Julian Assange extradition judge refuses request for delay

Oh, I know your papers loved Assange and Wikileaks until the Clinton issue. Then you all changed your minds and decided it was correct to give a person a life sentence or even a death sentence for reporting war crimes while none of you are bothered about your country dealing with those who commit war crimes. On that by the way the UK is no better than you. Our Government was working to hide the war crimes our people were committing in Iraq and shut down all investigations as soon as some impropriety was found with the lawyer working with them.
I wrote about a hell of a lot more than you replied to and it was really, to me at any rate a small matter. It did though seem the reason Democrats gave up their integrity and now no longer believe in free speech or a free press.

 

If this was WWII I myself would report on American war crimes in the Pacific
and European theatres - from killing POW's to the mass deaths of civilians.
I would have reported it - and named names of American and British agents
behind enemy lines.

 

You are woefully misinformed Joe. There was no criminal behavior by Assange, in Sweden or elsewhere.

You have been conditioned to believe otherwise.

 

He breached his bail conditions in the UK. That's why he's in prison right now.

 

You don't know right from wrong sir.

 

I'm not saying anything about right or wrong in this context, simply stating basic facts. He was on bail when he first fled to the embassy and sought to flee the country which was obviously in breach of the conditions of his bail. That is what he was recently charged and convicted over and led to the prison sentence he is currently serving.

 

You know that, do you? Some kind of supporting evidence would be nice. I don't buy your generalizations about what "we all" thought or did, or are thinking and doing now. I'll tell you this, though - people's minds will change about a person when they find out that this person is accused of a serious crime and/or of deeds that are deemed bad even if they're not criminal, and Assange is not only charged with having aided in hacking government systems to get the information he subsequently published, which goes well beyond any journalistic endeavor protected under the 1st Amendment or any similar protection, but is implicated in helping the Russians to harm our elections by disseminating their illegally obtained information. And all the while, we know that Roger Stone was in touch with them, learning about their future dumps in advance. There are two separate but somewhat related issues here.

I don't mind Assange or WikiLeaks at large exposing misdeeds and helping keep governments honest. I do mind these people committing crimes and helping a hostile foreign power with what amounts to a military campaign being conducted through the internet and intended to harm this nation. This, too, goes beyond mere journalism.

 

This is a UN Rapporteur on Torture speaking on the situation of Julian Assange yesterday. I highly recommend it to those who believe in free democratic states and yet believe what is being done to him is acceptable

 

And.....because......unsurprisingly, he is considered an obvious 'flight' risk. Fuq him. He sweats it out like everyone does when they behave like he has.

 

I believe he should have had no expectation of trusting the judicial system.

So he should have just "trusted" the system, and if the system screwed him, "too bad for him"?
Is there any organization providing a guarantee that if justice is not done, they're going to rescue him?

Or an insurance coverage policy willing to pay him 1 million dollars if something bad happens. (Though what good would a million dollars do him if he spends the rest of his life in prison)

When we get to the point of punishing people for not being willing to place their trust in the system, I believe we have entered into a totalitarian domain. People should not have to trust their lives and personal liberty into government hands under threat of punishment.
That's only one step away from making it a separate crime for people not to turn themselves in when government has charged them with a crime.
People who can't see why this is a big problem, and outrageous, obviously have no conception about individual civil liberties. (In some countries it's not a crime to escape from prison, and the same sort of rationale applies)

Anyway, there's very good reason skipping bail is not a separate crime in other countries. As mentioned before, very ironically it would not have been a crime in the US or Sweden.

 

Guess who wins that 'argument?'

 

Don't you see the irony here? He's being specifically punished in the UK for something that ultimately stemmed from charges coming from another country where that wouldn't have been a crime.
How does him skipping bail hurt anyone? What reason is there that needs to be a crime?

 

Mind you, I normally never use this type of terminology, but your rationale and basis behind your whole general argument strikes me as very Fascist.

(I don't like to use that word, but I can't think of a more appropriate substitute for it here)

 

You are wrong. I am no fascist, but I am a stickler for the notion that no-one is above the Law and that includes narcissists and Jesus reincarnates like Assange (a fellow Aussie I am not proud to admit) and Trump.

 

Presumably that principle would apply to everyone? You're saying anyone charged with any crime can simply refuse to go to court because they "don't trust the system", with no formal challenge or consequence?

You can be charged with "failure to appear" in the US, which is essentially the same thing. I'm curious what you think would be the good reason for not requiring suspects to actually turn up for trial.

 

Well it costs money while people are looked for and with Assange cost an enormous amount of money stopping him from escaping.

However I keep hearing that breaking bail often gets away with a telling off and I have read that at most it is a couple of weeks or so in jail. They may keep him there in isolation for 5 years or more if he survives.

