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.
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.
> 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.
Maybe he did, but neither you nor I know what actually happened. Unless you're Assange or one of the women.