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Comment by malms | Hacker News Reader

membership of a particular social group or political opinion

I'm relatively neutral on Wikileaks/Assange, but this is a stretch. I don't think "illegally leaking documents" counts as a political opinion any more than I should be entitled to asylum because I have a "political opinion" that MDMA synthesis should be legal and got caught for engaging in it.

That's intended to cover things like persecution solely for being a member of a political party.

it's not so much a stretch to say "transparency" is a political opinion..

i'm not even so much agreeing with what he did and full transparency, but to me all of this is clearly political.

Everything is political opinion, but the legal standards are much narrower. The idea that I can hold a political opinion that "I should not be arrested for breaking laws", break a law, and then expect not to be arrested because of my political opinion is ridiculous.

I'm firmly against his potential extradition to any other country, but let's be honest -- he's not exactly in trouble with British authorities due to his "political opinions", is he?

why is he in trouble for then ?

Skipping bail. For refusing to surrender to the court after he was released on bail, following his arrest for questioning over sexual assault allegations.

If it was for skipping bail, why is he getting extradited to the US where he did not skip bail?

He's not being extradicted, he was arrested in connection with an extradition request. He now has the opportunity to fight his extradition in court.

From charges that were dropped.

A central tenet of the UK legal system is that people on bail don't get to unilaterally decide they should just be able to skip it.

Also, the victims of crime don't get to "press charges" ro "drop charges", that's for the CPS.

The charges were dropped because the warrants could not be served.

He was never charged with a crime. There were no charges.

If he was anyone else the british authorities would’ve quickly forgotten about him jumping bail.

They wouldn’t have spent this much money and resources on just anyone.

Yes, the fact that Assange is prominent is obviously a factor. But that doesn't mean that there's some kind of sinister motive for enforcing the law in this case. Consider that the UK police spent £11m looking for a single missing child (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-madel...). Would they spend that much on a child who wasn't in the news? No. But I'm sure the people looking for her genuinely wanted to find her.

> If he was anyone else the british authorities would’ve quickly forgotten about him jumping bail.

Ignoring the specifics in this case, I'm assuming you know absolutely nothing about our legal system? Jumping bail is not taken lightly in most of the world.

I know quite a bit about your legal system thank you. It is extraordinarily unusual to spend this much money to pursue any arrest warrant, much less one for such a minor offense.

Of course, now we know that there's been an US warrant on JA since at least Dec 2017

> If he was anyone else

If he was someone else who had a European Arrest Warrant outstanding for rape, the authorities would take it seriously. Our press are going to have a dim view of a foreign (alleged) rapist running around because the police couldn't be arsed.

Jumping bail to an embassy in Knightsbridge and talking to the media from the balcony isn't going to help them look the other way either.

Skipping bail.

There is no obvious threat of persecution. Facing rape charges certainly doesn't qualify.

Assange is in danger of "persecution" based on his avoidance of the judicial process. That's not a protected class.

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