Of course Assange knew he had already been told in Sweden that he could leave because there was no evidence or charges against him so he knew there was something fishy going on. That is why he went for help to the Ecuador Embassy. I heard someone, I think it might have been Pilger in a video I saw who said that Sweden were thinking earlier of dropping them again and were told 'Don't you dare' or some such thing. This was the excuse so that they could keep him until the US could get him so that no one will dare alert citizens to the wrongs they are doing and investigative reporting as far as Government's are concerned is over. This will quickly be taken up by other countries including Western as we have already seen.

This EU video is very educational but I have a feeling here a lot of people have no interest in knowing the facts on this case.

 

In all honesty, it's still hard to tell whether the case in Sweden has anything to do with the US.
Now it seems, after dropping the charges, Sweden is seeking to extradite him again, but it's unclear if that is to assist the US so they can hand him over to the US, and/or help create bad publicity for him, or if it is to help protect him, by trying to get him diverted to Sweden instead of to the US, or if this just has to do with the high level of publicity and the prosecutor being stubborn and not wanting to let such a high profile figure off the hook (even though the accusations he is facing in Sweden are not really very serious).
If the accusations in Sweden were true, then Assange really would have behaved as a sexual pig (though not a criminal in most people's eyes) and it would be understandable why a Swedish female prosecutor would want to come after him with a vengeance and make sure "justice" is done, for disrespecting women.

I don't think there's been any other international justice issue that has so many complicated nuances. It's like a three way tug-of-war between three different countries, with Assange facing peculiar injustice in each of them he could only face in that specific country. It's like some sort of absurd nightmare.

 

I think you misunderstand what I was saying.

The issue is facing separate and specific punishment for not trusting the system, for not being willing to place one's life and liberty into the hands of someone else.

So for example, if someone is accused of a murder and they are ordered to go to the police so they can be taken into custody. Then punished for not willingly going to the police. Maybe it turns out they were never guilty of murder in the first place, but now they still get punishment after that.

 

Yes, often in the UK even murderers only get a maximum of 6 additional months for breaking bail.

 

Hard for you. What I have heard does not make it so for me.

If the charges are dropped as you began saying and as is the last I have heard then he clearly has nothing to face in Sweden. I know nothing about them making another demand to extradite them. He is being held in jail while it is decided whether to extradite him to the US. Please leave a link concerning this new call to extradite him. I did a search but it brought nothing.

You have agreed they are dropped as in the last paragraph. I suggest you listen to the video I left. If you are saying that Sweden has asked to extradite him and yet again accuse him having dropped all charges last week, charges he was told had no validity and would not result in an arrest before he left Sweden then please provide evidence of this as well..

I suggest you provide evidence of this having happened. He might or might not be a two timer but that does justify taking his life and that is not what he is charged with by the US who are the people who he is being kept in jail for - see the previous video I left. As for your stereotype of women check out the video below.

 

Maybe you haven't been keeping up with the most current developments. Although the charges were dropped, Sweden recently decided to reopen the case.

"Sweden reopened an investigation into a rape allegation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday and will seek to extradite him from Britain, a potential setback to efforts by the United States to put him on trial over a huge release of secret documents."
"The Swedish prosecutor said she would request Assange be detained in his absence on probable cause for an allegation of rape and that her office would issue a European arrest warrant - the start of the extradition process."
article from May 2019​

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ffort-to-try-him-for-conspiracy-idUSKCN1SJ0UZ

(And again, "rape" is not really the best translation in this article. Assange is not being accused of "rape" in the sense that most people interpret that word. I don't know why the media seem to keep using that word when it's so obviously very misleading. It really should more literally be translated as "sexual violation" and in Sweden that can cover all sorts of sexual misconduct that may be a far cry from rape, and would not even be considered a crime in most other countries. i.e. it can still be "rape" even if the woman agrees to have sex, if there was some aspect to that sexual encounter the woman did not explicitly consent to; she doesn't even have to say "no". You can even "rape" your own wife without realizing that you raped her, just to show how absurd the legal logic in Sweden is here)

 

What is the matter with you. That article is May. It was last week they dropped the charges

 

Only some kind of dictatorship or some form of fascism would go after assange for acting as a Press and speaking truth to power in regards to crime and political corruption.

Assange is a threat to tyranny and that isnt overstating it.

 

I understood, I was explaining the unintended consequences of what you're saying. You can't only apply your principle to people who are innocent. If there is no punishment for skipping bail there's no point in having it at all. Without bail, a flight risk like Assange would have just been kept in custody during the extradition case.

Well that isn't how it ever works and certainly isn't how it worked in Assanges case. Bail isn't something imposed, it's something agreed with the suspect. Assange specifically had been on bail for some time as he went through the legal process challenging the extradition request. It's only when he thought he was going to loose that he tried to run. If the Swedish request had been denied, he wouldn't have been condemning the UK legal system. And plenty of guilty people are just as arrogant.

 

The mainstream media in the US has become almost Orwellian over the last decade.