Julian Assange case: Sweden offers to question him in UK
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
> the principle of proportionality
First, we need limits against abuse of the law and legal system. I imagine Assange's representatives will be arguing that this is what is going on here. Being free of all proportionality restrictions allows bodies and individuals within the legal system the ability to pursue other agendas (say, strategic or diplomatic relations with the US) by abusing the legal system. If you put enough resources into investigation you can probably put anyone in jail. At the very least, you can disrupt their life dramatically with lengthy processes.
Second, there's the practical issue of resources. Indictments are abandoned regularly because court systems are backlogged, expensive and limited in resources. Prosecuting 100 minor indictments per year needs to be weighed against timely prosecution of more serious crimes. This is triage, prioritizing resources (court days) in the face of limited resources.
This is a strange case. Assange is accused of "non-consensual behaviour within consensual sexual encounters." This crime/law unique to Sweden. Very few people have been prosecuted under for it. Swedish authorities did not treat the case very seriously when they first investigated it and didn't make much effort to keep him in the country, apparently happy to let him leave the country.
That aside, resources are always limited. Say you have a serious sexual harassment case. It takes place in a University. Prosecuting it require, extradition and millions in resources. Is the public better served by prosecuting the crime or staffing an entire police unit dealing specifically with sexual harassment cases in Universities? The costs are comparable, and the latter will result in tens or hundreds of convictions, far more deterrence and far more justice. I think it's entirely appropriate to refer to proportionality in cases like this.
For certain crimes like large scale racketeering, corruption, murder, rape, and others proportionality is irrelevant. There are few limits that make sense for prosecuting a serial killer or a corrupt government minister.
> This is a strange case. Assange is accused of "non-
> consensual behaviour within consensual sexual
> encounters." This crime/law unique to Sweden
http://jackofkent.com/2012/06/assange-would-the-rape-allegat...
The Al Capone case is ultimately a failure in rule of law, of sorts. If he was indeed the gangster that Al Capone the pop character was, the police failed to catch and prosecute him for those crimes. In light of that failure, they basically abused laws (and maximum sentences) to convict him for a different crime.
We are open to that sort of abuse so long as prosecutors and police have big discretionary powers. If the average jail term for crime X is 1 year on parole, but the maximum sentence is 10 years in prison and the prosecutor plays a big role in determining which one it will be… that's open to abuse. If a prosecutor really wants you but can't prove your guilt, she can get you for something small and push for an oversized sentence. This basically bypasses the rule of law.
In any case, I don't think the Al Capone investigation would have violated the proportionality principle. He was being investigated (I assume) for murder, racketeering and the like. That merits a big investigation. It failed, but it wasn't disproportionate. The only thing that was disproportionate was the sentence relative to the (proven) crime. Maybe the scale of the prosecution itself too. Police were investigating a major criminal. That investigation should be (and will be) well resourced.
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article17836961.ab
It seems that in that case, the prosecutor initially dismissed the case as a drunken brawl on a ferry to Finland, and did not want to bother. Then there was some publicity and it was evident that it was a case of actual bodily harm.
In a manner somewhat similar to Assange, the Irish musician evaded court sessions in Sweden by going to Portugal, but unlike Assange, did not seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in Lisbon, and was returned to Sweden to stand trial.
So, if there's a suspected rapist (someone accused of rape for example) who has been on the run for years then you wouldn't bother to take them to court as you'd consider their sentence to be served out whilst on the run?
Would you apply this to all crimes? How do you determine the length of "sentence" without having a court case? Or is it just "well, he says it wasn't a bad rape and he's been hiding out for a few months let's call it even"??
The 'statute of limitations' for a crime needs to be much longer than the crime's potential maximum sentence.
Paying a high cost now is necessary to avoid the well connected from being able to bypass the justice system in the future. It's not just about this one case; that can be seen as a flaw in precedence based systems.
Assange is obviously not trying to evade justice, or "on the run". He reported to the Swedish authorities when he was first accused and wanted for questioning and then only left Sweden after they allowed him to. When he was in house arrest in the UK, he was reporting to the police every week and was being totally cooperative with the authorities. He has also repeatedly suggested that the questioning be done over Skype or by having the prosecutor visit him in the UK, which is standard practice for crimes of similar graveness in Sweden. Only after he was supposed to be extradited did he become a "fugitive" and hid in the embassy.
Furthermore, the women that could be the victims don't even want him to be persecuted, although the situation here is not clear-cut, as they could just say that to escape some retributive online justice, and since rape and similar crimes are considered crimes against the state and are persecuted by the state regardless of whether the victim wants that or not.
