Hacker News Reader

Comment by foldr | Hacker News Reader

>It's easier to extra judicially grab at least non citizens from Sweden.

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In any case, this particular line of Assange apologism is rather obviously out of date, since we see that the US can (in all likelihood) quite easily extradite him now that he's out of the embassy, and thus has no reason to use extrajudicial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.

View on HN

> 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.

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 In any case, this particular line of Assange apologism is rather obviously out of date, since we see that the US can (in all likelihood) quite easily extradite him now that he's out of the embassy, and thus has no reason to use extrajudicial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.

You have a strange idea of "proof". The fact that something happened in Sweden once is hardly proof that it could not happen in the UK. By the way, you might want to look at the "aftermath" section of that Wikipedia article.

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.

> You have a strange idea of "proof". The fact that something happened in Sweden once is hardly proof that it could not happen in the UK.

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.

There was a scandal in Sweden too. It’s telling that you Assange conspiracists have been referring to an isolated event in 2007 for over a decade now. There is simply no factual basis for the assertion that it would be easier to snatch Assange from Sweden than from the UK. Especially when you consider what a huge international scandal that would inevitably have caused either government. The idea only makes sense as part of a silly conspiracy theory. If you want sensible people to believe the conspiracy theory, you'll have to do offer more than a largely irrelevant Wikipedia article plus a ton of wild speculation.

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 was a scandal, yes, and then cablegate revealed rendition-flights via Sweden kept happening for years afterwards and the Swedish government kept it quiet when they discovered it.

It's quite likely that such flights also took place in the UK. Kidnapping Assange would have been an entirely different affair in any case. It would have created an enormous international scandal whichever country the kidnapping took place in.

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.")

> It's quite likely that such flights also took place in the UK.

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?

If you take the UK government at its word, none of the many rendition flights that indubitably passed through the UK contained any prisoners. But if you consistently took the UK government at its word, you could hardly maintain the positions that you do.

You don't take the UK government at it's word. You take the leaked cables at their word that cover renditions in Sweden and other countries, but not the UK.

Which leaked cables establish that there were no prisoners on board rendition flights passing through the UK? And moreover, establish that this was a matter of policy?

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.

According to the Open Society Foundation, the UK did a lot worse than just refuelling planes: https://www.justiceinitiative.org/uploads/655bbd41-082b-4df3...

> 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.

Ok, fair enough. They have a very clear 'no extraordinary rendition to or from the british isles' policy.

They will participate when the US takes someone from a third country.

And Swedish military intelligence uncovered Swedish staff complicit in ongoing rendition flights via Sweden years after the black-bagging incident had caused the government to formally protest about it.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com