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Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

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Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#371

I think the pressure from the Australian government had to do a lot with this good news[0][1]. 0. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansar... 1. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/10/politics/biden-assange-au...

The first link is a motion spoken to independent Andrew Wilkie acknowledging supporters of Assange. The CNN article talks about the governments bid to have all charges dropped (they were not, he had to plead guilty on espionage).

Despite Mr. Albanese (the prime minister)'s election promise to bring Assange home, he's officially refused[0] to talk to Biden about it and has never answered questions on what they're doing about it.

It is great he's finally coming home, but forcing a journalist to plead guilty of espionage falsely, the decade of harassment and false imprisonment, the fake rape case... This should not be treated as "job done".

0. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-29/pm-says-biden-wont-in...

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#372
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but the judge can't both reject the plea deal and sentence him, since rejecting the plea deal invalidates the guilty plea. Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a diplomatic incident. He's not out of the woods yet by any means, but if they reached a deal his lawyers are confident in, I wouldn't be worried about the judge. They are supposed to deffer to international law if US is a party to the t…

> Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a diplomatic incident. Why would it be a diplomatic incident? When you are a fugitive from justice taking a plea deal is always a gamble because you have to show up in court. Should the judge reject your deal, you are handed over to US Marshals pending a new court date. Edit: downvote all you want, it doesn't change facts. There is a separation of powers between…

I don't understand why you are being downvoted. I just posted essentially the same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40785120

source: over a decade of experience in pretrial operations

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#373

Good, this was getting majorly embarrassing for all countries still involved with this legal mess. The man dying in prison stuck in legal limbo without any conviction whatsoever (innocent until proven guilty and all that) would have been a PR disaster for the UK. And of course there's also the issue that the UK is very likely to get a new government that would have likely been leaning to just letting the man go in an…

> At least the current Labour leader strikes me as a decent man with some actual principles and backbone and this would fundamentally be a decent thing to do. (massive sidetrack, but I can't let this sentence go unpunished) The current labour leader is the lamest duck in a group of wet blankets. His policies revolve around not being as corrupt as the Tories whilst doing virtually nothing else to better his constituen…

He is also personally responsible for the persecution of Assange. He was head of Crown Prosecution Services in the UK at the time we know (from Stefania Maurizi's FOIA requests) they actually threatened Sweden when Sweden wanted to drop the case.

Wet blanked doesn't begin to cover it. I honestly think he's an entryist trying to tank the Labour party on the behalf of some British spy-lord. He's failing, but that's more the Tories' fault.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#374

Good, this was getting majorly embarrassing for all countries still involved with this legal mess. The man dying in prison stuck in legal limbo without any conviction whatsoever (innocent until proven guilty and all that) would have been a PR disaster for the UK. And of course there's also the issue that the UK is very likely to get a new government that would have likely been leaning to just letting the man go in an…

> At least the current Labour leader strikes me as a decent man with some actual principles and backbone and this would fundamentally be a decent thing to do. (massive sidetrack, but I can't let this sentence go unpunished) The current labour leader is the lamest duck in a group of wet blankets. His policies revolve around not being as corrupt as the Tories whilst doing virtually nothing else to better his constituen…

Have you actually read their policies? There are plenty of big changes.

Maybe you are referring to them not stating that they will change taxes significantly? Well, yeah no shit. a) they can't, taxes are at their highest level since WW2, and b) they don't want to destabilise things like Truss did.

I think his biggest issue is that his voice sounds a bit wet and that makes people think he is wet.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#375

whatever happened to the r--- allegations from Sweden, I understand that Sweden has dropped the charges but.. can we get some closure about that as interested followers of this entire saga? Hope that's not too much to ask..

He fled and let the statute of limitations expire. His excuse was Sweden might extradite him to the US, but the UK wouldnt.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#376

Is there any risk that he could face further charges in Australia?

The Australian government brokered the deal [0] after their parliament voted for him to be freed [1] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/10/biden-assange-... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/14/austr...

Interesting, I’m guessing he didn’t expose many Australian secrets? Their government is fresh off of jailing a whistleblower (David McBride) ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶l̶i̶f̶e̶ 5 years who exposed a so called war hero as someone who actually committed war crimes.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#377

> Court documents revealing Assange's plea deal were filed Monday evening in U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean. Assange was expected to appear in that court and to be sentenced to 62 months, with credit for time served in British prison, meaning he would be free to return to Australia, where he was born. I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. He is appearing in…

IANAL but the judge can't both reject the plea deal and sentence him, since rejecting the plea deal invalidates the guilty plea. Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a diplomatic incident. He's not out of the woods yet by any means, but if they reached a deal his lawyers are confident in, I wouldn't be worried about the judge. They are supposed to deffer to international law if US is a party to the t…

> Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a diplomatic incident.

Australian Politicians: collective silence

We let dodgy Uncle Sam do whatever he wants to us.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#378
post #287

Can someone who has an accurate source post when Wikileaks cryptographic canary expired? I'm unable to find a source and it's important to know they shouldn't be trusted. Here's when their key expired in 2007: https://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks_talk:PGP_Keys From another below: vikingerik A canary goes something like "This website has not received or acted on any government orders to disclose or modify or remove ma…

I remember at the time that it expired, all of the moderators on their official subreddit also got replaced. The insurance file also got changed out at some point as the hash changed.

The wikileaks subreddit was never official, and it was a train wreck. Two very dodgy Trump supporters "volunteered to help with the increased traffic" around the time of the Podesta releases and basically took over.
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