Stars align in strange ways.
Chelsea Manning walked free from prison a couple of days ago. so will Assange honour promise made an Jan or will he weasel out of it.
Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
111–120 of 396 posts
Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
#112Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
He needs to face justice one way or another.
What is his crime? He isn't the one committing war crimes. He is exposing them. Yet we continue to go after whistle blowers and journalist instead of the ones who committed these crimes against humanity.
Well he was accused of rape, or, more accurately, sexual assault by other countries' definitions. Those charges have now been dropped, for what I can only assume "a preponderance of the evidence suggesting the defendant is permanently insanity".
But he may have committed other crimes in his attempt to flee the rape charge (not sure if 'failure to appear' is a crime in the UK, that differs by jurisdiction).
None of all that has anything to do with Wikileaks, by the way. A person's good deeds in one domain don't make him immune to criminal charges for unrelated matters. The idea that two average Swedish women are somehow recruited by the CIA to smear him with (rather weak) rape accusations is rather preposterous.
Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assange agenda was always anti-Americanism at expense of everyone else, so he just stayed true to himself. Many of his then liberal supporters were turning a blind eye to this, until it spectacularly bit them in the ass.
What about the "Macron leak"?
What about them?
That wasn't wikileaks.
Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
What base do these have? Assange isn't a US citizen, so he can't be charged for treason like Snowden and Manning. He just gained information and published it.
I believe the US traditionally sidesteps this legal thorn by detaining people without charge at gitmo for as long as they like. Non-US citizens have minimal to no rights under US law, so it's all just peachy
Doesn't the US Bill of Rights talk in several places about "any person":
Fifth Amendment to USA Constitution:
>nor shall any person [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
Sounds like quite a strong right.
FWIW this contrasts with the pages referring to "the people" which are limited and not universal, "any person" means any person.
Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
#116David Allen Green, Law and policy commentator at @FT: >It is now easier for US to obtain Assange's extradition, if they (ever) wanted it. >Now only UK's consent required, not UK and Sweden. https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/86550564980685619...
Other legal commentators in the thread pointing out that he is still wanted for "failing to surrender" to his bail which can face up to 12 months in prison. This is what the arrest warrant will be for, not some secret US extradition request. Prosecution guidance on the offence: http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/a_to_c/bail/#a32
But now the UK government can surrender that right to prosecute him if they want to. The political responsibility is pretty clear at this point.
Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
#117David Allen Green, Law and policy commentator at @FT: >It is now easier for US to obtain Assange's extradition, if they (ever) wanted it. >Now only UK's consent required, not UK and Sweden. https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/86550564980685619...
That assessment, though, is based on an assumption that Swedish authorities would have complied with Swedish law. Part of Assanges fear of going to Sweden, whether justified or not, is presumably that Sweden had a history of letting Swedish police get away with blatantly violating Swedish law in support of US rendition. One could argue that this risk is not real in his case, but that is/was not relevant to whether or…
It doesn't have to be "the prosecutor's ambition"–it's just an unwillingness to let someone skip a trial just by fleeing, and the precedent it would set.
Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
#118I suppose the ball is now in the US' court .
Assange is a strange case, hes (Wikileaks is) really a journalist, and should be protected by laws and conventions protecting journalists. But he doesn't seem to identify too strongly with the press and presents more like a political dissident.
I used to live in Melbourne (where wikileaks is sort of based). I stopped to sign a petition in his support. The petition mentioned Assange at the top of a long list of dissident left issues: release off-shore asylum seekers, withdraw from afgahnistan, free palestine, jail Blaire & Bush, stop Tasmanian timber harvests, overturn some ruling on Aboriginal land title... They were also inviting people to a dissident-socialist gathering later on that day.
Now, I don't want to misrepresent the situatoin. This wasn't Wikileaks petitioning. It was a local activist group promoting their agendas, headlined by the Assange cause. That said, I do think it's kind of indicative of how present themselves & why the Assange debate is associated with the Manning or Snowden cases. They were US operatives "gone rogue." He wasn't. He was just a journalist receiving and diseminating leaked information.
I in now way suggesting the protections of a free press system are mooted because he doesn't act or present recognizably as a journalist. But I do think that statements like the CIA Director's (Wikileaks is a hostile non-state actor) would be a lot harder to say if he presented as " Senior Editor of The Wikileaks Times."
Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the US traditionally sidesteps this legal thorn by detaining people without charge at gitmo for as long as they like. Non-US citizens have minimal to no rights under US law, so it's all just peachy
Doesn't the US Bill of Rights talk in several places about "any person": Fifth Amendment to USA Constitution: >nor shall any person [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; Sounds like quite a strong right. FWIW this contrasts with the pages referring to "the people" which are limited and not universal, "any person" means any person.
I'm not a US legal scholar but I wouldn't be surprised to know the US Supreme Court might have ruled that such rights do not apply to non-US citizens.
Re: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
#120Is there a good article -- does even anyone know? -- on how did Wikileaks turn from a whistleblower into a mouthpiece of the Kremlin? Edit: some examples: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/... https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/03/...
i think assange is a victim of an effective smear campaign, probably organized by the CIA.
He addresses this specific issue in his reddit AMA:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as...