quality research even though they are not personally invested in the topic they are researching.

Journalists, for instance.

I personally prefer a source that is as unbiased as possible, even if that means that there is less "content", because I don't want to have to sort fact from fiction in the biased source. If I had to sort fact from fiction, I would basically be doing the research myself, which would defeat the point of looking at someone else's corpus of research in the first place.

> His "crime" would be no crime at all in every other country.

One of the requirements of extradition treaties is that the person is accused of something that's a crime in both countries. Assanges lawyers argued in the UK High and Supreme Courts that what he wanted for wasn't a crime in the UK. They lost. It's the opinion of the UK courts that what Assange is accused of, would count as a crime in the UK.

"would be no crime at all in every other country" is completely incorrect. He is accused of initiating sex with a person who was asleep at the time.

This is a crime in the UK & Wales, in fact their legislation specifically mentions sleep (this was specifically cited by the UK Supreme Court when it denied his appeal). This would also have been a crime in Canada (the Canadian Supreme Court ruled on a case a year or two ago in regards to sex and unconsciousness). It is also a crime in Sweden.

I thought this comment in the other thread was insightful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11033115

Why did he go to the UN? Probably because they're not a court and have no actual power here.

But it doesn't mean that he'll walk free. It's not legally binding. And British officials have made clear that the European arrest warrant against him remains in place.

The panel's ruling will not have any formal influence over the British and Swedish authorities and the UK Foreign Office said it still had an obligation to extradite Mr Assange.

I don't quite understand: Why appeal to the UN in the first place, if their ruling is not legally binding?

Very few things that the UN does is legally binding. The idea is that you can use the ruling to shame national governments into doing the right thing, and it gives politician that support the ruling leverage for trying to oust the sitting government.

It's a political move. He wants to use the UN to put pressure on the UK and Sweden.

Why hasn't Assange appealed to the European Court of Human Rights? Both Sweden and the UK are members and he's subject to a European arrest warrant.

Probably because at every stage where a court has looked into the issue they have crushed him. The UK Supreme Court's ruling was very clear on the matter and did him no favours in terms of public opinion. Taking to the ECHR and losing would be another serious blow.

I think that's the correct answer. So, rather than going up the legal hierarchy in Europe, Assange is attempting a political end-run by going to the UN.

The bigger question is why is the UN going along with it.

They already have basically no credibility - why make it worse?

The UN should stop trying to tell countries what to do, no one listens to them anyway. Focus on helping when asked, and brokering voluntary treaties, when asked.

Because he has no need to go to ECHR, Swedish supreme court already sided with him.

The UK police have said they will still arrest him if he leaves, and the UN ruling is not legally binding.

Ha. Organisations like the UN or EU are pointless if countries can just choose not to ratify decisions. Sad.

>Ha. Organisations like the UN or EU are pointless if countries can just choose not to ratify decisions. Sad.

I thought the point was to get people round the negotiating table in a safe environment, rather than breeding resentment by forcing people to sign things at gunpoint?

There's no point in getting people to negotiate if there's no way to ensure they'll follow what has been agreed upon after leaving the table.

Forcing a nation is what war is about, and it rarely works out very well.

Negotiation is about finding a solution to a problem that leaves all parties better off if they follow the solution than if they don't. It is not always easy and sometimes coercion, in the form of sactions within EU and UN, is used to make one party realize what is best for them - but this also tends to work out not very well.

Not forcing people to do what you want is often a more succesful way of getting what you need.

AP: "Sweden's foreign ministry says U.N. panel concluded that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's detention is 'arbitrary'"

https://twitter.com/AP/status/695260597533962241

A U.N. official says Sweden was informed last month of a U.N. panel's decision on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

While the panel hasn't officially released its decision, Sweden's foreign ministry said Thursday that the advisory group had concluded that Assange has been a victim of "arbitrary" detention at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where he sought refuge in 2012.

http://bigstory.ap.org/7bb5647f6042478ab3d56d4bbe73b90b

As mentioned by some people in the comments, Assange may still be arrested due to the lack of jurisdiction of UN panel's such as this.

If that is the case, what is there that we (as supporters of Assange's plight) can do to add pressure to the UK government and forward the effort towards securing his freedom?

