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Comment by sorenjan | Hacker News Reader

It surprises me that HN is so full of conspiracy theorists. Assange is stuck in the embassy of a less than ideal country regarding freedom of press etc because of his own actions, and he's free to leave at any time. When he does, he will get arrested by English police, extradited to Sweden, and questioned regarding alleged rape. If the prosecutor thinks he's guilty he will get arrested, and he will stand trial in Sweden.

Nothing in this case supports any of the scare tactics he himself and parts of the Internet is using. Sweden isn't a better country to extradite him to the US from than the UK. Sweden isn't legally allowed to extradite him after he's been extradited from the UK. He was in the UK for months before he started hiding in the embassy. He is not in house arrest, he's fleeing the justice system of two well developed western countries. Sweden's government can't give any guarantees that he's been asking for, because it's against Swedish law for the government to interfere in legal matters. It's all a bunch of FUD, and people seem to eat it up because it fits their narrative.

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Sometimes it's OK to say, "I don't know."

The term conspiracy theorist is used to denote some idea that is irrational. 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.

Thus it's probably more prudent to accept one's own ignorance of the situation, and await more information before calling anything a conspiracy theory.

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.

You mean like nobody will force to land a plane carrying a prime minister for example? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

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?

Whether the charges are currently filed isn't important; they always can file the charges later.

The U.S. has claimed the right to kidnap people off the street, detain them indefinitely, or kill them as it deems necessary. I'd be very surprised if any of those tactics would be used on Assange, but in that context pressuring/asking another country to deport him to the U.S. to face charges seems within the realm of possibility.

If you were Assange, would you want to gamble life in prison on your odds, whatever they are?

That doesn't make sense because he was walking around freely in Sweden and was not afraid of being extradited before the rape allegations. If the US wanted to, they could have asked any allied or friendly nation to arrest and extradite him many years earlier.

I would if I really stood for what I believed in and wanted to prove that the US government was really as bad as I say it was.

So if I was Assange, yes I would.

Martyrdom... the dumbest way to measure the correctness of one's argument.

You embarrass yourself. Should the people who figured out that asbestos caused cancer have proved it by inhaling asbestos dust on camera, and then contracting cancer?

If you were one of them, would you do that?

Then maybe you're just worried about disappearing, or "killing yourself."

Assange is not currently charged with a crime, but there are a few reasons not to give weight to that.

First, there are claims of a sealed indictment. Second, Dianne Feinstein and other similarly influential people have called for charges. And third, they have reason to delay those charges: laying them now would make extradition harder, as compared to extraditing for a subpoena and then bringing charges.

The result is that he's not charged (which could make things like grounding planes harder) but I don't know anyone who seriously believes he wouldn't be charged if he showed up in the US tomorrow.

Whilst he hasn't yet been charged in the US, it is rumoured that there is a sealed indictment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#U.S._criminal_i...

That may be reason to force the plane to land when over US territories, but not in the EU. It's the EU who is at fault here however, for once again showing it has no balls.

The EU has extradition treaties with the US.

Do extradition treaties cover forcing diplomatic planes to land with no evidence aside from rumor that a person of interest is on the plane?

From what I remember Assanged attempted to get diplomatic license (become a diplomat for, don't know the technical term) from Ecuador but did not. There he can't get in a car and none of that stops the cops from setting up a large traffic jam till said car runs out of gas and assange has to walk. I'm not sure if there is diplomatic immunity for a tow truck.

The image of Assange trapped in an out-of-gas diplomatic car, being towed behind a beat up truck driven by a very amused blue-collar driver on the way to the airport sounds rather like something from a Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett novel.

Since these extradition treaties are not public record, all we can go on, is events. So apparently, yes.

No, Snowden is not a U.S. citizen. He has not be charged with a crime in the U.S.

Do you have any support for these assertions? The wikipedia entry for Snowden clearly seems to indicate that he is a US citizen and that he has been charged with crimes in the US.

I think I mixed up Snowden and Assange when I wrote that late last night. Sorry HN.

Snowden should be protected by WPA [1]. Unfortunately, trusting ones' government will follow its' own laws is quite a risk.

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

Sorry, you're way off base here. The WPA only protects Whistleblowers who work within the government reporting system. It's not a get out of jail free card for any action you perform under the auspices of 'blowing the whistle.'

In this case exactly. For Snowden, there is a reason he was hired as a contractor. The government contractors do not have the WPA protection that their fellow government works do.

And that might make sense if the government reporting system worked. The Thomas Drake case shows that it doesn't. Thomas Drake and some other government whistleblowers agree that Snowden did the only thing he could.

So let me get this straight. You contact "The Office of Special Counsel [1]" and they contact the FBI/CIA to take you away to an undisclosed location. You are never seen again. I'm just not buying the effectiveness of the formal procedure unless ones' goal is to die in vain..

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

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...

Perhaps there were legitimate fuel-gauge issues, perhaps not. That's disputable, and we will never know the truth. However, the fact that multiple US-allied nations denied that plane entry into their airspace isn't in dispute:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23174874

Possibly. However, if it was your life on the line, wouldn't you want assurances? I know I would. Especially if you look at what happened to others.

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 (or frankly not even well thought out / put together), and can often easily be interpreted in very different ways by different judges, I can totally understand his point of view.

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. He's got leverage. If Sweden really wanted a solution to this, they would've done this years ago.

> 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):

Some of the charges against him has already expired, the rape charge expires in august 2020.

"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

Then again this actually happened:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition#Swed...