In a generalized rape or another similar crime, you would probably have a crime that is more obvious and has more proof, a victim that wants justice, and a criminal that is actively avoiding justice from the very beginning. You have none of that here.
Also, I don't know if that applies to all crimes or just to rape, but I find it rather funny that he cannot by persecuted "in absentia".
No, they need to be set based on how far back the evidence can hold and how well someone can make a reasonable defense. Especially in cases that have begun leaning towards guilty until proven innocent.
All criminal cases in non-corrupt courts in the West have a presumption of innocence.
Why? The point is to ensure that the defendant can receive a fair trial. With video and DNA evidence, shouldn't there be a longer limit than if there is only a single witness testimony?
For example if a rape victim doesn't get a rape-kit done does that mean that after a few months you declare the rapist to have served their time whilst at-large [obviously at that point you haven't determined legally if there was a rape] if a rape-kit is done then you give them 25 years when they could be held accountable before a court? The evidence doesn't have a bearing on the purpose of holding the criminal accountable.
It's always possible that a new technique could arrive to gather evidence or a new source of evidence - a hidden personal diary, say - turns up.
No, you declare that without any concrete evidence, there is no way to have a fair trial, and thus it is a waste to pursue the case. If some new form of evidence comes up, it gets written into law about its statute of limitations, and if the cold case is now within the statute of limitations, the new form of evidence can be used (but there cannot be any witness testimony or other evidence that is considered past the statute of limitations).
As it currently stands, we place far too much weight on eyewitness testimony years after the fact that results in innocent people going to prison.
So if someone leaves Sweden for (more than?) the length of their sentence, that is comparable to carrying out their sentence?
- never, if the maximum sentence would be life
- 20 years, if the max is more than 8 years
- 10 years, if the max is 2-8 years
- 5 years, if the max is 1-2 years
- 2 years, if the max is less than 1 year or a fine
- if the crime was a "serious sexual crime
against a child" it will expire at earliest
when the victim turns 28- 25 years, if max is life
- 15 years, if max is more than 8 years
- 10 years, if max is 2-8 years
- 5 years, if max is 1-2 years
- 2 years, if max is 1 year
- for sexual crimes against children the limit is counted from the victim's 18th birthday.
Or maybe his lawyer should drop the offer and just let the statute run out now, since the prosecutor couldn't be bothered when it wasn't to her advantage.
Edit: wukerplank is right, he wasn't charged, but (a kind of) rape is one of the crimes he allegedly committed and is wanted for questioning for (according to Wikipedia[1], it's "one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation, and one count of lesser-degree rape"), and this article and the Wikipedia[2] suggest that the statute of limitations for rape is 10 years.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Swedish_legal_po...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_A...
But all the courts involved in the matter, in Sweden and abroad, have come to the conclusion, that the procedural state Assange is in, is equivalent to the English word "charged".
Sweden can formally indict Assange anytime. The problem is that doing this would require the prosecutor to move her case beyond the "preliminary investigation" stage, at which point she would have to file actual evidence of the crime with the court and release it to Assange (who could publish it and show the prosecution for the farce that it quite obviously is). Indicting Assange would also make it impossible for the Swedish authorities to detain him indefinitely without trial (something otherwise possible in Sweden in the case of "preliminary investigations"). And the indictment would also make it possible for Assange to challenge his extradition on the basis of actual charges instead of vague and unsubstantiated allegations.
The Swedish prosecution was obviously interested in having their warrant evaluated on the much narrower question of whether it was technically valid.
The terminology dance you are referring to played out because while Sweden wanted to extradite Assange without coughing up any evidence supporting their case, it is not legal to extradite a subject for mere questioning. So for the arrest warrant to be technically valid, the Swedish prosecutor had to insist that while Assange was technically wanted only for questioning and no decision had been made to indict him, the prosecution was in an "advanced" state and he was virtually guaranteed to be charged. Anyone can see sections 142 and 144 (ii) from the High Court Ruling to watch the dance in action:
The confusion is caused by Swedish laws having specific crimes and categories of crimes, in which "rape" is both a specific crime and a category.
I thought those on the run were "wanted for questioning concerning allegations of ..." and then when arrested they would be "charged under $statute for $crime" and read their rights, etc.?
In Assange's case, he didn't escape after being charged did he so ...? Can someone clear this up for me, thanks.