Why would "we" want Assange to go free? He's wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual assault.

Why did we want Aaron Swartz to go free? He was actually charged with a felony crime.

Or maybe some times things aren't what they seem and their are political motivations, and they require politics to fight them, not just blindly following false justice

These allegations of sexual assault really should be investigated in good faith. The time is coincidental, I'll grant that, with the allegations being levied against Assange shortly after WikiLeaks published something so prominent, but non-consensual sexual activity is a horrible thing to do to a person, and the impact of such should not be mitigated.

Because the Swedish authorities have actively prevented him from having a chance to defend himself in court.

Considering what a brief and skewed description of the Julian Assange story is reported by the article, this is probably a good time to repost John Pilger's more thorough reporting on the events, for anyone who wasn't following it or doesn't remember clearly:

http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-siege-of-julian-assange-i...

Which is also a biased article!

For some frequently asked questions, from Assange's side of things, as it seems as if a few people here haven't heard about Assange before on Hacker News, take a look at the FAQ section halfway down this page (you can skip the top bit if you are somewhat familiar)

https://justice4assange.com/

It's also worth a look at some of the arguments here: https://justice4assange.com/extraditing-assange.html

(edits: made the above clearer that the FAQs were from Assange's side)

I'm not sure Assange's own site is the best source for unbiased facts on the case. Here's the other side:

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/media/2012/09/legal-mythol...

[Edit: tone]

Right, thanks!

Thank you for that link - I haven't come across a well researched analysis of all of the entire legal history up to this point. I'd say this was required reading before commenting here.

Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange

Julian Paul Assange (born 3 July 1971) is an Australian computer programmer, publisher and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, an organisation which he founded in 2006. He is currently a fugitive from UK and Swedish justice, in Ecuador's London embassy after having been granted political asylum by Ecuador in August 2012.

If USA didn't do anything illegal/scandalous/unethical/violate_their_own_constitution, then there wouldn't be incentive for anyone to leak anything if at least there was proper channels to go through to point errors and correct the system.

Instead of correcting the system, those in power are trying to going after whistle blowers. The system is no longer a democracy.

Note that the article says the panel will rule on Friday, not that he has already won.

If there is an updated article showing more recent developments, then a link to that would be awesome

Shame on the UK. Shame on Sweden. Shame on the US.

We're with you Julian.

This title is misleading... he has not won anything yet... he is still waiting for their ruling... The ruling I believe from the article suppose to come out tomorrow. So please make sure you read the article. He has also said that if he looses which might still he will freely give himself up for arrest tomorrow at noon.

It's a done deal:

https://twitter.com/AP/status/695260597533962241

UN says Sweden's foreign ministry was informed last month.

Everyone is reacting to the leaked prediction of the panel's decision; what makes you think Assange's statement isn't also a reaction to that? If he knows how the panel is going to decide, it's not particularly courageous of him to suggest he'd turn himself over if they voted against him.

The statement was made Wednesday night, U.S. time:

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/695084493825273856

Do we have reason to believe Assange knew about the decision beforehand?

Moreover, do we have reason to be less interested in the larger context of the UN panel's decision than in the ways in which we can paint the motives of Assange's statement?

I'm not invested in this situation either way.

I think the charges against Assange are weak, but that he should face them. I don't believe he ever will, though.

I do not believe in the conspiracy theory that the US wants to spirit him out of Sweden; in fact, my personal belief is that if he himself flew to JFK Airport tomorrow, his only problem would be that we would take 8 hours of waiting in a room at customs before informing him that we wouldn't let him in the country at all. A lot of the hypothesizing about the US kidnapping or assassinating Assange makes sense only on a message board. In reality, just about the worst thing that could happen for the US is for Assange to suddenly disappear.

Meanwhile, I think things are playing out in the embassy exactly how everyone watching it figured it would, and exactly as Assange hoped: he's waiting out the charges, which grow staler and less immediate to the victim and harder to prosecute by the day. Eventually, Sweden will stop caring enough to force extradition. He'll never be able to go back to Sweden again without risking prosecution, so he just won't, and that will be the end of the story.

The comparison to Polanski is apt.

