Julian Assange: Wikileaks co-founder jailed over bail breach
bbc.com
bbc.com
> If the Swedish allegations against Julian Assange were genuine and not simply a ruse to arrest him for extradition to the United States, where is the arrest warrant now from Sweden and what are the charges?
> Only the more minor allegation has passed the statute of limitations deadline. The major allegation, equivalent to rape, is still well within limits. Sweden has had seven years to complete the investigation and prepare the case. It is over two years since they interviewed Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. They have had years and years to collect all the evidence and prepare the charges.
> So where, Swedish prosecutors, are your charges? Where is your arrest warrant?
> Julian Assange has never been charged with anything in Sweden. He was merely “wanted for questioning”, a fact the MSM repeatedly failed to make clear. It is now undeniably plain that there was never the slightest intention of charging him with anything in Sweden. All those Blairite MPs who seek to dodge the glaring issue of freedom of the media to publish whistleblower material revealing government crimes, by hiding behind trumped-up sexual allegations, are left looking pretty stupid.
> [...]
[1] https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/04/so-where-is-...
Much of the commentary around the legal aspects of Assange's case it misleading or outright false.
See:
1. (2012) https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/media/2012/09/legal-mytho...
2. (2019) https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/11165977611288453...
Ecuador started arranging for him to leave the embassy at least five months ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/dec/06/ecuador-says-u...
Why didn't Sweden have an extradition request ready? They had at least five months to prepare one.
The US does not need Sweden's involvement to extradite and try Assange. The rape charges are separate and irrelevant to the charges he faces in the US, and whether the UK would even grant his extradition to the US is not a sure thing.
These two cases are unrelated, and the only reason they have been conflated is a concerted effort on the part of Assange supporters to discredit the accusations of sexual misconduct by lumping them in with his WikiLeaks activities and make up a whole lot of guff about CIA plots rather than just accept that he should face the criminal justice procedure for some shitty personal behaviour on his part.
Ecuador hardly needed to notify Sweden. It was international news. The Guardian article from five months ago that I linked was just one of many. "No one in the Swedish government reads international news" is not a credible explanation.
I see two possible explanations:
1) Sweden doesn't place a high priority on prosecuting famous accused rapists who've escaped justice for years, or
2) Sweden doesn't consider Assange a famous accused rapist who's escaped justice for years.
I don't find that believable, but whatever.
It really does look to me like you are grasping at straws, but maybe I've missed something.
I just realize Assange is a high-value target for political and legal attacks (including false allegations), so I think people who unquestioningly believe what they hear about him from official sources are naive. Haven't we all seen enough to know that governments and the media don't always tell the truth?
And when Sweden cracked down on The Pirate Bay we saw that the Swedish government is not immune to pressure from Washington.
All I'm saying is: wait for conclusive proof before leaping to conclusions.
From what I recall about the situation from past threads is that Sweden cannot send extradition requests in advance. Most criminal courts don't go out of their way to break the rules as that costs and they have to justify the budget.
Also why spend extra time and money on something when they could just wait until he was under British custody? Where is the urgency when normal procedures would suffice?
The Americans went out of their way because this is a political matter to them and their budget was approved.
These things normally takes quite some time.
Interesting, this is the first I heard about the DNA evidence, which is compelling. The prosecutor's dropping of this charge is reasonable given the lack of any DNA present on the sabotaged condom.
Also should mention that Craig Murray is a personal friend of Julian Assange, something his blog readers are well aware of. Murray is the one who testified he personally collected the DNC email leak from a disgruntled DNC employee in Washington DC and hand couriered it across the Atlantic where he handed it over to Assange. This leak origin account contradicts the Russian hacker narrative regarding the DNC email leak.
Based on all the problems Assange has faced in the last 8 years, it's pretty much "mission accomplished, total victory".
They did find DNA in the other woman's condom, but that condom was not split and there was no claim by her of condom sabotage.
With that in mind, I've moved 19797118 to be a child of 19796933. Even if the guess is wrong, it makes more sense in that context anyway.
The original case was closed since the prosecutor didn't expect a conviction because Assange was hiding under a rock.
> No it hasn't.
IIRC, a couple of the less serious crimes expired but the most serious one remains prosecutable.
The rape charge is the one that's still prosecutable, but he'd previously faced allegations of "sexual molestation" and "unlawful coercion."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-11949341:
> August 2015 - Swedish prosecutors drop their investigation into two allegations - one of sexual molestation and one of unlawful coercion because they have run out of time to question him. But he still faces the more serious accusation of rape
Edit: This article clarifies the meaning of the other Swedish allegations by quoting them in detail: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/julian-ass...