See for example: https://www.gov.uk/charged-crime/overview which doesn't quite answer this specific question. But https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights says [roughly] after arrest you will be "charged with a crime" or released.
>the procedural state Assange is in, is equivalent to the English word "charged". //
I thought they meant the English word being used in legal terms - so that's where the application of English law comes in to the equation. Hence I was asking if in England & Wales if the term "charged" could be actually applied to Assange's situation if the investigation and proceedings thus far had happened in England & Wales.
The procedure is different enough that there are meaningful substantive differences even though that may be the closest equivalent in American terms (it seems, though, that its really not, and the state he is in is more like someone who is both an uncharged suspect and subject to arrest as a material witness.)
Would the statute of limitations be tolled for the duration of Assange's stay at the embassy?
IANAL, but that sounds unreasonable: his presence isn't required in order for him to be charged. The statute limits the time in which he can be charged (regardless of his geographic location).
I know for certain under Roman-Dutch law, one can be charged (tried, and sentenced) in absentia. I suspect other justice systems have similar allowances
"If the criminal is a fugitive, out of the state in which the crime was committed or otherwise living in hiding, this tolls, or suspends, the statute. (Once the criminal reenters the state the statute resumes running.)"
http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/time-limits-...
"My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorean embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview," Marianne Ny said in a statement.
This seems ludicrous.
I believe before he was living in the Ecuadorian embassy, he offered to cooperate with the investigation in the UK. Swede could have sent investigators to interview him in person. The UK police would have assisted. They could have gone further with their investigation, without extradition.
The worst part of this is Australia's role. Where are they in protecting their citizen? Can you imagine an American journalist (wikileaks is journalism) pissing off the German Government, then being subjected to these insane attempts at extradition without the US stepping in?
Australia need to arrange safe passage for Assange to Australia and guarantee him his legal rights.
Australia fails to do anything when their citizens are killed for a bit of cannabis, about as blatantly disproportionate as a government could possibly get. They're in a perfect position to economically encourage Indonesia to be reasonable, and they would have the backing of a fair bit of the western world. And yet they don't do anything.
Why would you think they would do anything when it's less politically expedient?
Noone is saying they shouldn't be punished for their crime, but all indications are that the two Australians currently on death row in Indonesia have been genuinely reformed during their decade in prison.
One is now a pastor, and the other has completed a fine arts degree. And many of their fellow prisoners speak highly of them. Some Indonesian prisoners have even offered to be killed in their place.
I think the outrage about their imminient executions is due to the fact that Indonesia is about to execute two men who have shown they can both be valuable members of society.
The Australian government is now offering to pay the costs of keeping them in prison for life, but I doubt that will have any sway with the Indonesian government.
When has this happened?
I know Schapelle Corby served 9 years for cannabis trafficking, and I know there are two Australian men facing execution for heroin trafficking. Have Australians been executed for cannabis trafficking?
A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?
The anwer to that is probably that the justice system can be inflexible and slow moving at times. (I hesitate to take stronger words in my mouth, but those may be true as well.)
Ludicrous or not, all justice systems have their reasons why they work in a certain way.
> A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?
He was interviewed during this period, and the transcript of the police interview was leaked onto the internet: http://pastebin.com/HAc6HjVn
After the interview the allegations were dropped, but then the prosecutor reopened them. And he didn't stay there just for a week after that. He stayed there over a month, and only left after having been given permission to leave by the prosecutor.
It's all in this court document: http://www.scribd.com/doc/80912442/Agreed-Facts-Assange-Case
He was interviewed during this period, and the transcript of the police interview was leaked onto the internet: http://pastebin.com/HAc6HjVn
After the interview the allegations were dropped, but then the prosecutor reopened them. And he didn't stay there just for a week after that. He stayed there over a month, and only left after having been given permission to leave by the prosecutor.
It's all in this court document: http://www.scribd.com/doc/80912442/Agreed-Facts-Assange-Case
Different prosecutor, one less high up in the system there.
The original prosecutor made the right decision. The chance of a conviction is zero. No sane jury in a civilised country will find a man guilty of raping a woman who made him breakfast and went out with him the next day, tweeted about the incident positively and generally acted as happy as can be until she decided ... much later ... that actually she had been raped. (then she started trying to delete the evidence that she was lying). The case just has no merit at all, which is why Assange thinks it's a set up - the new prosecutor is either a tool of the USA or some kind of bizarre ultra feminist who thinks women never ever lie about rape. Whatever the cause, Assange doesn't want to go there for obvious reasons.
