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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

NYT:

> Mr. Assange has lived for years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and would have to be arrested and extradited if he were to face charges in federal court, altogether a multistep diplomatic and legal process.

Meanwhile, The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/04/julian-assange...

> Julian Assange is in arbitrary detention, UN panel finds

Also from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-mannin...

> Bradley Manning's treatment was cruel and inhuman, UN torture chief rules

So, yes, simply "living" in the embassy. Nice dodge, NYT.

The USA are the bad guys here, and no amount of deliberate obfuscation by the CIA is going to be able to ultimately hide that. This whole thing is a national shame.

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He can leave at any time how can it be arbitrary - trouble is Mr Assange fled bail which is an offence in all countries.

When he leaves he will be transferred to the US and tortured, just like Manning was. His trial will be a farce, just like Manning's (did you know POTUS—Obama at the time—declared Manning guilty prior to trial?). You, or I, or anyone would skip out on bail if appearing means you get given to torturers who will torture you without a trial. That's not his choice, it's the choice of the people out to physically harm him.

If he stays he will never receive a trial or be allowed to face his accusers.

Either way his human rights are violated. That's why it's arbitrary detention.

It's why his indictment has been kept secret; they want to physically grab him before they have to justify, legally, the charges against a journalist who published things in the public interest. If they weren't being shady about the whole thing, he could have been charged by now - but doing so would require them to be subject to legal scrutiny. They don't want that, because they don't have a leg to stand on. They won't tip their hand officially until he's already physically in their (or their allies') custody.

> (did you know POTUS—Obama at the time—declared Manning guilty prior to trial?)

POTUS is a member of the executive branch, the same branch as the federal prosecutor made tasked with arguing charges against defendants.

When the President of the United States is denying you the presumption of innocence and publicly declaring you guilty of a crime before a trial, it doesn't matter what branch of government they are in: you are not going to receive a fair trial.

> When he leaves he will be transferred to the US and tortured

If that was the real concern and not merely the excuse, why bother with Sweden? The UK has an extradition treaty with the USA. Sweden’s extradition treaty with the USA “”“prohibits extradition on the basis of "a political offense" or "an offense connected with a political offense."”””

In theory the treaty might prohibt that or torture, but in practice Sweden has extradited persons to USA who have been then tortured: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...

Missing the point that if the USA wanted him they didn’t need to go via Sweden.

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