Let me just say this in advance: I am a person on the Internet who probably does not agree with you about this stuff. You need to be ok with that. I'm certainly ok with you, a total stranger, not agreeing with me!

My hunch is that someday Assange will be extradited to Sweden (or go on his own volition), the Swedish prosecutor will interrogate him, and shortly afterwards (hours or days) he will be set free. And nobody will kidnap him.

And then he can wonder if his self-imposed imprisonment was worth it.

Why does he have to go to Sweden when there is no real need for him to do so? Swedish courts already confirmed that they don't need him present there, they could've easily have tried him already if the prosecutor did their job.

That is something you could ask about everyone who has ever been accused of anything and later acquitted. Unfortunately, it's also the same thing everyone accused and later convicted would like to say, so that logic can't control.

Having someone else represent you at trial is very common.

Swedish courts have already confirmed that there is no need for Assange to be extradited. Had he been given a fair trial and sentenced, then it would be a whole different situation.

For years the prosecution has been preventing him from having his day in court by illegally refusing to interview him in the Ecuadorian embassy, which is what this whole UN thing is about.

>I think the charges against Assange are weak, but that he should face them. I don't believe he ever will, though.

He hasn't really been allowed to, there's no need for him to be present in Sweden to face those charges.

I'm curious on why you feel that the Swedish prosecutor delayed the case, and kept it in a stalemate even though the Swedish courts have stated (as others have stated here) that Assange does not need to be present in Sweden. If they really wanted to proceed with the case in Sweden, it seems like they could have.

If you believe that this whole thing had nothing to do with extraditing Assange to the US (or using the stalemate to keep him confined to one place), then what was the purpose of waiting for Assange's physical presence in Sweden?

It was just a few hours before the BBC published the leak.

If somebody wants to try to guess what the arguments of the UN Working Group can be, the starting point should be:

http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FactSheet26en.pd...

"according to the Group, deprivation of liberty is arbitrary if a case falls into one of the following three categories:

A) When it is clearly impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty (as when a person is kept in detention after the completion of his sentence or despite an amnesty law applicable to him)(Category I);

B) When the deprivation of liberty results from the exercise of the rights or freedoms guaranteed by articles 7, 13, 14, 18, 19, 10 and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, insofar as States parties are concerned, by articles 12, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26 and 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Category II);

C) When the total or partial non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial, spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the relevant international instruments accepted by the States concerned, is of such gravity as to give the deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character (Category III)."

It's about the "arbitrary deprivation of liberty" against his human rights.

Most likely cause is the fact that (despite Swedish law) the Swedish prosecutor has forced him to stay in the embassy by refusing to interview him there, if she had done so the EAW could be cancelled and the whole extradition mess would be over.

Assange doesn't want to go to Sweden and there's no need for him to do so, so forcing him to stay in the embassy just because the prosecutor wants it is undoubtedly "arbitrary".

Could the title be changed to the original? ("WikiLeaks' Assange 'unlawfully detained' in Ecuador embassy, U.N. panel to rule, BBC says")

As the article correctly points out, this is currently a rumor, the panel has not yet ruled.

It may be worth pointing out that this is not a court. It's some working group.

It's extremely hard to understand how this could be the case. He has evaded prosecution for rape for years and still has people defending him. It was entirely his own choice to seek refuge inside the embassy and he did so to avoid prosecution. This makes him a gigantic hypocrite in addition to the sexual offences.

Reading the complaint against him, it's very hard to see how anyone could justify his actions. I'm sure there'll be much posted in this thread shortly though calling him a hero.

I'm one of those who would defend his actions.

Lets assume Sweden drops the rape case against him. Then he would certainly be extradited to the USA. A country where the harshest penalty is the death sentence, a country that imprisons people for life without a due process and a country that tortures its prisoners.

Afaik the rape accusations in Sweden boil down to "he had sex with a woman w/o using a condom", but that could be wrong.

EDIT: Read up on the issue and the accusation is that he had unprotected sex with a woman while she was asleep.

Lets assume Sweden drops the rape case against him. Then he would certainly be extradited to the USA.

He spent weeks in UK before going to the Ecuadorian Embassy. Why didn't the UK extradit him to the US?

