(psst – Assad is the guy with the porn star mustache that’s hiding out in the Middle East; Assange is the vampire-looking dude that’s hiding out in the embassy.)
Has he actually been charged or do the Swedish police just want to question him, if they only want to question him why not come to London?
Shouldn’t he be like convicted before we agree to call him a rapist and sex criminal? So an alleged case of tricking a women to unprotected sex which was already once dismissed by the prosecutors. Most countries also follow the principle of double criminality, but this is a rather singular paragraph in the Swedish books he’s being charged with, does it even exist in British law? In any case, it very much at this point appear to be a political case rather than a criminal, but I do wonder why the women would let herself, and continue for years to let herself, be used for this end.
I don’t really care about the guy, he’s just one guy and a rather insufferable one at that by all accounts. So I’d also like to see if there is a somewhat objective assessment, weighting all the positive to the negatives, to see if what he has done is a net positive, or net negative.
I asked this once before and didn’t see an on-topic answer: why should suspects ever get to prevail in establishing extraordinary conditions for criminal investigations? Assange has essentially jumped bail: he’s on the lam, just in one spot. The warrant issued by Sweden is valid on its face, and a fleeing suspect should have no inherent right to demand that authorities do what is convenient for him.
Literally none of your post is true.
Assange is avoiding being extradited to the USA. This is well-established. Supposedly, Sweden doesn’t usually consider what Assange did to be legally actionable, which makes this prosecution suspicious.
The USA is not going to bomb the Ecuadorian embassy.
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foolsguinea, I think your sarcasm detector isn’t working. 
Oops. You’re right. I goofed. Although I wouldn’t say Assad is “hiding” anywhere. Recent reports suggest he’s doing pretty well crushing the so-called moderate rebels.
I dunno about that. Back during the Balkan War, the US “accidentally” blew up the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Which, by an amazing coincidence, just happened to be housing some kind of Chinese missle expert that NATO did not want getting involved in the war.
Seriously, if the US wanted Assange, the US would get Assange, Ecuador be damned. But the US doesn’t want him. If we really wanted to shut down Wikileaks, then that super-duper Bond villain cave they operate out of would have suffered some sort of catastrophy by now. But in all likelyhood, probably some huge fraction of the “leaks” on Wikileaks are deliberate disinformation posted by various governments, and intelligence agencies around the world know it’s all just part of the game.
According to this helpful blog, Legal myths about the Assange extradition, the Swedish criminal investigation system doesn’t work the same way as common law systems. It begins with a preliminary investigation, which includes an interview with the suspect. Charges, if any, cannot be laid until almost the end of the pre-trial investigation, after the formal interview.
This was explained in detail in the decision of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, in reviewing the propriety of the extradition warrant issued by the Swedish prosecutor. It’s more than just “wanted for questioning” - it is a formal stage in the Swedish criminal inquiry.
The Swedish authorities have been working on interviewing him in the Ecuador embassy, but there have been some legal hoops to go through, apparently because it is a major deviation from their normal criminal procedure.
It involved getting the consent of the UK to conduct a Swedish legal investigation in the UK, then working out the terms with the Ecuadorian government, which then needed to be confirmed by the Swedish and Ecuadorian governments. Arrangements were finalized in December 2015 and January 2016:
Ecuador, Sweden break legal impasse over Assange questioning
Julian Assange to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors in London
This is a good point, and is illustrated by the fact that the Swedish prosecutor has been forced to end proceedings on the lesser complaint, of sexual molestation, because the statute of limitations has run out on it.
So by jumping bail, Assange has beat the rap on that charge. Is that the kind of behaviour that should be encouraged?
Could you provide something in support of that? The article from the Washington Post, cited by AK84 up-thread, says that the US Justice Department has concluded that they can’t charge Assange. He didn’t actually leak the documents; Manning did that. Assange just published them, which likely doesn’t amount to a criminal offence.
So what basis is there to argue that it is well-established that the US is trying to extradite him?
Julian Assange unlikely to face U.S. charges over publishing classified documents
The BBC has put together a timeline of the Assange saga, and I think it’s hard to link the dropping of the investigation and then the re-operning to anything in the Manning prosecution.
Manning was arrested in May, 2010, and formally charged in July, 2010. The first court-martial proceedings were in April 2011, with a ruling that Manning was fit to stand trial.
