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Comment by Kristine1975 | Hacker News Reader

Kristine1975·

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?

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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.

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.

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