Sweden asks to meet Julian Assange inside Ecuador embassy

I'm not going to try to translate the concepts, since I'm much too unversed in Swedish or any other law.

The prison sentences for the crimes that may apply in his case seem as far as I can tell to range between six months and ten years (that is the harshest possible sentence for rape here in Sweden, and I can only imagine that it is given under very aggravating circumstances). Also bear in mind that almost every prisoner is released on parole after serving two thirds of their sentence - anything else is an exception.

    > Assange did threaten to release a bunch of documents
    > about Clinton

That he got via FOI requests, iirc, so unlikely to be particularly exciting.

They have asked the UK. But by being in the Embassy, Assange is on sovereign soil, and it would be (politically) akin to the UK invading Ecuador.

Now, grain-of-salt all that. I've read several things that a) say it's not exactly sovereign, but the political fallout of the U.K. entering the embassy could collapse the entire house of cards that is the Embassy system worldwide, b) states have been kidnapping and assassinating people on foreign soil for ages (see: United States, Russia, Israel, etc).

I'm sure being stuck in the Embassy is seen, at least a little, as being contained. But if he ever stepped foot outside, that'd be the end of that.

That's not what happened though. He dictated where the police were capable of having a word with him, and they chose not to do so there.

It's totally possible that there are legitimate reasons for that (if you already have enough evidence to convict, there would be no reason to 'interview' someone except in an arrest-friendly setting), but it's still a worthwhile distinction. This isn't someone calling up the police and going "I'll talk to you, but only if you agree to meet me at Starbucks." It's someone leveraging international law to leave the police with only one option.

Apparently there is, because he could.

You have the right to remain silent, and you have the right to have an attorney present, at least in one country.

Well that's nonsense. Do you honestly think most countries would rather let the charges expire rather than agreeing to do an interview outside of their jurisdiction.

I heard it was because he was a (high-profile) British citizen.

It's like what one of the other comments say, the embassies are effectively extensions to Countries. Extraditing a guest of Ecuador may be considered an act of war and could set off a chain reaction for other embassies around the world.

And to expound on that, the foreign minister is not allowed to influence the police in Sweden ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerstyre ). Although there have been cases where this has happened (IIRC the US cable leaks revealed there was ministerial interference in the Pirate Bay case)

"Some in the Foreign Office fear a permanent impasse between the UK and Ecuador, and that Assange will stay in the embassy until 2020, by which time a statute of limitations applies under Swedish law on the rape case."

Its implied 10(?) years in the article

I'm not even sure what the exact allegations are or include. E.g. consensual sex, but without a promised condom might be a different charge.

Per below, yes.

However, England doesn't have a statute of limitations on breach of bail, of which he is pretty clearly guilty. (England rarely has statute of limitations.)

"You state that Sweden can't extradite him to the US. Given the fact that most of the laws created in most Western countries (ranging from tax law to civil law) are often not extremely well defined, and can be interpreted in different ways by different judges, I can totally understand his point of view." => It is not a matter of justice system (common law vs civil law) or law definition, but a matter of independence. And when it comes to independence, Europe has shown a strong will not to extradite people to the US. Add the media pressure around Assange's case and you get a good assurance that he won't be extradited to the US

> all he has to do is wait for the statute of limitations to expire.

The Swedish investigation may well expire (parts have already). This has never really been about the Swedish charges.

The English charges (relating to failing to comply with bail) do not expire. Very few offences in English law expire - something I'm sure will surprise Americans who are used to relatively short statute of limitations on even some serious crimes (e.g. the Bill Cosby sexual assault allegations). England routinely prosecutes and jails people for alleged offences 50 & 60 years ago; many are elderly men in their 80's & 90's with little chance of mounting any sort of defence due to their age, but that's another issue.

Arrange cannot wait out the English charges and England is well documented as an enthusiastic participant in torture and rendition of both it's own citizens and foreign nationals. The UK-US extradition treaty is a shocking travesty of justice and is routinely used to send people from the UK to the US for activity carried out in the UK and considered lawful in the UK but which has upset US authorities. [1]

He has good reason to remain in the Embassy. Unfortunately he's likely to be there for many years to come and either be grabbed when he requires hospital treatment at some point in the future, or, the UK will decide it can live with some diplomatic protests and expulsion of UK diplomats after sending the SAS in to grab him from the embassy and hand him over to the US.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-14339901

> At the end of the day, as long as Ecuador doesn't kick him out, all he has to do is wait for the statute of limitations to expire.

Don't know about Sweden, but in the U.S. the statute of limitations is not granted to those fleeing from the law.

> No statute of limitations shall extend to any person fleeing from justice.

- 18 U.S.C 3290 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3290):

Forgive me, but this comment reads like yet more FUD. Do you have anything to add except more scare tactics? Of course I'd like assurances regarding anything with my life on the line, but why would I be special? Why would Assange be special? The law is the law, and an important principle in western law is that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. Should you or I be allowed to flee abroad and then demand to be questioned where we are?

Sweden's government can't give any assurances beforehand, since every case must be judged independently. Sweden can't extradite Assange anywhere after he's been extradited to Sweden from the UK without the UK's permission [0, 1]. If the US needs Sweden and the UK to cooperate, why wouldn't they just ask the UK from the start, who's a much closer allied?

