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Comment by CogitoCogito | Hacker News Reader

> It's kind of absurd that this has taken so long - and that's primarily down to Assange himself.

I’d personally say it’s due to the UK pursuing extradition instead of just dropping it, but your perspective is interesting as well.

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Sorry, why would the UK drop it? The UK has an extradition treaty with the US, the US wanted Assange extradited, what would be the basis for the UK refusing?

The UK could have looked at the evidence and decided it wasn’t a crime according to UK law and hence he shouldn’t be extradited. I haven’t looked at the evidence for a while, but last I checked I didn’t even understand how his actions were a crime according to US law.

So yeah the UK has leeway here. Why pretend otherwise?

edit: Why would I receive downvotes for this?

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/extradition-processes-and-review...

Extradition hearing

"""

The extradition hearing before the District Judge is where most of the issues in the case are decided. The CPS will represent the requesting State in the proceedings.

The judge must be satisfied that the conduct amounts to an extradition offence (dual criminality), that there is prima facie evidence of guilt (where applicable and in accusation cases), and that none of the bars to extradition apply, including that extradition would not breach the person’s human rights.

"""

The judge could both not believe that dual criminality is satisfied and could also believe the supposed evidence isn't good enough.

The UK did look at the evidence to the level of scrutiny as agreed in the extradition treaty and decided he should be extradited. This isn't some hypothetical, Assange got a fair hearing at every court in the land up to the supreme court, and the judges came to the conclusion that he should be extradited. This isn't some hypothetical, it is a matter of law that his extradition is legal.

And just to put a real fine point on this: The UK judges all the way up to the Supreme court did look at the evidence, and decided against him. Which I would say is a much more reasonable approach than your argument that he shouldn't be extradited based on not having looked at the evidence for a while. It's not even like it's incomprehensible, they published their judgements at every single stage. Here, it's page 27 of this document: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/USA-v-As...

"Assange got a fair hearing at every court in the land up to the supreme court"

This is debatable, especically for anyone who followed Murray's reporting. Here are a few random links that I had bookmarked that give a different opinion. I could possibly find more but I really do not want to spend the rest of the day on this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508528

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/09/why-are-amnes...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24505438

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24503896

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24526096

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27881936

I also think that you misunderstood what the parent said, I took it to mean that the court could deny it because they could hypothetically decide that it wasn’t a crime according to UK law

I think this really lays it out clearly now where you're coming from. I point to a whole series of judgements that lay out in clear legal text why and how they came to the decision to extradite Assange and you reply with essentially a claim that one of the most respected judges in the country is biased because he's friends with a government minister. Guess what? That is literally not evidence.

It's literally a case of: On the one hand we have the expert legal opinions of a series of the top judges in the country, on the other hand we have some amateur internet slueths.

You are probably receiving downvotes because of your assumption that based on the evidence -you've- looked at (which I would suspect is probably a single digit percentage at most of all the evidence presented), and decided "Oh, I don't see a problem here, so why would the UK Courts", when plainly, that's not exactly the way of things.

In addition to what the other post said, the UK could use the rejection of the extradition of Anne Sacoolas

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

So the UK would claim that Assange was acting as a UK diplomat when he committed the alleged offenses and thus had diplomatic immunity?

Here's a possible response from the UK: "No, we're not going to extradite a journalist to the US, to face 175 years in prison for publishing evidence of war crimes."

Extradition is first and foremost political, and the government of the UK has final authority in the matter. It's obvious that this case is political in nature, and that the US government is pursuing Assange in order to send a message to any other journalists who might try to emulate him. The UK government could tell the US to stuff it, the US would have no recourse, and the decision would be popular in Britain.

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