The Assange complaints were laid with the Swedish prosecutors in August, 2010, who issued an arrest warrant on August 21, 2010: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange accused of rape
The prosecutors withdrew the warrant a day later, saying: “I don’t think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Swedish rape warrant for Wikileaks’ Assange cancelled
However, the lawyer for the two women immediately filed an appeal of the withdrawal, to a special department of the public prosecution service.
On August 31, Swedish police question Assange in Stockholm.
The next day, September 1, the Public Prosecutions Director re-opened the investigation, saying more investigation was warranted before a final decision could be made: Sweden reopens Wikileaks founder rape investigation
It all happened over a ten day period at the very beginning of the investigation. It doesn’t strike me as unusual that the situation could be fluid at that early stage, with the prosecutions service deciding to proceed with the investigation rather than dismiss it summarily.
At the same time, I think the US has brought a lot of this type of criticism on itself, by its policy of extraordinary renditions and running Gitmo for the express purpose of keeping the detainees from the US courts as much as possible, and to permit “questioning”.
Once upon a time the US was the shining example of due process and fairness. Nowadays, not so much. As a result, its international credibility has been badly shredded, by its own actions.
Thank you for linking to that article, it’s very informative.
Thanks, Stanislaus.
It’s also now linked at the bottom of the summary I mentioned in post 17. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there originally. It may have been embargoed until the two governments had formally responded?
I’ve skimmed through the opinion of the Working Group, and Im puzzled by two things.
First, they appear to count the time that Assange was initially in custody in the UK (10 days) and the time he was under house arrest in the UK as part of the detention (550 days). I don’t think there was any doubt he was detained; but was it arbitrary? The detention was under the extradition process, and the detention was authorized by law. As well, the lengthy period of house arrest (550 days) was while Assange was challenging the extradition, first in the trial court, then in the Court of Appeal, and finally in the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. I fail to see how a detention in those circumstances is arbitrary. He chose to exercise his legal rights to challenge the warrant; he shouldn’t then be able to say that the time it took for his challenge, through the courts and under due process, is arbitrary.
Second, they also count the time in the embassy as arbitrary detention. But he’s there because he wants to be, because he wants to avoid legal process. Bottom line is that I don’t see how avoiding due process at your own desire can count as arbitrary detention on the part of the government.
Here’s an article on how much some of his friends were on the hook when he jumped bail: Julian Assange supporters ordered to forfeit £93,500 bail money.
The magistrate gave each of them a bit of a discount. They were collectively liable for £140,000, but he accepted their arguments of hardship if they had to pay the full amount they had sworn surety to. Nonetheless, they each ended up forfeiting substantial sums.
There was another group of friends who were also on the hook but it looks like they were well-heeled and had to pay the full freight, amounting to an additional £200,000:
Interesting. How would you characterize József Mindszenty’s 15-year stay at the American embassy in Budapest?
If evidence emerges that the British had beat Assange with rubber truncheons and put him on a show trial on the orders of the government, my views would be different.
But so far as I can tell from the news accounts, the Swedes and the British have been observing the rule of law and due process, with the legal questions about the validity of the extradition process being determined by independent courts, according to law.
The U.S. has not issued a warrant for Assange’s arrest.
Sweden wants to interrogate Assange in connection with the rape of two Swedish women.
Britian intends to abide by the European Arrest Warrant, which it is legally required to do.
While the lesser charges Assange faced have exceeded the statute of limitations, the limitations on the charge of rape is 10 years.
Assange came out of the Ecuadorian embassy, saw that he still had a shadow, and realized that he is facing 5 more years of winter. In the Ecuadorian embassy. hehehe.
But you don’t think it’s possible that, you know, Assanage raped two women? You’d rather think that there is some elaborate and convoluted scheme afoot by the US to get him than the simpler explanation that the Swedes might actually have real charges against him and actually want him to stand trial to defend himself against those charges? A lot of folks in this thread seem to have malfunctioning Occam’s Razors when it comes to this guy. You all seem to believe that because he did something you like, that means he must be innocent and that there is this elaborate conspiracy by the US to get him brought up on charges in Sweden so we can get our mitts on him to do something something something and…PROFIT!! I’m sure Obama is getting daily updates on the quest to bring Assanage to justice at Gitmo!! 
A lot of this sounds like we need to be wearing tin foil beanies and talking about moon hoaxes and nano-thermite…