[0] http://jtl.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/04/F...

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/12/07/wikileaks.assange/index...

If he sincerely believed his life was on the line from people that were willing to creatively reinterpret the law to get him to the US, he probably wouldn't have twice waited until the day there were no further legal impediments to him being prosecuted in Sweden before changing jurisdiction.

On the other hand, insisting that superfluous assurances are made by bodies that don't have any legal authority to make them is a very good excuse for not going anywhere.

Look at Kim Dotcom for a counterpoint. He's been fighting extradition for what, 4 or 5 years now?

New Zealand is just as much a lapdog of the USA as Sweden, and Dotcom actually has had charges laid.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Snowden, an American citizen, formally charged with a serious crime in the US? Is Assange, not an American citizen, charged with any such crime in the US?

Frankly this one remains unproven at best: all we know for sure is that the plane landed after its pilot cited fuel issues at a time when memos were circulating reminding border controls that Snowden was a wanted fugitive.

Edit: downvoters are welcome to prove me wrong by providing evidence to the contrary. We've no more reason to believe Morales is telling the truth than any of the alleged conspirators, particularly not when his own account is contradicted by the hard evidence of what the pilot said before landing. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/07/03...

Yes, exactly.

>Yet we're regularly challenged to redefine what is rational. It's not hard to come up with examples of things which were commonly accepted as conspiracy theories, which are now accepted as fact by most people.

It is really frustrating to witness people throw the 'conspiracy theorist' derision around so liberally when we know the above is true.

>> Sweden isn't legally allowed to extradite him after he's been extradited from the UK.

> Can you support that claim?

Yes, and I've linked to a source in a different comment that's at the moment at -2 here. It's both due to the The Doctrine of Specialty and whether what he has done is a crime in Sweden or not [0, 1, 2].

When Sweden asked for Assange's extradition from the UK he was arrested after presenting himself to the London police and then let out on bail. London's Belmarsh Magistrate's Court then rules in favor of Assange's extradition. Then the High Court upholds this decision. Then he wins the right to appeal to the UK Supreme Court because his case is "a question of general public importance." He was certainly willing to face the UK legal system.

The UK's Supreme Court also ruled that he should be extradited to Sweden, at which point he jumped bail and fled to the embassy where he sought and received political asylum. He fled to the embassy only after all legal ways of getting out of the extradition from the UK to Sweden was exhausted. Nowhere in this has the US made any claims on him, all such talk comes from Assange himself that says it's all part of a smear campaign. If the Swedish charges are dropped he will still face the criminal charges in the UK from jumping bail.

[0] http://jtl.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/04/F...

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/12/07/wikileaks.assange/index...

[2] https://www.aklagare.se/nyheter-press/for-media/assangearend...

Sweden can extradite, but not without permission from the UK. The terms of the European Arrest Warrant states that Sweden can't extradite him to a third country without permission from the UK. This means the US would have to convince two governments instead of one.

The UK will extradite to the US for a capital offence, but only with a written assurance that the death penalty will not be applied. I don't think the US would risk its extradition treaty for the sake of one person.

The question the Assange fans never seem to want to answer is why, if the US secretly wants to have Assange extradited, they didn't do that in the months when he was under house arrest in the UK. Why would they concoct an elaborate conspiracy to get him to Sweden so they could extradite from there, when it would be harder than extraditing from the UK?

No, it suffices that the United States assure Sweden that the death penalty would neither be sought, nor imposed, nor applied.

That's the standard European countries have adopted for such extraditions.

Trial in absentia is not legally possible in many, many countries.

Oh, surprise! That includes Sweden.

This is exactly the kind of irrational, sensationalist, FUD the parent was talking about. Do you honestly believe that the moment Assange steps foot outside the embassy, he's a dead man walking?

I would have thought Internet access was a drop in the ocean vs all the other expenses involved in operating an embassy

Unless incompetence. Or malice.

Trump is, as far as I'm aware, just as bought and paid for. He's just also not a career politician, but that doesn't mean he's not figured out how things get done at that level. Although best case scenario, all the career politicians decide they don't like an outsider and prevent him from doing anything he wants.

> But the reason he's made it as far as he has?

Because the Republican nominating system's non-proportional allocation of delegates, combined with the schedule of Republican primaries and caucuses, is designed to very strongly favor the candidate with an advantage in early name recognition especially if they can effectively appeal to a particular demographic that the Republicans have been focusing on as a key element of their coalition since Nixon's southern strategy, especially in a crowded field since the system is designed to create artificial delegate majorities from small electoral pluralities.

(This is engineered as a way to shorten the competitive period of primary contests by making a candidate's victory nearly inevitable very early in the process without them needing to secure anything like majority support even within the primary electorate, allowing the party to move quickly on to focus on the general election.)

Its the Jesse Ventura[1] effect writ larger. I think some folks should start looking at the 1998 MN gubernatorial election. Polling before the election suggested he would lose, but that didn't happen.

1) not a supporter - people who sue widows are pretty much on my not nice list