Afaik the rape accusations in Sweden boil down to "he had sex with a woman w/o using a condom",

...while said woman was sleeping, and when the evening before she had categorically refused to have sex without a condom, AFAIK.

Great, but it's still just an accusation. If the UK is willing to spend millions to get Assange back to Sweden so he can be questioned about an accusation... I mean, come on, isn't that a bit too much? There's surely something else going on here the way I see it.

That's how the criminal justice system works. How would you prefer it were done? He was tried in absentia, and only arrested in convicted?

The UK has a well established history of actually having a judiciary that is willing to stand up against US extradition requests and make it possible to drag them out for years.

Sweden, meanwhile, has a history of black bagging political asylum seekers and illegally handing them over to the CIA.

If I was Assange, I know where I would take my chances.

Well it's more that with the two women he agreed to use a condom and then did it without it against their wishes which is certainly bad form and which apparently breaks the law in Sweden.

Try not to get your information about the USA from reddit threads. It will give you a very skewed view.

What is so wrong with my view? What has reddit to do with it? Just asking you to point it out so I can adjust my opinion.

"Then he would certainly be extradited to the USA" Now you're the one using absolutes that no-one can be certain of. One of the key points about the whole process is that Sweden can't pre-emptively say what they would do if the US requested extradition because they haven't.

The one extradition case we have seen play out, to a country famed for its liberal criminal justice policy (Sweden) from a country famed for the rule of law (UK) gave him many opportunities to test the process through the courts. That was even through the European Arrest Warrant process which is supposed to streamline extradition processes.

If, and it is an if, Assange were to be subject to an extradition request from the US he would be able to challenge it through the courts. He wouldn't face the death penalty as European countries don't extradite under those circumstances. Similarly prison conditions can be argued and again European courts can require commitments from the US regarding conditions and treatment before they would approve an extradition.

The Gary McKinnon case is illuminating into the thinking behind extradition from Europe to the US.

Finally it is also worth saying that Assange has probably also shot himself in the foot if he ever did face extradition to the US. He was bailed in the UK (where there is a presumption of bail) and this able to flee to the embassy. If he were arrested again facing extradition to the US he would be much less likely to be granted bail and so unable to claim political asylum on a much more sympathetic case.

> The Gary McKinnon case is illuminating into the thinking behind extradition from Europe to the US.

It is illuminating about why Assange might feel safe in the UK compared to a country that his own leaks have demonstrated continued to host CIA rendition flights for years after the government said they would stop after being caught illegally black-bagging political asylum seekers and handing them to the CIA.

UK courts actually do stand up against US extradition requests. In Sweden, on the other hand, it is not clear that the government will abide by Swedish law.

Here's the kicker - the UK's permission would be needed if Sweden went on to consider extraditing to the US http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19426382 It's because we're still vicariously liable because we're handing him into the power of another country.

So not only would Swedish courts be an appeal process the UK's would as well.

Plus it is worth making the point that it is inconceivable that the USA would "black bag" Assange. Kidnapping a high profile Australian citizen from a European country while he was still being protected by the UK legal system is beyond international incident territory, the repercussions would be immense. If the US wanted to illegally abduct him making him the focus of the international media and several legal systems is a really bad precursor.

If anything they want to put him on trial and make an example out of him, not apply car batteries to him in some Egyptian hell hole. A trial means a legal means of getting him before a US court, which means following established extradition processes.

Apart from academically, it is largely irrelevant whether or not this is likely to happen.

What is relevant is that there are good reasons why Assange might genuinely believe it likely to happen, which means there is good reason that his asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy was requested in good faith rather than "just" to avoid a Swedish court case with a low risk of conviction and short sentences were he to be convicted (he'd have been out a long time ago if he had been extradited and convicted in Sweden).

Here's the secret - Sweden does not like him either. He could appeal it up the courts all he wants but when you are in a position where you expose secrets the the public sovereign bodies do not want known you are going to be a target. Civil rights and due process are for when you have not pissed off the leaders of multiple nations and their intelligence agencies by showing off their dirty laundry.

If I was from Sweden, went to the US, shoplifted, and got an extradition request because I committed a crime, I would not need to fear for my life nearly as much as Assange needs to. His is the kind of case where he "accidentally" ended up a plane to the US and "accidentally" disappeared after he arrived, and then six months later the FBI say they found his body halfway across the country in a forest mauled to pieces by an "unknown predator".