Die schwedische Staatsanwaltschaft änderte nun ihre
Meinung, weil einige der Vorwürfe gegen Assange im August
verjähren.[1]
The Swedish prosecutor recently changed his mind because
some of the allegations against Assange will lapse in
August.
[1] http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/julian-assange-sc...
[2] https://www.google.de/?q=+into+Assange+will+lapse+in+August.....
Die Staatsanwaltschaft => The Prosecution
their, her, theirs, hers
I took German long enough ago to trust Google better than my own memory... it was a minor nit before, now it's even minor-er.
Anyway, if it's Die Staatsanwaltschaft which the possessive applies to, that's a feminine noun anyway (in German nouns have either masculine, feminine, or neuter gender), so I think that ihre is used either because the noun is feminine or because the person being talked about is female. IANA grammatician.
Thanks for the correction.
The gender of the person might not change the gender of the noun that refers to it (I'd suppose the noun's gender is actually fixed.) But, possessive pronouns might not care about the gender of the noun in cases where a person is the referent and the person's gender is known. It seems (intuitively, and as a grammarian you should be innately used to discarding your intuition since it's often going to be irrelevant) if the gender of the person is known, it should take the correct gender of personal pronouns. But it might be more important that the word for prosecutor in the sentence actually has an (innate) feminine gender?
That's why you should be confused, same as I am.
If I had to guess, prosecutor is a noun that is either masculine or feminine depending on the gender of the referent, but if I had to second-guess, I'd say that's in fact probably wrong and nouns always have concrete genders of their own. Hopefully someone knows and comes along to tell us both, I'm curious now.
Edit: German Wikipedia agrees:
Ein Staatsanwalt (Kürzel StA, weibliche Form: Staatsanwältin), in manchen Staaten auch Procurator, Procureur bzw. Prosecutor genannt, ist bei Gericht oberster Vertreter der Anklage.
Die Staatsanwaltschaft (StA) in Deutschland ist eine weisungsgebundene Behörde, die für die Strafverfolgung und -vollstreckung zuständig ist und als solche ein Teil der Rechtspflege ist.
Whether it translates "her" or "its" depends entirely on what the rest of the sentence means in English, the fact that nouns in German are gendered and this one is innately feminine does not even enter into the equation.
Thank you for figuring that out.
Not only did they do this (and Sweden was forced to pay restitution), but part of the Wikileaks documents revealed how Sweden objected after Swedish military intelligence years after these renditions had supposedly stopped, caught Swedish airport staff assisting CIA rendition flights.
While one might hope this has now finally stopped, Sweden is pretty high on the list of countries I would not like to be in if I was wanted by the US, given recent history.
Swedens official neutrality has been a joke in Scandinavia for decades. "Everyone" knows that there is a lot of close cooperation with the US behind the scenes.
Source?
They did obtain assurances from Egyptian authorities that the asylum seekers would not be tortured, but didn't do anything to ensure this could be enforced, and of course they ended up getting tortured. (EDIT: But even if one were to believe that Swedish authorities actually believed those assurances, a parliamentary investigator also determined that the treatment in Sweden violated Swedish law - they were arrested and violated and handed over without any required legal procedures, and even if they had been legally extradited, the treatment itself still would be illegal - see below)
Here's an article about Swedish military intelligence interfering after the CIA continued the rendition flights via Sweden for years after they had supposedly stopped:
http://www.swedishwire.com/politics/7497-cia-rendition-fligh...
This article also has more details about the Egyptian incident, including:
> Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, two Egyptians who had been seeking asylum in Sweden, were arrested by Swedish police in December 2001. They were taken to Bromma airport in Stockholm, had their clothes cut from their bodies, suppositories inserted in their anuses and in diapers, overall, handcuffs and chains put on an executive jet with American registration N379P with a crew of masked men.
> They were flown to Egypt, where they were imprisoned, beaten, and tortured according to reports by Swedish investigative pogramme "Kalla fakta". The Swedish ambassador visited them only six weeks later.
We can hope that was the end of it, given that Swedish military intelligence did act, but the fact of the matter is someone high up authorised it initially, given that it required the cooperation of police, security services and the CIA, and to this date it is not clear who did. Either someone did it under the nose of top levels of government, or the very same people who claimed to have put a stop to it authorised it in the first place.
What we do know is that there's been no proper investigation apart from a finding by a parliamentary investigator that the rendition flights were in violation of Swedish law. In other words there are no guarantees that the arrangement haven't simply been changed.