Prosecutors dropped the rape investigation in 2017 because they were unable to formally notify him of allegations while he was staying in the embassy.
They are considering re-opening the investigation.
Top prosecutor Marianne Ny said his arrest warrant was being revoked as it was impossible to serve him notice.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39973864
You are unlikely to come to sound conclusions if you reason on the basis of your knowledge of US law. Sweden is not the US.
There are many differences between the US and EU/UK.
His questioning here is clearly in bad faith. Assange successfully evaded justice on most of his charges in Sweden because they have a statute of limitations. It's not something to celebrate.
The situation with Assange is all public record. Obama DoJ didn't pursue extradition, Trump DoJ did.
Separately to this, Assange was suspected of sexual offences in Sweden, most of which have now expired. Connected to those charges, he committed an offence under the Bail Act in the UK for which he has now been convicted.
Anyone arguing that USA was intending to extradite Assange in 2010 is misinformed or arguing in bad faith. Only Sweden wanted to extradite him in 2010 because they had strong evidence he had committed a sexual offence in their jurisdiction.
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Downvoters - did I get something wrong?
He regards "bellingcat" as an enemy; they are the supposedly independent blogger producing OSINT that showed the Russian missile launcher used to shoot down MH-17. These days I'm suspicious of people defending the argument that this wasn't Russia.
He was removed from his ambassadorship to Uzbekistan because he protested against human rights violations in Uzbekistan. This may not be what an ambassador should do, but displays integrity.
[1] https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/03/pure-ten-poi...
Considering how well its working, I'd say they're left looking pretty smart.
EDIT: And tbh I'm not sure how the original arrest warrant for rape could be considered by anyone to be a "technicality".
The jail sentence for skipping bail is the reasonable part of the whole story. No question that it was about as bad a case of bail-skipping as could be imagined.
The issue is more one of why exactly is the justice system involving itself in his business. He didn't think he'd committed a crime in Sweden. His 'victims' didn't think he needed to be arrested. The police didn't think he needed to be arrested at the time either. The word 'rape' seems to be something of a mistranslation on this one.
I gather (from Wikipedia) that he maintained he had consensual sex [0], so it's going to be interesting, if he does get to Sweden before the US grabs him, what actual evidence is involved.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...
It's not a guaranteed conviction. The president has an embarrassing YouTube reel where he "loves WikiLeaks" 50 times. It'll drag the contents of contentious leaks back into the spotlight. It could be more convenient to let it go.
But America isn't a dictatorship so the decision isn't exactly up to him. There's a whole legal system operating under their own framework that the president doesn't have much control over.
You should probably let the Met know. They seem to think there is one.
>UPDATE: Julian Assange arrest.
>Julian Assange, 47, (03.07.71) has today, Thursday 11 April, been further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities, at 10:53hrs after his arrival at a central London police station. This is an extradition warrant under Section 73 of the Extradition Act. He will appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates' Court later today (Thursday, 11 April).
http://news.met.police.uk/news/update-arrest-of-julian-assan...
However in these cases they were both done with co-operation from the local police (or military) and government as part of the US "war on terror" (abductions without local government approval have also happened in the past -- Mossad did this in the 1960s[2] -- but I don't recall a US example).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann#Capture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...
> The case was picked by the international media as one of the better-documented cases of extraordinary rendition carried out in a joint operation by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Italian Military Intelligence and Security Service (SISMI) [emphasis added]
A joint operation implies there was co-operation. I'm not saying the US has never conducted extraordinary rendition without local government involvement, just that the two examples aren't like that.
In that context, I wouldn't really be surprised if it's happened before, tho the blowback potential, if it should become public, would be massive so it will probably be kept under extremely tight wraps.
[0] https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/20-extraordina...
It was a decent sized scandal that rendition flights had even just refueled in Diego Garcia (a UK territory).
These sorts of things can't be looked at in terms of broad 'alignment'.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-told-to-stay-off-u...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/29/msps-demand-...
So yes, even just refueling is something the MSPs demand action over.
Not sure why that's worthy of "come on" like it invalidates my point.
Yep, Members of the Scottish Parliament have been pissed off. Scottish police were blocked from doing anything however. Westminster unfortunately rides roughshod over both of them and has been a supporter of the rendition flights, as noted in the article from The Times.
>"The CIA has been accused of using Scottish airports to facilitate the transfer of terrorism suspects to overseas black sites for interrogation and torture.
>A report by Westminster’s intelligence and security committee (ISC) says that MI5 or MI6 was involved in at least 50 rendition operations."