There is little reason to believe he is more likely to be extradited to the USA after being exonerated of a crime in Sweden than before being charged with a crime in Sweden, or from the UK before the courts had exhausted all options to stop him being from extradited to Sweden. His jurisdiction-hopping simply doesn't square with someone fearing US power rather than Swedish courts (cf. Snowden)

Frankly, the probability of the USA torturing or executing a celebrity journalist from a Western country isn't particularly high anyway, especially not when it involves extradition from a European country, but of course asking countries to rewrite their statute book to offer him a special personal guarantee it won't happen is a good way of deflecting a rape charge.

> There is little reason to believe he is more likely to be extradited to the USA after being exonerated of a crime in Sweden than before being charged with a crime in Sweden, or from the UK before the courts had exhausted all options to stop him being from extradited to Sweden.

Which of the two is known to have continued to cooperate in illegal extradition flights long after its own government told the US to stop it (we know thanks to Wikileaks), and have had a history of illegally black-bagging political asylum seekers and handing them to the CIA to be shipped off and tortured? (that would be Sweden, if it wasn't clear)

> His jurisdiction-hopping simply doesn't square with someone fearing US power rather than Swedish courts (cf. Snowden)

If you are going by this, then it also doesn't make sense that he's prepared to spend years holed up in an embassy to avoid a case based on allegations that 1) has extremely low conviction rates even before considering that at least one of the women is refusing to cooperate with police, 2) where the punishment generally would be much less time than what he's so far spent holed up in an embassy in a relatively low security Swedish prison. If all is above board, then had he returned to Sweden he'd have been free a long time ago.

As I've said many times before before, I don't think that Sweden has been pushed by the US here, but I do think Assange genuinely think they do, and I can see why he'd be worried, especially given the strange behaviour of the prosecutor.

> Which of the two is known to have continued to cooperate in illegal extradition flights long after its own government told the US to stop it (we know thanks to Wikileaks), and have had a history of illegally black-bagging political asylum seekers and handing them to the CIA to be shipped off and tortured? (that would be Sweden, if it wasn't clear)

Except that he stayed in Sweden for months knowing there was an investigation against him and being free to leave, then left on the day he was advised they intended to interview him under caution with intent to charge him. The former makes no sense whatsoever if you fear conspiracies to render you to the US. The latter makes a lot of sense if what you're really trying to avoid is a reputation-damaging trial.

And yes, his reputation isn't exactly unblemished, but making the story about conspiracies against him certainly has a lot more appeal to his natural supporters than making the story about that tearful woman opposite him in the courtroom, even if that tearful woman's testimony amounts to nothing.

Why do you think your ten minutes of Googling makes you better placed to judge what constitutes a crime than the UK Supreme Court?

It's not worth arguing with Assangers on HackerNews, it's like trying to argue with a Scientologist. Their beliefs are faith-based: facts and logic are of no interest.

Where did I write anything like that?

Welcome to HackerNews, where people actually believe that Sweden would extradite Assange to the USA where he would be executed.

It's so braindead I can't even begin to respond.

You did respond.

What is braindead about it? Sweden and other EU countries are extremely hesitant when it comes to extradition based on "political crimes", therefore the US prosecutors already changed the inducement to computer fraud etc.

I live in a EU country where our government looks the other way when our citizens are being illegally detained by the CIA. There is at least one case where one of our citizens was tortured for years w/o court date.

When the US found out that he was not a terrorist, they asked our foreign minister what should happen to him. He told them to keep him, so he was tortured for a couple more years.

The whole world looked the other way when the US forced down a diplomatic plane to search for Snowden.

Chelsea Manning was sentenced to a life in prison under circumstances that can't be called due process.

What is so outlandish about thinking that Assange would be extradited?

For starters Sweden have laws against extraditing people for crimes where there is a risk of the offender to be executed on a guilty verdict.

Sweden also has a history of, in violation of Swedish law and international treaties, black bagging political asylum seekers and handing them over to CIA to have them shipped off to be tortured. Years later Swedish military intelligence uncovered that CIA rendition flights via Sweden were still ungoing.