"The Swedish government must now comply with the Human Rights Committee’s decision in the al-Zari case. The committee has indicated that monetary compensation for the petitioner is one appropriate remedy."
http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-b...
It has been said a million times, but if Assange was extradited to Sweden, in that case in order for him to be extradited to the US they would need approval of Sweden AND of the UK per the extradition treaties
Extraditing Assange to Sweden makes it harder for him to end up on the US.
They've shown a willingness to blatantly violate both Swedish and international law to satisfy US requests in the past. Why should Assange trust they won't do the same in his case?
My conclusion would be that the Swedish investigators are trying to gain some diplomatic points. A "US extradition" might or might not be on that road map, but equally likely (or unlikely) is justice. When a suspected witch hunt is launched, you don't stay and see what kind of punishment the mob is going to do. You think of the worst possible thing they might do, and then hide.
The last man that tried to take a one man stand against the U.S. was shot in his bedroom, the one before that was found in a rat hole...
If Assange wasn't holed up somewhere as politically sensitive as a foreign Embassy on foreign soil, he'd have either ended up in the same boat or would have "disappeared" to a U.S. black site somewhere never to be heard from again until it was politically advantageous for the U.S. to "find" him.
A more rational perspective to the situation can be seen from the point of view of rape statistics. They are an indication of how seriously countries take accusations of sexual molestation. The rate of police-recorded rape offenses is
- US: 27.3
- UK: 28.8
- Sweden: 63.5
Are there really more than twice as many rapes per capita in Sweden than there are in UK or US? Of course not, if you use the same definition for rape. The issue is that Sweden records things differently. I'm quite convinced that if we're looking at what actually happens, Sweden has less rape then UK or US, but Sweden records them with a much lower threshold for what constitutes a "rape" so that the statistics looks different.
Sweden has a history of actively handing asylum seekers to the CIA for illegal rendition without even the knowledge of any courts.
The UK doesn't to my knowledge have a history of handing over people without proper extradition proceedings, some that have dragged out in the court system for years.
The UK has also extradited people under terrorist laws, just like the Swedish case you keep referring to. Sweden also has a history of protecting deserters from the US army, from the Vietnam era onwards.
But neither of this matters, because the whole theory doesn't make sense. If Assange was sent to Sweden for questioning, the very same international agreements that got him sent there would only allow him to be sent back to the UK, nowhere else.
Not only that, but the rendition flights with complicity of Swedish staff continued for years after they were initially uncovered and condemned and the government promised they would end.
Girl gets drunk, wakes up the morning after, looks over and would rather chew her own arm off than wake him up before escaping...
This kind of scenario has played out in countless movies and every university dorm since the beginning of time. Usually it's the guy who gets drunk and tries to escape, but the plot is the same.
So he woke her up with sex... something many millions of partners the world over have done countless times... and enjoyed. She appeared willing, consensual, into it - at least that's how it allegedly looked at the time, and then she cries foul after the fact...
Sounds an awful lot like she had sex with this guy, then she was jealous about him having sex with another girl, they both found out he was double dipping (as it were), were pissed that they weren't the center of his attention and thus decided to have him slapped with a rape charge.
Of course, that's just what one can glean from the various hyperbolic media reports. I'm quite sure it's more nuanced than that. But even with the hyperbole, that doesn't sound like rape, that sounds like a revenge tactic for jealousy. The fact that this could also play favour for a U.S. rendition really just compounds how suspicious this whole situation sounds.
If you were in the shoes of Assange, with 2 girls throwing themselves at you for sex (which is how it comes across in the media) and then in the midst of you leaking the largest trove of politically embarrassing documents that have ever been leaked, having them come forward with allegations of rape, in a country that until you start digging you had no idea they have a history of conspiracy to perform illegal rendition to the U.S...
It seems to me that the worst thing that happened here was poor judgment. If you have sex with two people at the same time and get busted, it's not unusual for them both to be pissed that they're not the only one... and I hate to say it, but people in that situation tend to do irrational things such as you might hear about in songs written by Carrie Underwood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaSy8yy-mr8 or worse... abuse the legal system for revenge.
> Not that I'm condoning his behaviour, but unless I'm missing a piece of the puzzle that I'm not understanding: Last I checked, anywhere outside of Sweden, having sex with a partner who appeared to be willing (until after the fact) is not rape. If that's the case, how do people not get charged with rape all the time?