They don't allow extraordinary rendition starting from the UK.
>"I understand they, I understand they intervened on our behalf.
>So we're going to extradite him and we're going to get him back, it'll be really good to get him back on United States soil.
>He's our property. So we can get the facts and the truth from him."
https://twitter.com/NewDay/status/1116322371781058561/video/...
I expect better from the BBC. He was never charged with anything related to that investigation. There were no such charges to drop; this statement is factually inaccurate.
But all of the leaks were factual, no "crafting" to form a narrative involved. The DNC did undermine Bernie Sanders, she did say she had "private and public positions", and a whole host of other things. Just because they didn't publish what the RNC was doing doesn't make the leaks any less true or important.
There are many people who continue to hold him in high esteem, despite claims about his organization's ulterior motives.
I also really don't think it is a difficult concept to understand that when choosing what to release and what you don't release you can greatly influence what is "true".
Let's say I was a military organization and I released some information that I killed 12 terrorists.... but I didn't say that I killed 200 civilians doing so. I could use your same argument "point out something I said that wasn't true"... but obviously I wasn't telling the whole story.
I’m sure he is fully aware that his actions have put his life in danger, but I’m also sure he doesn’t believe he should accept this fact without fighting.
Disgracefully dishonest in multiple ways. Not to mention, the police force's continued incompetence should have no bearing (maybe it didn't).
I'm somewhat shocked by the idea that people should be allowed to get away with breaking the law just because it would be expensive to catch them. I don't think many British people would agree with that attitude.
People also seem to be happy to forget the UN has found he has been arbitrarily detained [0]. The judge could have factored that in, she did not, probably to save face in light of a ridiculous 16 million pound police operation and pandering to US relations.
[0] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...
So? It's only to be expected that more money will be spent on enforcing the law when it's being flagrantly violated in the public eye.
I think in reality you object to any attempt to hold Assange to account for skipping bail, and you'd be no happier if only, say, £10,000 had been spent in attempting to do so. If you don't object to the law being enforced, I don't think you can really object that "too much" money is being spent. It's up to the relevant authorities to figure out when enough is enough, financially speaking.
The UN finding was daft, as Assange was not detained at all, and hence obviously not arbitrarily detained. If you look into that in more detail, you'll find a dissenting view by one member of the relevant panel - presumably the only person with his or her head screwed on:
> The finding in Assange’s case is a surprising one. As a dissent by the working group’s Ukrainian member, Vladimir Tochilovsky, points out, there is a thin basis upon which to argue that Assange is detained in the Ecuadorean embassy. “Mr. Assange fled the bail in June 2012 and since then stays at the premises of the embassy using them as a safe haven to evade arrest,” Tochilovsky wrote. “Indeed, fugitives are often self-confined within the places where they evade arrest and detention.”
If you are UK taxpayer, you can.
> "It's up to the relevant authorities to figure out when enough is enough, financially speaking." It is, but when they spend more than seems appropriate for the offense, then questions and doubts about the incentives pop up.
As a UK taxpayer myself, I'm happy to see the rule of law eventually prevail in this instance. It strikes me as stingy and short-sighted to value that outcome at less than a few million pounds.
> It is, but when they spend more than seems appropriate for the offense, then questions and doubts about the incentives pop up.
Not really. I'd use the Madeline McCann case as a comparison. Millions of pounds of public money were spent looking for one missing girl who was (sadly) quite unlikely to be alive. You can question whether that's money well spent. But it doesn't take a conspiracy theory to explain why large amounts of money sometimes get spent investigating cases that are extensively covered in the news.
(i) An EAW can only be issued for something that's a crime in the country that issues it.
(ii) European countries can't extradite people who would face the death penalty on conviction.
The courts could have been forward thinking and left his bail-skipping as a misdemeanor.
(the following in quote marks are direct quotes from the alleged victims.)
On 17 August, SW wrote "JA did not want to use a condom".
On 20 August, while at the police station, SW wrote that she "did not want to put any charges on Julian Assange" but that "the police were keen on getting their hands on him".
According to the statement she was "chocked (sic shocked) when they arrested him" because she "only wanted him to take [an STD test]".
On 21 August, SW wrote that she "did not want to accuse" Julian Assange "for anything" and that it was the "police who made up the charges (sic)"
On 23 August, SW wrote that it was the police, not herself, who started the whole thing.
On 26 August, AA wrote that they ought to sell their stories for money to a newspaper.
On 28 August, AA wrote that they had a contact on the biggest Swedish tabloid and SW wrote that their lawyer negotiated with the tabloid.
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-07/julian-assange-goe...