It happened for alleged terrorists no one knew about - apart from people working in security/intelligence/military services - and Sweden felt extremely shameful. Not sure they want to do that again with somebody almost every has heard of and who hasn't been a threat to Sweden

To paraphrase grandparent, if it were you, would you be willing to risk it? It won't be much consolation to you if it happens and somebody in Sweden might feel ashamed about it.

I seem to remember Belgium extraditing someone for plotting to attack US soldiers on Belgian base.

When the US barks, Europe rolls over.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizar_Trabelsi

Belgium was recently fined for this by the EU. So I'm not sure Europe is the one that rolled over.

Yeah but if you're Assange, some kind of punishment like a silly little fine later on really doesn't matter if you end up kidnapped.

Belgium routinely gets convicted and fined for its incredibly poor treatment of prisoners. In fact, it's been convicted TWENTY TWO times for locking up mentally ill prisoners in regular (overcrowded) prisons without treatment.

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.

Dotcom is a New Zealand citizen facing charges within the borders of New Zealand. New Zealand just can't grab on of its citizens and toss them out.

This is incorrect. The US is attempting to extradite Dotcom from New Zealand for violating US law outside of US jurisdiction.

I don't like the guy, but let's not lie about it.

Dotcom is not a New Zealand citizen. He is a German citizen and a New Zealand resident. He was specifically barred from a path to citizenship and owning property because he failed the good character requirement.

>New Zealand is just as much a lapdog of the USA as Sweden

This doesn't sound like something a lapdog would do (February 2016): http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/296076/us-requests-fa...

Lawyers for the US were at the High Court in Auckland today, where they asked Justice Asher to give the appeal priority and set an early date for the hearing.

Justice Asher declined that request but set a date for August.

The current New Zealand leadership are worse than lapdogs. The goings on with Hollywood contracts (The Hobbit), Dotcom and spy agency leadership, TPPA etc etc are shameful. The lengths the PM goes to get in a photo with Obama etc etc. USA asks, we say yes. It's gross. A shining light is New Zealand's judiciary who seem fairly offside with political leadership.

The justice system is a separate entity from the government. If the government had its way, they'd have shipped him over years ago.

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.

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...

This is an absurdly naive view of a utopian hyper-rationalist.

The laws are created by those in power to serve those in power. They do not stand on their own, because they are enforced by cops, lawyers and judges, who are people. These people choose to enforce the law based on the situation at hand, and this can lead to a large disparity in outcomes given technically similar cases.

Assange and Snowden will both rot in Guantanamo the second they leave their safe houses. If you think otherwise, you are absurdly naive to the geopolitics of the world we live in.

He has a special case because they have been treating this as a special case from the start. Had he not been wanted for something beyond the official claim then he wouldn't have been treated as he is

Here are some more facts:

1. the Vice President of the USA, Joe Biden, has publicly called Julian Assange a terrorist

2. the US Government has a policy of assassinating people it considers to be terrorists.

Make of these facts what you will

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?

It can be worse he can be sent to Guantamo, the no rights land maintained by the democracy and human rights defender US government, the same that says that waterboarding is a good investigation technique.

Guantanamo is worse than being killed?

I suppose you have found a way to improve the prisoners' lot and at the same time outwit US Congress who is adamant in not letting them set foot in the United States...

But I believe very few people actually agree with you.

Yes, i agree with grand-parent, torture is worse then death. Especially when you know there is no way to escape it, and you will probably spend the rest of you life there.

Even life in prison can well be torture. I'm often surprised at the common thought that prisoners should get life instead of execution, like that's some kind of prize.

It's why I support life sentences over execution. It is the harsher of the two punishments. Bonus effect: you can attempt to rehabilitate an inmate, but not a dead man.

The main reason i am against dead penalty, there's always a possibility to rehabilitation. and dead penalty is always definite,

He's probably not brown enough for that. But the US does have a distressing tendency to kill people without any due process.

(I really didn't mean to accuse the Obama administration of racism, but seriously, what if he'd been an Arab and living in Yemen. Would the US really not have classified him as terrorist and killed him by drone?)

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

Can you support that claim?

My understanding was exactly the opposite. Sweden can't execute someone who would face the death penalty where they are being extradited. That's part of why Assange hasn't been charged under the Espionage Act - it would bar extradition. I'm not conspiracy theorizing there, it's been explicitly stated that extradition is a reason to delay charging him until he can be brought here to face a grand jury.

> "Sweden isn't a better country to extradite him to the US from than the UK."

This claim doesn't seem relevant. As soon as he was facing legal involvement in the UK (or as soon as he got asylum, I'm not sure how the timing shook out there), he ran for the embassy. Your implication seems to be that he's hiding from Swedish prosecution rather US law, but I've seen no indication that he would leave the embassy if Sweden dropped charges. Without that, I don't see how the Sweden/UK distinction matters - he's avoiding both legal systems which could extradite him.

This is a sincere question - I'd like to know anything backing those points. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I haven't seen anything suggesting that A) Sweden couldn't extradite, or B) Assange is willing to face the UK legal system but not the Swedish one. One or both of those seems necessary for your conclusion.

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?

>> 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...

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.

> It's all a bunch of FUD, and people seem to eat it up because it fits their narrative.

Not even particularly original FUD. Jacob Appelbaum was able to get away with a lot of things because he could always point to his accusers as being planted by the FBI or whoever.

Already mentioned, but deserving to be mentioned again: in a normal criminal law case you don't have multiple nations deny airspace to a prime minister's plane on a hunch the suspect is on board.

> Sweden isn't legally allowed to extradite him

Of course they are.

Alleged rape happened six years ago. There was enough time to investigate, and make trial in absentia. Stretching this case for years (possibly decades) is not fair to his victims.

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

Oh, surprise! That includes Sweden.

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