That's actually not true at all - there are a number of situations in which a person can be legally incapable of consent. In various jurisdictions this can include someone who is too intoxicated, someone who is under the age of consent, someone who is a ward of the state (e.g. prisoners are legally unable to consent to sex), someone who is emotionally pressured or coerced, etc.
Rape convictions are very hard to secure for a number of reasons (the biggest one being that most victims don't pursue charges[0]), but that shouldn't confuse what is and isn't rape under the law.
> This kind of scenario has played out in countless movies and every university dorm since the beginning of time. Usually it's the guy who gets drunk and tries to escape, but the plot is the same.
Yes, and this is what is often referred to with the statement "rape culture" (which is often misunderstood and dismissed). There are a lot of things that are commonplace in movies that would be considered sexual assault in real life.
[0] Even if you were 100% sure that you could get a conviction, it's an incredibly exhausting, taxing and humiliating process for the victim, so most ultimately choose not to risk their mental health in the process.
This comparison is wrong to the point of being offensive. It's classic victim blaming. You're drunk, get raped? Your fault! "Being raped" and "driving a dangerous piece of equipment" seem very obviously different in terms of who is the victim and who the perpetrator.
What I'm saying is they were drunk and horny and wanted sex - both parties, consensual (from the way the media portrayed it.) Not rape. It wasn't until after the fact that she backtracked and changed her mind and decided that she retroactively didn't want sex after all and cried rape.
That's like me going back to a partner and saying, yeah, I know we had sex last night, but I'm regretting it now because I heard you had sex with my room mate, so I'm going to report you for rape. Which is exactly how it was portrayed.
Making a shitty decision to have sex with someone while under the influence of alcohol is entirely different than getting shit-face drunk (or drugged) and getting raped. These are two entirely different scenarios. The first is what I'm getting at - bad decision to have (consensual) sex, regretting it after the fact; the second is what you're getting at - getting too drunk to be in charge of your own destiny and unable to fend yourself off from someone you don't want sex with - this is rape and is inexcusable. In the scenario you're presenting, I'm entirely in agreement with you, but that's not the scenario as I perceived it, nor as I presented it. As the media presented it, I didn't see any real victim. I saw someone that played the victim card only as a result of coercion. The way her testimony was portrayed, I'm not even convinced that she felt she was a victim, she was a willing participant and only seemed to be going along with the rape allegation as part of some outside coercion or pressure. I genuinely read it like she had some affection for him and that she was sexually into him.
My point regarding the getting drunk and driving a dangerous piece of equipment is about legal culpability with regards to the ability to make decisions while under the influence of alcohol - not victim blaming. It's not about the indirect consequences of her decisions. It's about making a decision to participate in sex while under the influence of alcohol. In the legal sense this is no different than making a decision to drive a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. If you're legally considered to have the mental capacity to make decisions in one scenario, you're legally considered to have the mental capacity to make decisions in the other.
If someone decides to have sex with someone while under the influence of alcohol, they can't use the legal excuse they were drunk. In exactly the same way as you can't get into a car accident and claim legal immunity because you were were drunk. In other words, you cannot be deemed legally able to make a decision in one scenario but not the other because you're drunk.
If it was rape and indeed it was non-consensual on her part, then her being drunk is irrelevant, just as it would be irrelevant what she was wearing. Rape is rape. But this was not portrayed as rape.
One of the 4 things he's wanted for is sex with someone who's asleep. That's rape in the UK. In fact "It's only a crime in the Sweden" would have been a perfect way to legally defeat the extradition request. His lawyers tried it. It didn't work.
I will admit that without going back and digging through the all original news stories again that my memory could be misleading me here... but I recall at the time that everything about this charge seemed sketchy to the point of suspicious.
Maybe he did, but neither you nor I know what actually happened. Unless you're Assange or one of the women.
“There’s nothing special about Britain,” the US state department official said. “You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment.”
Obama "We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people."
England and the US nothing special anymore.
That is the kind of thing presidents say in speeches. It just means "I want to be polite to you". It's diplomacy, don't take it literally.
France was technically the first ally of the U.S. That alliance has been pretty stable, except under the following circumstances:
- France or the U.S. is having a civil war.
- France and Britain are at war.
- France is under foreign occupation.
If NATO did not exist, France would be one of the few non-Commonwealth nations for whom the U.S. would declare an actual, full-engagement war to defend, without even much argument from the voting public--unless it was the UK attacking it, obviously.
The full "special" list is probably Canada, UK, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel.
Probably because fucking Henry Kissinger insisted it exists (Diplomacy, chapters for post WWII). And he is a guy that knows something about US foreign policy.
