Note also that Sweden only found out that the UK had removed Assange from the embassy because America had begun extradition proceedings against him, even though Sweden still wanted to get hold of him.
Sweden has assisted the US before in breaking their own laws to help black bag their residents. The UK instead makes you bounce through their whole court system, not wanting to be overruled by one of their former colonies.
Does this not effectively prove that? The US has made a decision, and like a good vassal the UK judiciary is delivering Assange to them.
Sweden has provided it's own police to assist CIA operatives in black bagging it's own residents against it's own laws and process and sent them to an Egyptian prison clearly to be tortured and then blamed it all on a dead politician.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...
To the extent that it is now sycophantic towards the USA, it already was — the “special relationship” meme in UK politics has been around for a long time.
I see this repeated all over the place as if it were an obviously established fact, but there is no reason to think that this is true. Extrajudicial actions and their consequences are inherently unpredictable. It's pure speculation to say that it would have been easier to do it from Sweden than from the UK.
In any case, this particular line of Assange apologism is rather obviously out of date, since we see that the US can (in all likelihood) quite easily extradite him now that he's out of the embassy, and thus has no reason to use extrajudicial means.
The proof is an empirical one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...
> In any case, this particular line of Assange apologism is rather obviously out of date, since we see that the US can (in all likelihood) quite easily extradite him now that he's out of the embassy, and thus has no reason to use extrajudicial means.
If they went the Sweden route, they wouldn't have needed this public trial that we're all commenting on, and he'd already be in US custody.
It's far from clear to me that the US wants to avoid a public trial. It's not as if Assange is particularly popular these days.
Except the UK has a very clear no extraordinary rendition policy, and even the idea that UK airports had been used as a refueling stop for rendition flights was a minor scandal in the UK. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6736227.stm Meanwhile Sweden has broken it's own laws to assist the US in black bagging it's own residents.
> By the way, you might want to look at the "aftermath" section of that Wikipedia article.
Can you be more specific? My reading is that Sweden found it's own actions to be illegal, paid out a settlement to those whose genitals were electro shocked in an Egyptian prision, but no Swedes faced any real consequences.
> It's far from clear to me that the US wants to avoid a public trial. It's not as if Assange is particularly popular these days.
And yet even this article you're commenting on goes into the large amount of work going on by the US government to remove observers, including Amnesty International, from the proceedings.
The trial is going to be public, as I understand it, so who cares if Amnesty International are there or not? They'll see and hear the same things as anyone else who is there. But anyway, if you are right, this just goes to show that the US can avoid a fully public trial and yet still extradite him, which by your logic gives them even less motive for using extraordinary rendition!
There is not a shred of evidence to show that the US had any intention of kidnapping Assange. We are in the realm of pure conspiratorial speculation here. ("They are bad guys; this would be a bad thing; therefore they would do that thing.")
Can you give any examples of this happening? Particularly given that we have access to the same diplomatic cables from the US embassy in the UK as the Swedish one which showed continued rendition flights from Sweden?
Zooming out a bit, there is very little analogy between the Agiza/Alzery case and anything that could conceivably have happened to Assange. Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad Alzery were asylum seekers whose asylum applications failed and who were then deported to their home country. The correct legal procedures around deportation were not followed (and of course the Egyptians broke their promise not to torture the two men), but it is a huge stretch to try to make an analogy between this case and some supposed plot to kidnap Assange once he was in Sweden. The latter would have been a vastly more flagrant breach of the law than a rushed deportation, and would have made a mockery of Sweden's original extradition request.
The simple fact is that it is extremely unlikely that the US would have kidnapped Assange from any location.
> this article you're commenting on goes into the large amount of work going on by the US government to remove observers, including Amnesty International, from the proceedings.
I think we all agree that the USA is acting like a bad guy here, regardless of how we feel about Assange and Sweden.
They will participate when the US takes someone from a third country.
We know this only because Wikileaks leaked cables from the US embassy after they were called in for the Swedish government to object that this continued to happen even without the governments knowledge.
So one thing is what the Swedish government itself would be complicit with. Another is whether the US cares and whether the Swedish government would have the power to stop it.
Personally my pet theory is that the Swedish charges were not something that happened with US involvement, but an overzealous prosecutor, but that there were enough iffy things going on that I understand why Assange would fear being sent there - that fear does not need to be justified to be real.
But I also know that as someone living in the UK, even with the kangaroo court Assange is currently subject to, I'd far prefer to face an extradition hearing in the UK to Sweden, because even in the face of this I wouldn't trust the Swedish government to be able or willing to resist as much as the UK government.
The UK's record on unlawful rendition flights (at America's behest and otherwise) is also not good and our extradition treaty with the US very one-sided; though there was a reasonable possibility its courts might have stymied a European Arrest Warrant for something his lawyers argued wasn't equivalent to a charge and wasn't equivalent to the crimes in English law...
The Iraq release from Manning's leak occurred after he left Sweden. Getting him back onto Swedish soil would have been the first step.
> The UK's record on unlawful rendition flights (at America's behest and otherwise) is also not good
The UK has never allowed rendition from the British isles, and certainly would not allow a former colony to subvert their court system.
Rendition of residents of the British isles, at least.
Assange lived happily on Swedish soil for ages, apparently without any particular fear of unlawful rendition. He voluntarily attended a police station regarding sex offence allegations, his lawyer had ongoing discourse with the prosecutor regarding the reopening of the case, and he was still happy to continue live in Sweden. He then left the country when they informed his lawyer they did want to charge him.
I'm not sure the fact the US wasn't even aware of the Iraq release at the time undermines my observation that this behaviour looks more like somebody seeking to avoid facing sex offences charges in court than unlawful abduction. And likewise that Swedish actions look like a slow motion bureaucratic response to sex offence allegations that would have been tricky to prosecute and not a dastardly plot to get him to the US.
The fact the US has subsequently chosen to actually open a case against him based on something they didn't even know about at the time doesn't really change that (although FWIW I think it's politically unwise for them to bother)
> The UK has never allowed rendition from the British isles, and certainly would not allow a former colony to subvert their court system.
Apart from British soil having been a stopping point for CIA rendition flights and its enthusiastic cooperation with US schemes overseas, the UK has also routinely bent its own law to deport asylum seekers before their appeals are completed in manner not dissimilar to the Swedish cases which keep getting cited. (The same Home Secretary that was happy to push the unlawful 'deport first, appeal later' policy was, ironically, also the only thing stopping Gary McKinnon from being legally deported to the US after exhausting every single appeal, because our court system isn't that fussed that the US might be overzealous with national security related hacking prosecutions. But I doubt Assange had much hope of helpful intervention from her...)
Even if that were the case, that's not the right comparison. The comparison has to be of the combination of extradition to Sweden plus rendition from Sweden vs. the easier of extradition or rendition from the UK. Since, after all, he was already in the UK, not in some indeterminate state that the US could collapse to either Sweden or the UK at its preference with no effort.
In the rendition case, you avoid the possibility of airing all sorts of dirty laundry in a foreign court, so it makes sense that they'd pursue that for as long as they could, and once that was not an option pursue extradition while heavily limiting public access (as they have here).