Hacker News Reader

Comment by brandelune | Hacker News Reader

I suspect Assange does not want to be tortured and murdered and thus does not want this. Are you insane ?

From the article:

"The US had offered four assurances, including that Mr Assange would not be subject to solitary confinement pre or post-trial or detained at the ADX Florence Supermax jail - a maximum security prison in Colorado - if extradited.

Lawyers for the US said he would be allowed to transfer to Australia to serve any prison sentence he may be given closer to home.

And they argued Mr Assange's mental illness "does not even come close" to being severe enough to prevent him from being extradited."

So assuming that the international community cannot avoid his extradition, to make sure that those assurances are true and can be hold, would be already a win, no?

the "assurances" had an unless we feel like it exemption.

I’m sure Epstein was offered assurances as well.

US assurances aren’t worth the toilet-paper they’re written on.

Well nobody has ever died while in custody of US law enforcement, so this seems reasonable

exactly, I'm not saying that it is perfect, but to keep comparing with Epstein and joking around won't help Julian Assange. Important is: if those Assurances could be documented and monitored by the international community, it is definitely great and TBH, would be better to Assange if he would have gotten something like that back in 2010.. he lost 10 years of his life in "prison", but it won't even be reduced from his sentence..

> he lost 10 years of his life in "prison", but it won't even be reduced from his sentence..

Totally his own fault. Neither the USA nor the UK told him to hole up in that embassy; he did that all on his own.

yes, sure. Probably he believed that Obama and the international community would save him. In another hand back in the days he didn't have the same offer on the table as he has now.

To me it feels more likely that he just wanted to avoid a few years in Swedish prison for rape and thought it would blow over soon (much faster than in the end it did), so he could slither out from the embassy in a month or three. The whole "afraid Sweden would extradite him to the USA" line felt phony then and still does now.

which is understandable.. I think people accused from rape have an universal welcome treatment everywhere in the world...

Sure, but still nobody's fault but his own. All the people going "But the evil U[S|K] has already kept him inprisoned at the embassy for ten years!" are totally off their heads. Nobody but he himself did that.

Not wanting what’s coming, and regretting his choices are not the same thing. He fought the good fight, I hope that’s worth something to him.

I doubt the US intends to murder him.

It might be the case right now but it came out earlier this year that the CIA was entertaining this idea in 2017. This [0] appears to be the originating story and there are corroborating accounts in many other outlets.

[0] https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london...

> It might be the case right now but it came out earlier this year that the CIA was entertaining this idea in 2017.

CIA, DoD, and lots of agencies “entertain” lots of ideas, and even develop plans, for lots of things that never get close to being policy.

Planning to commit a murder or a terrorist attack is a felony that will put an individual in prison for a long time.

> Planning to commit a murder or a terrorist attack is a felony that will put an individual in prison for a long

Unless it is with other people and, more critically, at least one of the people involved goes beyond planning and takes some concrete step to advance the execution of the plan (at which point it becomes the separate crime of conspiracy), no, planning a crime, even of that seriousness, is not itself a crime.

Just writing death threat for the president online is a crime.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikram_Buddhi

No other concrete step is needed.

A threat is not the same as planning.

Planning to kill someone is not a crime. Threatening to is, even if they aren't the President.

Yes, but whether it is a murder or not is decided in court, not by you. Not all assassination are murder.

Except the time they were plotting to murder him, of course.

Yes, when he was a fugitive potentially in possession of state secrets.

I’m not saying it’s ok - just that now he’s in custody it’s a little different.

They intend, fully, to make an example out of him.

Why murder him when he's no threat to them anymore, and they can drag him through more hell for the next decade in order to show what happens when you cross the line?

They committed to letting him serve his prison term in Australia, if convicted.

I'm afraid you may have fallen for the deliberately misleading words of the supposed assurances given by the US. Here's what the Guardian[0] says of that particular claim (with my emphasis):

"and could apply, if convicted, to be transferred to a prison in Australia."

My understanding is that his application could be denied, without any recourse, by the DoJ (of whichever administration is in power at the time), and probably by the Australian government too.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/dec/10/julian-assange...

Ah, very weasely. I imagine any prisoner can apply to be transferred to a prison in another country.

There are worse things than dying.

> I doubt the US intends to murder him.

And Epstein committed suicide. Right?

How is Epstein at all relevant? I believe the conspiracy theory is around powerful people trying to keep their secrets secret. Meaning not let the US government know their secrets so they can avoid prosecution. So the US government would want Epstein alive. Why do you think the US government is prosecuting Ghislane Maxwell right now?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com