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Julian Assange arrested in London

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#471

Post by GoblinSlayer »

djsumdog wrote: post #210
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #91

It will be interesting to see if the US tries to extradite him. It's actually not 100% clear that he's broken any US laws in any ways that they aren't also routinely broken by newspapers. There's a few avenues: 1) Publishing classified information. Easy to show that he did this but a very difficult path to go down when American newspapers do this all the time. 2) Conspiracy to commit espionage. Probably the most like…

I wish Australia would step up and actually defend one of their citizens.

The government is on your side.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#472

Post by dragonwriter »

nagVenkat wrote: post #220
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #91

It will be interesting to see if the US tries to extradite him. It's actually not 100% clear that he's broken any US laws in any ways that they aren't also routinely broken by newspapers. There's a few avenues: 1) Publishing classified information. Easy to show that he did this but a very difficult path to go down when American newspapers do this all the time. 2) Conspiracy to commit espionage. Probably the most like…

There is a sealed indictment against him in EDVA which was accidentally released. He has been most certainly accused of breaking United States laws. Edit: To indict someone, the government has to show the grand jury that there is sufficient evidence. It is very easy to indict someone (hence the phrase “A ham sandwich can be indicted by the grand jury”) but one has to acknowledge the fact that the federal government h…

> There is a sealed indictment against him in EDVA which was accidentally released.

No, there was an inadvertent mention in a filing made in another case which strongly suggests that there is an indictment in EDVA, which would have to be sealed because no unsealed indictment exists. The indictment itself was not released.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#473

Post by tomp »

antocv wrote: post #110

My introduction to bitcoin was due to this https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/12/07/visa-m... 2010, about November, when Wikileaks was loved by everyone here on HackerNews. When donations were piling up by PayPal, Visa, Mastercard. When Assange was the postgresql security hacker turned whistlblower-enabler and journalist. Then suddenly all donations, globaly, halted to Wikileaks. Bitcoin was the only way…

> censorship resistant transfer of value

But how do you get actual value out of it, i.e. currency? AFAIK most exchanges have pretty strict money laundering rules these days, it's not like Wikileaks could just open an account to liquidate those BTC donations...

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#474

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #383
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #274

and considering the public mood after a several year campaign to demonize Wikileaks and Assange by the US media, chances are pretty high that he will rot in a US prison for life or have his ashes thrown into the sea the same way as they did with Osama bin Laden. The US is a terror state that uses torture and secret prisons. I hope that EU countries will stop extradition asap.

> or have his ashes thrown into the sea the same way as they did with Osama bin Laden. The UK won't extradite if the death penality is on the cards. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/41/section/94

is this the case also for foreign nationals (e.g. Australians)? and in combination with terror laws and agreements[1] between UK/US (not just civil/criminal law)?

I think if he does a little bit of time for jumping UK bail then the second he walks out from a UK prison the CIA will be all over abducting his ass. And he'll never be heard off again. I recall Hillary Clinton wasn't ashamed of suggesting "Can't we drone the guy?"* She and her ilk was considered a lot more moderate compared to the criminals in DC right now.

[1] edit: never mind I found it: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/uk-wont-send-ter... - seems that prosecutors would have to play their cards right and just promise to give him life in prison instead. Spending the rest of his life in solitary isn't really much of a consolation.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#475

Post by icebraining »

sorenjan wrote: post #464
lhjuhafjbh wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He claimed that his reason to do so was to avoid extradition to the US, [...]. But he had to make himself look like a victim of a conspiracy instead, and his followers eats it up. "Julian Assange, 47, (03.07.71) has today, Thursday 11 April, been further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities" http://news.met.police.uk/news/update-arrest-of-julian-assan... Sounds like Assange wasn't that wrong?

First of all, that's unrelated to the extradition to Sweden. He said that he didn't want to go to Sweden because then he would be more likely to get extradited, but the opposite was true. He fought to stay in the UK, but fled when all legal options to avoid going to Sweden was exhausted. Second, the US has had seven more years to build a case now, and a new Republican government.

> First of all, that's unrelated to the extradition to Sweden.

It's not "unrelated". It shows the US wants him, as he claimed.

You write that the UK would have had to authorize a further extradition from Sweden to the US, but does that authorization depend on the same level of judicial review?