Conveniently we know of the latter thanks to Wikileaks, seeing as the Swedish government kept quiet about it.

I don't think Assange's case is a US conspiracy, but I also am not that surprised if Assange does genuinely believe it, and the bizarre behaviour of the Swedish prosecutor (which my personal theory is down to domestic politics - both the prosecutor and the appointed attorney for the women have a history of pushing for radical tightening of the application of Swedish laws on rape and sexual abuse) certainly would give him more reason to hold on to such a belief.

"The US promisses Mr. Assange will not be executed"

Please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN.

Putdowns of the rest of the community are particularly tedious.

  He has evaded prosecution for rape for years

Whilst I am no fan of Assange, I think it is fair to point out that Assange is avoiding deportation to Sweden to face questioning concerning accusations of alleged rape. He isn't being prosecuted (yet).

Innocent until proved guilty please, whether you or I like him or not.

> Innocent until proved guilty please, whether you or I like him or not.

Being prosecuted doesn't mean guilty. Calling being questioned being prosecuted isn't that far off the mark. And neither term implies guilt.

> He isn't being prosecuted (yet).

Yes, because he has evaded it.

... Evading prosecution. The only thing here done is make his extradition order impossible to execute, he hasn't really evaded (ie he didn't break the conditions of his bail)

Of course he broke the conditions of his bail. He was ordered to surrender himself to the court after he lost his Supreme Court hearing. He skipped bail (leaving his supporters £100k out of pocket).

Julian Assange is an awarded journalist and one of the most famous hactivists of the 21st century[0]. Wikileaks (founded by him) published documents supplied by Chelsea Manning including the Collateral Murder video[1], the Afghanistan war logs[2], the Iraq war logs[3] and many others.

Who would you call a hero? Have you watched the Manning videos?

[0] Julian Paul Assange (born 3 July 1971) is an Australian computer programmer, publisher and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, an organisation which he founded in 2006. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrik...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_War_documents_leak

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak

EDIT: s/awarder/awarded

Doing good things doesn't give you magic credits to let you off bad behaviour.

You forgot to mention the rape stuff.

Yeah, the time he got horny so didn't use a condom and that constitutes "rape" for some people; accusation already posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11033327

Luckily "getting too horny" is not a defence against rape charges.

Not using condom is not valid proof in most countries neither, it should be a completely different crime "she asked for condom, I didn't use it, so I'm rapist" makes no sense under no line of logic, maybe it should a different crime called "non-compliance of sex risk accordance" or something, calling it rape is just the same as the silly extremist feminism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpbeSgMl434

The specifics of the charge and whether it counts as rape, were played out in the Supreme Court, which ruled that it would count.

That comment just rapped me, see you in court.

Here is the actual complaint, translated from swedish to english:

Sexual Assault

They were sitting in bed talking and he took off her clothes. They had sex again and she realised that he had only put the condom over the tip of his penis, but she let it pass.

They went to sleep and she awoke with the sensation of him entering her. She immediately asked 'Are you wearing anything?' and he replied 'You'.

She never had unprotected sex before. He said he wanted to come inside her, he did not say when he would but he did. A lot leaked out of her afterwards.

She told him 'What if I get pregnant?'. He answered that Sweden is a good place to have kids. She jokingly told him that if she became pregnant he would have to pay her student loans.

On the train to Enköping he had told her that he had slept in Anna Ardins bed after a party. She asked if he had sex with Anna but he said Anna liked girls, that she was a lesbian.

They joked that the child would be named Afghanistan. He also said that he ought to keep abortion-pills with him that would in reality be sugar-pills.

edit: pdf of the original complaint (in swedish): http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/docs/memoria.pdf

I'm still appalled by the fact that Sweden, which seems to be one of the best countries to live in, cannot handle this situation better.

They're America's bitch. Like the UK. That's the problem.

https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/02/25/snowden-training-guide...

https://theintercept.com/2015/04/02/gchq-argentina-falklands...

Remember: JTRIG (NSA+GCHQ) is very interested in online propaganda and controlling public opinion through shills.

Note: Both serve their governments, which have decided to treat Assange as an enemy rather than a journalist.

I don't think this is okay. I encourage everyone to be on guard for this sort of behavior on news stories related to Assange.

