USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

Hypothetically, let’s say the statute actually had a section with “no extraditions for unsavoury offences” in it. That’s pretty weird and ambiguous, so you might, subject to UK law on statutory interpretation, look to the treaty/treaties the Act is implementing to figure out what the legislature meant by unsavoury when they wrote it. Maybe a bunch of treaties had similar provisions using the word unsavoury, but the US one changed it, and you would analyse why they didn’t use the language again, or whether political offences as referred to by the US treaty would fit the bill... But according to the judgment, the Act is not ambiguous. There is nothing to look to the treaty for.

Still, the basis for the extradition is not the treaty. Treaties bind States (ie countries) against each other. The remedy for a treaty law breach is stern words from the UN, maybe a fine, whatever. But treaty law cannot establish domestic laws that govern things like extradition. The only requirement imposed by the treaty is on the UK as a State to implement the treaty in domestic law, which is how countries like the UK comply with the terms of the treaty. International law does not bind local decision makers who decide whether the extradition goes ahead. It also does not bind parliament, which can refuse to implement a treaty or decide to deviate from it. It should also be quite plain that Assange is not a State party to the extradition agreement, being neither the literal United States nor Kingdom, so he does not have standing to object to the UK’s implementation, and of course, is in utterly the wrong court for that :)

(That the UK is bound to comply makes for a strong suggestion that parliament actually intended to be true to the treaty when they implemented it, but this is only relevant where there is ambiguity in the domestic law requiring resolution, because of the primacy of legislative power and its ability to write laws in clear terms that can’t be wriggled out of.)

Countries are sovereign, a Nigerian person living in Nigeria is only beholden to laws of Nigeria.

In your world, you can accuse someone who lives in Mongolia of a crime that doesn't even exist is Mongolian legal system, such as some peculiarities of US copyright or packaging of lobsters. You seem to think they should be flown to the US to be tried at your convenience to in a language they don't speak, in a legal system they don't understand at their expense?

You could prosecute him in Australia for hacking in whatever form it broke Australian law. How can any non-US citizen be held responsible for some vague 'damage to US national security' if they have nothing to do with the US? Why should a hypothetical person living in Nigeria be responsible for US, UK, Russian, Saudi, Israeli and everyone else's national security?

No, it shows that Wikileaks can be just as disingenuous as any other "journalistic" organization. Wikileaks made a request to the US government that it had to know the US government would refuse (for the reason I gave in my other post in response to you upthread). It did that so it could disingenuously claim that it gave the US government a chance to protect people's names and the US government refused, making it seem like it's the US government's fault, not Wikileaks's fault, that the names got published. That's not "responsible journalism"; it's Wikileaks playing power politics just like governments and the media do.

> published vital information to inform the public that the government is committing war crimes of foreign soil in their name

Wikileaks could have published that information without publishing anyone's name. They chose not to do it that way.

The first two words explain any surprise here. It's still usable data but the HN-groupthink is still wilfully blind to Craig Murray's habits.

If Assange is a mere journalist, he and his organisations are hypocrites because of their use of NDAs and either malicious or deeply incompetent in their complete disregard for the privacy of people (bystanders) mentioned in their dumps. For example, dumping the credit card numbers and addresses of donors to the Democratic Party is unnecessary and clearly intended to do harm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Promotion_of_conspir... and downwards is a good place to start - the idea that Wikileaks are some kind of bastion of good journalism is pretty naff