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Assange

I see there is an article in the Guardian today, 70 MPs -- from across the house -- have written to Sajid David to ask him to prioritise Assange's extradition to Sweden.

A quote from the article:

The letter attracted growing support as the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that in the event of competing extradition requests for the same person, under section 179 of the 2003 Extradition Act it falls to the home secretary to determine which one goes first – based on criteria including the relative severity of the offences, the date of the first warrant and the places where they were committed.

Read the whole thing here: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...-to-julian-assange-claim-home-secretary-urged
 
milo said:
Rendition seems very unlikely given that he will be in prison whilst the extradition requests go through the court.

I think it highly unlikely that if he was extradited to Sweden, they would give permission for the US to take him before he stood trial or served his time.

He has ample legal grounds to fight extradition from the UK or Sweden to the US and may be successful.
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I agree it would be unlikely, but we can afford to apply the odds sitting on a phone, chatting on a forum. If the cost of being wrong were a lifetime in Guantanamo, then I wouldn't accept a <1% chance.

I don't like conspiracy theories, and on the balance of evidence, I don't think there's anything untoward happening here. But if there were, I don't believe the UK or SE governments would stand up to the US and I don't think the US government would find it all that tough to skirt the international laws attempting to restrict it.
 
There are 2 principles at play here. The first one about whistle blowing and freedom of press/speech. and if the US are driving this then there is a strong argument against this.

2nd principle - the alleged rape allegations are pretty clear. the way they are described are clear to me and if guilt: the guy is clam and a rapist.

Regarding the Labour front bench and their initial reaction - it is bad as we live in a world where consent in sexual activity is so important and never is it a good look to be on the wrong side.

also Assange is not some sort of hero at all. His stance on traditional anti imperialists and their crimes is not consistent. So again the guy is a clam. If a communist or a capitalist are both doing the same evil thing, one is not worse or better than the other. both are bad.
 
LutonSpurs said:
There are 2 principles at play here. The first one about whistle blowing and freedom of press/speech. and if the US are driving this then there is a strong argument against this.

2nd principle - the alleged rape allegations are pretty clear. the way they are described are clear to me and if guilt: the guy is clam and a rapist.

Regarding the Labour front bench and their initial reaction - it is bad as we live in a world where consent in sexual activity is so important and never is it a good look to be on the wrong side.

also Assange is not some sort of hero at all. His stance on traditional anti imperialists and their crimes is not consistent. So again the guy is a clam. If a communist or a capitalist are both doing the same evil thing, one is not worse or better than the other. both are bad.
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All I have seen the Labour front bench argue against is Assange's extradition to the USA. I have not seen them argue that he should not be extradited to Sweden.
 
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Is he just a whistle blower or did he groom targets to elicit classified information and coach them on how to extract it?
 
galeforce said:
Is he just a whistle blower or did he groom targets to elicit classified information and coach them on how to extract it?
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I believe he was contacted by someone who wanted to whistle blow but didn't know how without getting caught. He then coached how to do so.

The lines are a little more blurred in that he apparently encourages his sources to keep producing more.
 
I think he has behaved like a broker. He appears to have a narcissistic side (doubtless exacerbated by years of isolation leading to light insanity) and combined with his handling of all this supposed information he has accessed, it is very hard to feel sorry for him.

If he had all the information he had -and was a journalist at heart- he’d have released it all. Instead it always appeared that he was holding material to leverage situations. The saddest thing for him is he genuinely believed he could do it. I think Trump and the US gov will slowly smash him into pieces unless he gives THEM everything he knows and goes so quiet he makes Snowdon seem like Dennis Rodman.

It is all very ugly.
 
I'd like to know what he did in the embassy all day once they took away his internet access, he lived and breathed online.
 
Are conjugal jail visits a thing and would you!? Just for teenage posterity?

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Absolutely, I was obsessed back in the day, my girlfriend at the time had a bit of a problem with it weirdly, just because my room was wallpapered by Athena and the carpet cracked with every step.
 
Breaking news from the New York Times:

Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amendment Issues

WASHINGTON — Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks leader, has been indicted on 17 new counts of violating the Espionage Act for his role in publishing classified military and diplomatic documents in 2010, the Justice Department announced on Thursday — a novel case that raises profound First Amendment issues.

The new charges were part of a superseding indictment obtained by the Trump administration that significantly expanded the legal case against Mr. Assange, who is already fighting extradition proceedings in London based on an earlier hacking-related count brought by federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia.

The secret documents that Mr. Assange published were provided by the former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who was convicted at a court-martial trial in 2013 of leaking the records.

“Assange, WikiLeaks affiliates and Manning shared the common objective to subvert lawful restrictions on classified information and to publicly disseminate it,” the indictment said.

The Justice Department’s decision to pursue Espionage Act charges signals a dramatic escalation under President Trump to crack down on leaks of classified information and aims squarely at First Amendment protections for journalists. Most recently, law enforcement officials charged a former intelligence analyst with giving classified documents to The Intercept, a national security news website.

Legal scholars believe that prosecuting reporters over their work would violate the First Amendment, but the prospect has not yet been tested in court because the government had never charged a journalist under the Espionage Act.

Though he is not a conventional journalist, much of what Mr. Assange does at WikiLeaks is difficult to distinguish in a legally meaningful way from what traditional news organizations like The New York Times do: seek and publish information that officials want to be secret, including classified national security matters, and take steps to protect the confidentiality of sources.

Mr. Assange was secretly indicted in March 2018 in federal court in Alexandria, Va., on a charge of conspiring to commit unlawful computer intrusion. Prosecutors accused Mr. Assange of agreeing to help Ms. Manning crack an encoded portion of a passcode that would have enabled her to log on to a classified military network.

Mr. Assange was arrested in London in April after being dragged out of the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he had resided for years to avoid capture. The United States has asked Britain to extradite Mr. Assange, who is fighting it.

The Obama administration considered charging Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act but never did out of concerns that such a case could chill traditional journalism.
 
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