I can't say I am a fan of the "special relationship" (I'm in the UK) - but worth noting that I don't think the US sells Trident missile technology to anyone else? UK warhead designs are probably US based as well although we do manufacture them ourselves.
The US even allowed the UK to test some of their bombs on American soil, in Nevada. (The UK also tested nuclear bombs in Australia. They don't have much wide-open desert of their own).
But the point stands, which is all the discussion of "why he picked the UK" as a place to avoid extradition seems to be missing the point. If he were comfortable with the government of the UK he'd be relaxing in a pub or reading in the park rather than holed up inside an embassy somewhat out of the reach of UK law for two years.
> U.S. embassies and consulates abroad, as well as foreign embassies and consulates in the United States, have a special status. While diplomatic spaces remain the territory of the host state, an embassy or consulate represents a sovereign state.
[0] http://diplomacy.state.gov/discoverdiplomacy/diplomacy101/pl...
Even Russia (who is in the CoE) doesn't extradite for death penalty.
We also have evidence that the UK courts resist US extradition requests via the McKinnon proceedings.
Finally, the US obviously wants to prosecute Assange and the publicly acknowledge existence of a grand jury investigation proves it.
Edit: if you're inclined to disagree, please point out any factual inaccuracies or weaknesses in my reasoning rather than reflexively reaching for the down vote button. Assange entered the UK in late September 2010 and the arrest warrant became valid in the UK in December. That's a lot of time to book a flight elsewhere. The Ecuadorean embassy was a last-ditch move when his appeals failed.
More generally, the "weakness in [your] reasoning" is partly the arrogance to imagine that you understand Assange's legal options better than his lawyers did. But it is also partly the logical fallacy of ad hominem rhetoric, since you accuse him of hypocrisy and then use that accusation to try to discredit concerns of his that very clearly have nothing to do with questions of personal character.
As other commenters on this thread have mentioned, and as minimal research will confirm, Sweden has a long history of illegal rendition. Its handling of this case is extremely unorthodox, politically motivated, and shows a fairly clear attempt to maneuver Assange into indefinite detention through a legal process that even the UK High Court commented on as being unreasonable.
In other words, they had no problems carrying out interrogations outside of Sweden at the time. Just not of Assange.
If the Swedish legal system had been "a bit legalistic" and not wanted to make exceptions, a lot of what happened in the Assange case could not have happened. E.g. illegal leaks of lots of information to the press, irregular interview procedures, and this curious stubbornness about interviewing him abroad when Swedish police does not seem to have a problem with that in other cases.
Some people - even those not especially rigid and legalistic in their thinking, which individual prosecutors are perfectly entitled and possibly even encouraged to be - might reasonably think not. Even now they've opted to back down and talk on Assange's terms, I think it's staggeringly unlikely he's going to walk out of the embassy wearing handcuffs if he is unable to satisfy them of his innocence, so I'm not sure it really advances the case further.
Sweden did not interrogate those suspects in order to "charge" them, but in an earlier state of the murder investigation.
In fact, Swedish courts have even convicted a dead man in absentia, after deciding (before knowing he was dead) the trial could go on in absentia:
I'm honestly surprised anybody still thinks this. Particularly after the GCHQ emails confirming it as a 'fit up'.
So not actually at all like what the original poster implied.
Then again, maybe they're just tin foil crazed conspiracy theorists who just happen to be, err, employed by GCHQ.
I'm not saying that Mr Assange is definitely blameless, I wouldn't know. But it does seem that if you go up against the very powerful, any shortcomings will be ruthlessly exploited.
This decision serves thus two purposes. It abides the decision of the court which makes the prosecutor look good, and it serves the case.
Once charges are filed, Ecuador will have to face the question of whether or not they want to be viewed by the world as shielding an accused rapist from justice. I'm just guessing here, but I see no scenario in which he doesn't eventually wind up in Sweden to face these charges (and if he did it, then he should IMO).
So yes unless the Swedish prosecutor wants to open herself up to charges of abuse of power then at this point she will have to prosecute Assange.
He is accused of initiating sex with a woman later an evening after consensual sex had finished and she became "half-asleep". The legal questions to be answered is: was she half-asleep, ie, does he contest that statement and if so, what conclusion can be reached by a court.
Furthermore, there is an accusations that consensual sex was agreed under a condition, and that Assange broke that verbal agreement by ejaculating inside her. Its a rather odd situation for a sexual molestation case, but I guess that the court would first have to establish if both parties had reached the same understanding, and if the above mentioned act then broke it.
