101–110 of 135 posts
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You're attacking strawmen. People are free to believe whether Sweden/Assange have ulterior motives, but either way the Swedish prosecutor has behaved improperly. For example see the UN report here: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?Ne...
It's a bit of a stretch to claim Sweden is illegally detaining him in the embassy by virtue of demanding he leave the embassy.
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He is free to go wherever he wants until he is charged. It's just that if he goes outside the Ecuadorian embassy, he will be charged.
Rather extradited – to Sweden or the US, the latter maybe via Sweden … that seems to be the real issue, not the rape accusations (although rape accusations are known as a powerful weapon to destroy enemies – although that does of course not rule out that Assange is actually a rapist under Swedish law).
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How do they "finish the thing" by being unable to complete the arrest because he's sitting on foreign territory? Particularly when the Ecuadorean embassy keeps throwing curve balls by blocking requests and insisting on asking the questions themselves.
By going to him, which they have been happy to do in many other cases, and have finally agreed to do in this case after the UN criticised the way they have treated him.
Now he seems involved in some strange right-wing cabal involving everything from the Kremlin to Donald Trump? Was he that guy all along, or did he kind of turn into that side of things while stuck in the embassy?
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He is free to go wherever he wants until he is charged. It's just that if he goes outside the Ecuadorian embassy, he will be charged.
IANAL, and I'm definitely not current on how the Scandinavian legal system works. I'm hoping someone can summarize this: Why can't he be charged while he's still in the Embassy? I understand that enforcing any judgement rendered by a court becomes a hang up because of his asylum, but that's a separate concern.
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Sweden shouldn't have to bargain or compromise with someone accused of a crime just because that person is picky about what countries they set foot in for their own reasons. IF there are US charges against him and IF the US tries to extradite then I'm sure he'll have an opportunity to fight it.
Can you suggest that as a general principle? The current rules for extradition do have their reasons. You may not want Germany to be able to enforce its strict rules about nazi speech all over the world, or Turkey to be able to imprison people who've offended Erdogan. Haggling over extradition is not unusual. For example, the US has promised not to use capital punishment in order to extradite people from countries th…
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It's an unrealistic demand, which Assange is fully aware of. The Swedish constitution makes it illegal for politicians to interfer with the judicial system. Our laws do also, by the way, make it impossible for us to extradite him to the US without the consent of the UK, so it seems awfully convenient that he claims that he would trust an illegal guarantee by the Swedish government but not that it would follow it's ow…
This keeps getting claimed. No, Sweden is a sovereign nation and its extradition treaties are bilateral - that means they interpret them as they wish. If they think the demands for extradition are not fulfilled, they can say so, and that's the final word. There's nothing the US or UK can do but complain, there's no court they can apply to to overrule such a decision (because of course, the UK or US governments would…
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> The problem is that Sweden and the UK are complicit The UK isn't that complicit, because he's been here for a while and the UK has done fuck all.
Since when has "fuck all" cost £10m? http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31159594
If they really wanted him in the US they'd have spent a tenth of that and had him renditioned.
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Sweden shouldn't have to bargain or compromise with someone accused of a crime just because that person is picky about what countries they set foot in for their own reasons. IF there are US charges against him and IF the US tries to extradite then I'm sure he'll have an opportunity to fight it.
Can you suggest that as a general principle? The current rules for extradition do have their reasons. You may not want Germany to be able to enforce its strict rules about nazi speech all over the world, or Turkey to be able to imprison people who've offended Erdogan. Haggling over extradition is not unusual. For example, the US has promised not to use capital punishment in order to extradite people from countries th…
If there would be a request, as you say yourself, Sweden doesn't necessarily have to honor it, for example if Assange faces capital punishment. Assange could probably fight extradition in court also.
In any case this is nothing here to suggest that this is anything more than a smokescreen thrown up by Assange to distract from the fact that he's a rapist fleeing prosecution.
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Accusations should be investigated by the justice system, not dismissed just because the person is famous. They should face those accusations by being interviewed by the persecutor, and if the prosecutor believes there is a case to answer, they should face those accusations in court.
Suppose that you're accused of a crime in North Korea and somehow you manage to escape the country. Will you still respect what you said in the comment and return to NK to stand trial ? Replace North Korea with Iran, Iraq, Syria or any other country known to be a corrupt or totalitarian state... Aka at least half of all the countries in the world... As a foreigner, you wouldn't trust the justice system in those count…
Should a Swedish court rule against extraditing Assange to the US, that will have exactly no impact on the relationship between the US and Sweden. No government can reasonably expect from another to break its own laws and it is certainly not in US interest for Sweden to go down that route. Not to mention that the US also reserves the right not to extradite to Sweden in individual cases.