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#476

Post by criley2 »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #274

and considering the public mood after a several year campaign to demonize Wikileaks and Assange by the US media, chances are pretty high that he will rot in a US prison for life or have his ashes thrown into the sea the same way as they did with Osama bin Laden. The US is a terror state that uses torture and secret prisons. I hope that EU countries will stop extradition asap.

It's pretty shocking here to see pro-fascist comments like this which reward the Russian Intelligence operation called "Wikileaks" and its constant war against democracy, liberty and free elections in not just the U.S., but also Europe.

Sometimes you have to wonder why folks this guy truly hate the U.S. and the West and side openly with mediocre spies involved in intelligence operations against his own home.

But this is our reality: the new fascist right storming the world doesn't care about elections, democracy, liberty, or anything.

I proudly stand against the rising tide of dictators and fascism and the intelligence war they operate against the free people of the world, a war in which Julian Assange proudly operated in on the side of fascist dictatorships.

Our freedoms, our ability to conduct fair elections, our very ability to communicate is under concerted nation-state attack and if we do not rise to defend ourselves and our ability to associate like we do, we will lose it. It is already on life-support. We are losing it in real time.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#477

Post by TelmoMenezes »

foldr wrote: post #197
garmaine wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semantics. The host country is prevented from entering, searching, seizing people or persons, or otherwise enforcing its laws in any way. The soil is technically still British, but so long as he had Ecuador's cooperation, he was entirely outside the reach of UK law. So by the dictionary definition of sovereignty -- "supreme power or authority" the sovereign inside the walls of the embassy is Ecuador, not the UK, sinc…

No, the UK is sovereign inside the Ecuadorian embassy. The authorities are prevented from entering by international treaties that they've signed. If international treaty obligations block sovereignty, then the UK isn't sovereign within the UK either (!), since there are certainly international treaties signed by the UK which prevent the UK authorities doing certain things within the UK. For example, the UK authoritie…

> If international treaty obligations block sovereignty, then the UK isn't sovereign within the UK either (!)

Yup. International treaties are an exchange of sovereignty for something else. The general public imagine that XIX-century-style nation states still exist, but they haven't for a long time. I suspect the USA's rhetoric of patriotism, especially post-9/11 exacerbates this view. Even the USA shares a lot of its sovereignty with external entities (gasp!).

The only XIX-century-style nation state left might be North Korea, FWIW.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#478

Post by ryanlol »

peteretep wrote: post #469
ryanlol wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's an Ecuadorian citizen. Does the Ecuadorian law allow for the extradition of Ecuadorian citizens? It's quite common for this to be illegal. Of course this wouldn't be your typical extradition as he was already on UK ground, but I think it would not be unreasonable for a court to view this as an extradition.

> He's an Ecuadorian citizen Your information is a few hours out of date > Does the Ecuadorian law allow for the extradition of Ecuadorian citizens Yes, and also specifically to America, for what it's worth > this wouldn't be your typical extradition That's because it wouldn't be an extradition. Embassies are not extra-territorial. British police didn't storm the embassy largely out of politeness and convention.

>That's because it wouldn't be an extradition. Embassies are not extra-territorial. British police didn't storm the embassy largely out of politeness and convention.

My comment specifically acknowledged this, however I see a very real chance that a court might view this as an extradition. It is the .ec government handing him over to a foreign country after all.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#479

Post by ilikehurdles »

rudiv wrote: post #45

RIP. It's only a matter of time before he's extradited, and I would think the current US government would definitely push for the death penalty under the Espionage Act. I suppose it's little solace that he'll join a long list of illustrious names prosecuted under that infamous act. (Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Victor Berger, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden)

He’s more likely to be executed by whichever information sources he has a risk of ratting out in a trial than by the US. Maybe he won’t even make it to US land.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#480

Post by thiagoharry »

decoyworker wrote: post #314
dandare wrote: post #250

As a parent I will always remember that WikiLeaks (Assange) helped to stop the torture of children in Iraq. The war cables revealed that the US government knew about the routine torture of prisoners and opponents including women and children by the Iraqi authorities, a de facto puppet regime of the US. The US government knew about this from the alarmed reports of its own personnel and decided to turn a blind eye beca…

There is a lot of appeal to emotion in your post. Can we both agree that war is bad and things are always more complex than they seem? In the grand scheme of things these events rank pretty low on the list of priorities when you are fighting a war.

Yes, at war there are always these ideological explanations that try to justify atrocities, and people tend to accept them when they are from their side of the war (but not when they are from the other side).
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