Truly courageous of Assange to to write that "Should the U.N. announce tomorrow that I have lost my case against the United Kingdom and Sweden, I shall exit the embassy at noon on Friday to accept arrest by British police as there is no meaningful prospect of further appeal," at the same time as the BBC is reporting that they ruled for him.

Assange made his statement at 3 AM GMT, when did BBC leak this?

Did they leak it to the BBC or to Assange first?

AFAIK only the state parties and members of the panel had access to the info, so most likely source of the leak is UK govt.

Leaking it to the BBC (UK state media) sort of discredits the whole process and Assanges statement, so that might be motivation enough for someone.

Is it still costing UK taxpayers a million per month?

Vaguely remember something like that.

Think of what good all that money could have done instead.

Why don't UK folks do a petition for THAT so your parliment has to argue it, instead of something useless (but impressive) like banning Trump from the UK

There was a petition - it got something pitiful like 650 votes. Apparently people care a lot more about Trump.

Because at this point he's wanted by the police for skipping bail.

The courts can't just ignore that because he's been hiding out for too long. The justice system has an obligation to bring him in.

>The justice system has an obligation to bring him in.

Generally there's an expectation of reasonable effort, 24/7 police guard isn't going to magically stop him from leaving.

For better or worse I suspect the UN panel ruling would be the same if, instead of being a noted whistleblowing journalist hiding from equivalent allegations in the Ecuadorean embassy it was, say, a former senior diplomat for Gadaffi's Libya, or a prominent US cult leader, or another non-"hero" type that could claim the same fears of extradition and arbitrary detention with the same degree of plausibility.

On the other hand, I suspect that if he had that sort of background there wouldn't be many people here willing to advance the argument that the original prosecution must be politically motivated, or it wasn't a real crime...

Justice is supposed to be blind.

I don't think there is any argument against the prosecutions behaviour being politically motivated, the Swedish courts have confirmed that the prosecutor acted in breach of her duty by not agreeing to interview Assange in the embassy.

Not an expert on EU or UK law, but it seems odd to me that a ruling by a UN panel would have any effect on Assange's legal status. Perhaps it is just cover for him to live in a non-EU country and fight extradition?

Who exactly is he detained by?

Nobody yet, but the UK police / government already indicated they'd arrest him if he stepped out of the embassy (which is why they had a 24/7 watch on the embassy for two years), so that effectively is detainment.

Couldn't he have used a diplomatic bag to leave the embassy?

They considered that. The UK police had orders to detain him anyway.

http://www.wired.com/2015/09/ecuador-considered-smuggling-ju...

No. That's not how diplomatic bags work.

Diplomatic privileges don't give the diplomats any right to transport individuals across another country's territory.

Convoluted 'diplomatic bag' schemes don't reflect how the law actually works.

Apparently the 24/7 surveillance on the embassy cost £11.1 million ($17.6 million).

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/06/19...

How many officers do they have stationed there? Even factoring in 24/7 surveillance with overtime that's at least a couple dozen officers' salaries.

Technically, he's not detained; he's free to leave the embassy.

Effectively, he is detained; he won't get far if he leaves.

From there, it gets more complicated. Is that effective-but-technically-not detainment lawful, and even if it's not lawful, doesn't he have the option of lawful detainment by choosing to leave the embassy? After that, though, he's likely on the hook for a bit more than just a bit of questioning in Sweden. It's a very complicated situation, which is probably why the UN chose to be involved.

If "UN ruling" were binding then it would turn the notion of political asylum irrelevant. Political asylum only makes sense if laws have some sort of limit. And I am not looking into Assange's case specifics, but in a more abstract way, in which a bad "UN ruling" should be considered.

Can this be merged into the other post? This article is just quoting the BBC one.

The article that Reuters refers to:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35490910

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention:

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Detention/Pages/WGADIndex.asp...

Apparently their report is to be published tomorrow.

I personally don't see how is he "detained" when he himself decided to sit in the Embassy. Maybe because the UK by waiting on him to exit the embassy doesn't recognize his status of having political asylum granted by Ecuador? I'd like to read the (as the article says, legally directly non-binding for the UK) report of the UN Working Group myself to adjust my opinion.

