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Comment by samdfonseca | Hacker News Reader

> "arbitrary confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy, to his oppressive isolation, harassment and surveillance inside the embassy, and from deliberate collective ridicule, insults and humiliation"

Not only hyperbole, but it's entirely self-imposed. He wasn't confined to the embassy, he chose to stay there rather than face trial. He chose "deliberate collective ridicule, insults and humiliation" over defending himself against the accusations.

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“Come out and we will tell you what you’re guilty of”.

The US was once a great defender of liberty and democrac, but when you talk to its average citizen nowaday you start to get truely weimarian vibes.

His actions are entirely undemocratic. Sweden and the US have both democratically built a system of justice that we all agree to subject ourselves to. He decided to evade that system to serve his own self-interest. What about defending the liberty of the alleged rape victim? Do they only have the right to their day in court if the accused is ok with it?

he's neither swedish nor American; he was not democratically involved in building either judicial system

When he decided to travel to Sweden and the UK he implicitly agreed to be subject to their judicial system.

I agree that the US are overreaching.

How well did Sweden's democratic system of justice work for Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...

A system of justice that can be abused to go after political enemies. The Espionage Act is a piece of anti-democratic legislation passed during WWI in order to shut down opposition to the war. It's ironic that you're portraying its use to go after a journalist as a democratic act.

Just to be clear, 1600 of my coworkers are journalists, so I'm pretty confident in my support for journalists creds. Assange is not a journalist. Journalists don't encourage sources to break into classified systems and absolutely don't help them with it. When journalists get a stack of classified military docs, they don't indiscriminately release them to the public, they negotiate with the WH/DOD to avoid jeopardizing national security, weigh the public interest, and remove names to avoid putting people's lives at risk. See https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/26editors-note.html.... If you visited a newsroom, you might be surprised to find out that the overwhelming majority of journalists don't support Assange and his "I'm a journalist" defense.

What you write is a strong condemnation of the sorry state of journalism in America.

The New York Times withheld the story about Bush' illegal wiretapping program for a year, helping Bush secure reelection in 2004. They did so on flimsy "national security" grounds. The only grudgingly published the story when the journalist who had uncovered it threatened to publish it on his own. Some American news media is far too cozy with government. If they support the persecution of one of the most important journalists of our time, they're a truly rotten bunch.

From the moment he was removed from the embassy and locked in jail the Swedish prosecutor lost all interest to continue the case, and by a coincident the US extradition order came in.

That is how much anyone cared about defending the liberty of the alleged rape victim.

What trial was he to face? Sweden hadn't charged him with anything. They wanted to interview him as a witness, against himself essentially, so they could use what he said against him if (not when) they might have actually charged him in the future. He offered repeatedly to be interviewed, first in the UK and later in the Embassy.

This whole situation was ridiculous and kafkaesque. Charge him or do not charge him, and if you do charge him then, any only then, demand extradition.

>He offered repeatedly to be interviewed, first in the UK and later in the Embassy.

I'm pretty sure most people are not allowed to dictate terms to law enforcement as they conduct an investigation. Why should Assange be different?

He was at a very real risk of being extradited to the US. You know, one of those countries that keeps ignoring UN human rights reports.

It's not a stretch that he preferred ""deliberate collective ridicule, insults and humiliation" over what the US would do to him.

Doesn't mean that's fair or just. Just that he chose something less inhumane than the US.

Right, because all evidence points to him getting a fair trial if he came forward.

I don't know why you don't think a trial doesn't carry seriously negative and scary connotations, but it does and no rational person just subjects themselves to persecution.

I agree that standing trial for rape must be terrifying, but that doesn't mean he's being persecuted. We've agreed upon a system of justice that best protects the rights of both the accuser and the accused, and he decided to deny the alleged victim their day in court. He was free to leave the embassy, he was free to defend himself from humiliation, but he chose not to.

We've agreed on a system of law. Actual justice is frequently only an accidental byproduct.

"We" didn't "agree" to anything.

He was also at risk of being extradited to the US, and what they would do to him was a lot scarier than standing trial.

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