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Julian Assange is not "effectively imprisoned". He can leave the Ecuadorian embassy any time he chooses. Ecuador is under no obligation to provide him domicile.
Now the question is whether Ecuadorian law allows to extradite it's own citizens to the UK, and for a minor UK charge of "failure to surrender".
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jan/11/julian-assange...
What I've wanted for Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and if Obama would have done it before leaving office, it would have earned him infinite respect: Try them, possibly even find them guilty of something, but also award them with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What these people have done is probably illegal, but it is unquestionably about the most American, patriotic act you could commit. Sp…
The administration gave them tons of leeway (ie, ignoring the destruction of thousands of tapes of torture in the Thailand black site with zero repercussions for the agents involved) and made the strategic shift of the power/resources from the military towards the IC when he got in office.
He also famously prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president. Letting Manning go after 7rs in solitary confinement is the closest he got at trying to revise his history on the matter - at the last minute. So I don't see how such an action would make any sense in the context of his 8yrs of actions otherwise (rhetoric is another matter which people seem to value more in politics than action).
Nor is this is not a partisan issue. Both establishment parties are fully in support of doing the IC's bidding.
Julian Assange is not "effectively imprisoned". He can leave the Ecuadorian embassy any time he chooses. Ecuador is under no obligation to provide him domicile.
Perhaps "effectively under house arrest" describes his situation better.
Also, Ecuador may have no obligation to provide him domicile as such, but it does have a duty to grant asylum to legitimate asylum seekers. Without a way to safely transport him from their embassy to their country, I think there is a logical (if not moral) obligation to provide him domicile in the embassy where he claimed, and was granted, that political asylum.
What I've wanted for Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and if Obama would have done it before leaving office, it would have earned him infinite respect: Try them, possibly even find them guilty of something, but also award them with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What these people have done is probably illegal, but it is unquestionably about the most American, patriotic act you could commit. Sp…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowe...
What I've wanted for Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and if Obama would have done it before leaving office, it would have earned him infinite respect: Try them, possibly even find them guilty of something, but also award them with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What these people have done is probably illegal, but it is unquestionably about the most American, patriotic act you could commit. Sp…
There's no way Obama, or any mainstream president, would have done that. He loved the intelligence agencies even more than Bush as it gave the US the same power projection without any of the dirty business being under public scrutiny. The "polite societies" way of do much of the same which was highly criticized in the prior administration. Despite the convenient optics I don't see him being any more liberal on the ma…
I think it's possible to both recognize the importance of intelligence agencies, and recognize why whistleblowing should be discouraged, but at the same time recognize the patriotism required to do it anyway.
Giving these people the Medal of Freedom, to me, would have been an acknowledgment of that. "Yeah, you shouldn't have done that, but you did it anyway, and you deserve to be recognized for that."
"I disagree with what you're saying, but will defend to the death your right to say it" and all that.