On either of the two cases, my best guess is that we will never know.
In many jurisdiction initiating sex with an unconscious person is consider the same as non-consensual sex (one can't consent if one is unconscious). Some jurisdictions, like England and Wales, explicitly include sleep in the legislation around consent (i.e. a sleeping person cannot consent to sex, a reasonable person could not believe sex was consensual when the other party is asleep).
This is much more serious than "half-asleep" makes it appear.
The confusion seems to stem from a text message she wrote afterward, in which she called it half-asleep. The police document however wrote that she was asleep. Which should be seen as more accurate depend I guess.
Did you just guess at this? Or do you have something to contradict the police interview (http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/docs/protocol.pdf, top of page 6)?
Allegedly SW was re-interviewed and confirmed that she was half-asleep.
Page 54 of the document you cite also says that she was "half-asleep".
However the full quote is:
> Sofia also said that, when she was half asleep on her side, she had been aroused from slumber to feel that Assange was inside her.
Which is quite different from a plain "half asleep", especially with the rest of the sentence: "aroused from slumber to feel that Assange was inside her".
Even in its best light, assuming "half asleep", this begs the question of whether someone in that state can consent to sex (under the Swedish legislation), and/or whether a reasonable person could believe that there was consent.
I'd say no... but I will grant that this sort of question is why judges and juries are necessary.
Anyway, here's my translation of the accusation (to the best of my ability):
Sexual Assault
They were sitting in bed talking and he took off her clothes. They had sex again and she realised that he had only put the condom over the tip of his penis, but she let it pass.
They went to sleep and she awoke with the sensation of him entering her. She immediately asked 'Are you wearing anything?' and he replied 'You'.
She told him 'You better not have HIV' and he replied 'Of course not'. She felt it was too late, he was already in her so she let him continue, she was too tired to tell him once more, she had been nagging him about using a condom all night.
She never had unprotected sex before. He said he wanted to come inside her, he did not say when he would but he did. A lot leaked out of her afterwards.
She told him 'What if I get pregnant?'. He answered that Sweden is a good place to have kids. She jokingly told him that if she became pregnant he would have to pay her student loans.
On the train to Enköping he had told her that he had slept in Anna Ardins bed after a party. She asked if he had sex with Anna but he said Anna liked girls, that she was a lesbian.
Now she knows that he did the same thing with Anna. She asked him about how many he has had sex with, he responded that he didn't keep count. He said that he had HIV tested himself 3 months earlier and that he had sex with a woman after that and that she was tested and not positive.
She said sarcastic things to him in a joking tone, she believes that she was trying to de-dramatize what had happened, he in turn did not seem to care. When he was told the size of her student loans he said that if he was to pay her loans then she would have to give birth to a baby.
They joked that the child would be named Afghanistan. He also said that he ought to keep abortion-pills with him that would in reality be sugar-pills.
His phone rang and he had a meeting with Aftonbladet (swedish newspaper) on tuesday at 12. She explained that he would not make it to that meeting, so he pushed his whole schedule ahead by one hour.
After that he rode a bicycle with her on the back down to the train station. She paid his ticket to Stockholm. Before they separated he told her to keep her phone on. She asked if he was going to call and he said he would.
She took the bike home, showered and changed sheets. Since she didn't make it in time for work she called in sick and stayed home. She wanted to clean up and wash everything. There was semen on the sheets and she thought it was disgusting. She also went by the drugstore and bought 'dagenefterpiller' (abortion pills).
After she had discussed with her friends she realized that she had been the victim of a crime. She went to Danderyd hospital and from there to Södersjukhuset (another hospital). There she was examined and also tested using a so called 'rape-kit'.
Now what Ecuador will reply is another matter...
Edit: Timeline of case. http://www.thelocal.se/20141028/timeline-julian-assange
The bail has been forfeited. And if the prime cause for the arrest warrant is gone, he would (and should) walk free.
At least I think so.
I'd expect him either to be found to have been under effective house arrest for the period, and let go with a slap on the wrist, or be made an example of for running away to somewhere where the police could not enter, and sentenced to at least six months in prison (there's a maximum sentence of twelve).
"My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorean embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview, and that he would need to be present in Sweden in any case should there be a trial in the future," lead prosecutor Marianne Ny said in a statement.
"Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies in the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward."
Because the laws forbid them to. Not because your house is extraterritorial.
They did threaten to do this a few years ago.
Isn't this what he put on the table years ago?