Up to then it's just media making noise, still no new information, except that the report is expected to be published.

I believe he's with reasonable probability in danger of being extradited to the US and there having the fate similar to Manning's. As far as I understand there is also some kind of "working group" formed in the US that specially works on his case, and the US really successfully does such things as demanding the extradition of people they want to prosecute and then getting them.

Edit:

If somebody wants to try to guess what the arguments of the Working Group can be, the starting point should be:

http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FactSheet26en.pd...

"according to the Group, deprivation of liberty is arbitrary if a case falls into one of the following three categories:

It's not about the "detention" but about the "deprivation of liberty." That has more sense.

> I don't see how UK is doing something illegal

Threats of storming into an embassy is not illegal?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-wikileaks-assange-ecuador-...

Or threats to arrest him inside an diplomatic transport? Or even threats to ignore any diplomatic immunity at all?

Nothing illegal here it seems.

> threats to ignore any diplomatic immunity at all?

I agree with you that it is an obvious pressure by the state, the question remains how is that technically illegal and how is he technically "arbitrarily detained."

I'm looking forward to read the details tomorrow, or something more that you know even now.

I also find it good that Ecuador remained firm, because otherwise the claim would be that Ecuador agreed to what was demanded (as in UK saying "we've just made threats but haven't done anything else"), so there would be no chance even to consider if something is legal or not.

You seem to misunderstand diplomatic immunity. Host countries are well within their rights to evict diplomats.

Evict is not arrest though.

Conveniently Assange doesn't have diplomatic immunity, and you can't be retroactively granted it against the host's wishes.

AP confirms: https://twitter.com/AP/status/695258621454741505

i cannot figure out for the life of me why so many support him given what the women went through.

For the same reason people still watch Woody Allen movies, listen to the music of Michael Jackson, and why Cosby Show reruns are still on TV.

Talent is more important then morals.

The phrase "innocent until proven guilty" seems appropriate here.

What did the women go through? I understand he's been charged with sexual assault, but from what I understand the Swedish laws about sexual assault are quite different from those elsewhere, seems to be somewhat more demanding about what is classed as consent, but I could be wrong on that.

When the extradition request went through the UK courts, it was made very clear that these would have been classed as sexual assault under UK law too (may even be rape, I don't recall exactly).

Translated article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11033244

Because if you remember the details of when this case started it's not at all clear the women involved went through anything at all. The initial investigation was dropped by the prosecutor on the grounds that there was no chance of ever getting a conviction (e.g. one of the women tweeted about how she'd slept with Assange afterwards, not something you typically do if you've been raped). Assange hung around in Sweden for about a month, iirc, in case the police wanted to keep talking to him, but they said they were done and he could go.

Then later on the stories started changing and the charges were mysteriously resurrected by a different prosecutor as political pressure on Wikileaks intensified. Suddenly they want to question him again, but by this time he's left Sweden (as they said he could). So not surprisingly he is now suspicious as hell.

I read a pdf with the details once. can't find it now but i think it mentioned quite a bit of violence as well as um... inserting during one's sleep. I'm aware it's not a clear cut case because the victims don't hate him. but i'm sure the judges can determine his culpability better than I. I do however find his behavior disgusting.

What's alleged is irrelevant. The case was dropped because the standard for criminal law is "beyond all reasonable doubt", at least in any rational or sane justice system.

There is absolutely no way a case with this many holes in will ever - EVER - reach that standard of evidence unless they have something really unusual, like video evidence of what happened.

The chance of getting a conviction in this case given the weaknesses of the claims, the he said/she said nature, and the contradictory behaviour of the alleged victims afterwards (which included attempting to remove evidence that contradicted their story by deleting tweets etc), all point towards a failed prosecution. Hence, why Assange is suspicious.

"charges were mysteriously resurrected by a different prosecutor" is incorrect. The women appealed the prosecutor's original decision, which is their right under Swedish law. A new prosecutor looked at the case and decided to reverse that decision. Nothing "mysterious"... just the normal workings of a justice system.

One key part of what Assange is accused of is initiating sex with a person who was asleep. This is a crime in many countries (Sweden, Canada, UK) that have specific legislation around consent (the UK laws actually include "sleep" in their language about consent).

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