In this case, where the person is a foreign citizen, they are. Did they not foresee this scenario when they wrote the Swedish Constitution? A foreigner committing a crime?
That is a pretty poor read, friend. I’ve reiterated that I wouldn’t find this situation tolerable regardless of who is accused. You can’t just summon people from around the world. You have to actually charge them with something. Present evidence, that sort of thing. You know, due process. You can’t just say, “so and so accused you of something, you’re going to have to get on a plane and fly halfway across the world to answer a few questions”. Pick up the phone and ask what you want to ask, make the charge, or stop playing the game.
And Assange took his case to a British court to argue that he wasn’t subject to extradition to Sweden.
News flash: he lost, and then absconded. It appears that the judge rule against every argument Assange’s counsel put up.
If you make your case to a judge and lose, I think as a general rule, you’ve had your shot at due process. Now I suppose you’re going to insist that extradition treaties be rewritten so as not to impact Assange at all, eh?
The interview process is an integral part of Swedish criminal procedure, and therefore an aspect of Swedish sovereign power. Under Swedish law, they apparently cannot charge until that interview has occurred.
It is a long-standing principle of international law and comity that one state does not exercise its sovereign power in the territory of another state, without the permission of the other state.
In this case, there are two other states involved: the UK, because Assange is in the UK, and Ecuador, because Assange is in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. For Swedish authorities to perform the interview, they therefore need the permission of both the UK and Ecuador, because the formal interview process is an exercise of state sovereignty.
This is a pretty standard rule. Closer to home, Canadian cops can’t come south to the US and conduct investigations without the permission of the US authorities, and US cops can’t come north to Canada without the permission of Canadian authorities. That’s why Canada and the US have a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, to make that type of cross-border cooperation possible.
In the Assange case, the news reports (cited up-thread) indicate that the Swedish authorities have been working for a couple of years to try to arrange the interview, in a way that is consistent with Swedish criminal law, and is permitted by both the British and Ecuadorian governments. That arrangement was finalized in December and January. It’s now up to Assange to agree to the interview.
Where has he said this? In this thread, at least, he started off posting some woefully ignorant stuff about legal procedures, but I don’t see where he’s specifically said that Assange should be off the hook specifically because he’s the Wikileaks guy. In fact, in one of his first posts he said the exact opposite:
No, they are not. They are not the same word, they do not mean the same thing.
(post shortened)
You’re arguing with Swedish criminal law. And with international law.
Assange is Australian. The crimes were committed in Sweden. Assange hightailed it to England. And then ducked into the Ecuadorian Embassy, which is Ecuador. It took a long time for international laws/treaties to be established between individual nations. It takes a long time to settle the international legal issues created by Assange the asshole.
By my estimate, asshole Assange is looking at 5 more years in Ecuador unless Assange chooses to walk out of the Ecuadorian Embassy.
8 months later Assange was questioned today.
There are flights from Sweden to London after all!
As mentioned several times in this thread, it’s not simply a case of the Swedish prosecutor talking to Assange. The interview has to meet the requirements of Swedish criminal law, and also meet any conditions imposed by the Ecuadorian government, since the interview is occurring in the Ecuadorian embassy.
This is apparent from the way the interview will be conducted, as set out in the Guardian article linked by AK84:
When there are criminal cases that involve the sovereignty of two or more countries, it is pretty much inevitable that delays will occur, and that nothing will happen unless the legal requirements of both countries are satisfied.
I hope they do; it sounds like utter nonsense. He ought to be drawn and quartered, metaphorically of course.
What for ? Alleged rape, or embarrassing the American Government — an institution to which he owes no allegiance whatsoever ?
For non-Americans we have no interest in protecting American policies or needs unless they coincide with our own. Any more than America is obliged to support foreign wishes.
All these anti-Assange and anti-Snowden hymns of hate seem straight out of the Soviet playbook.
At this point, he’s no different than anyone else who has fled to another country to avoid facing seemingly legitimate charges. It would be a fight if the U.S. requested that Assange be extradited from Sweden, but it’s all a complete hypothetical. Assange just doesn’t want to face the rape charges and his paranoia gives him and his supporters the convenient pretext of the U.S. boogeyman to avoid that.
Quite. I’ve never heard his defenders deal with the question as to why the Swedish courts would be any more likely than the UK courts to accept a US request for extradition on a charge totally unrelated to the reasons for the Swedish arrest warrant - especially given that no-one in the US appears to have made any moves towards making such an application in all the time Assange was freely residing in the UK. Only when the Swedes issue an arrest warrant does the question of extradition to the US raise its head.
Nor does anyone respond to the point that if the UK extradites Assange to Sweden, and then the US applies to Sweden to extradite him, both Sweden and the UK have to consent to the extradition to the US. So it becomes more complicated to extradite him from Sweden to the US than it would have been to extradite him from the UK to the US.
Quite. Which includes the orderly and predictable application of international extradition treaties, which is in the interest of all countries which have signed extradition treaties.
So the American Government has a material interest in the extradition of Assange from England to Sweden, when none of these parties are connected to the USA ?
American Extradition Treaties generally work one way. To, but not from, the imperial power. This has pissed off India frequently.
And both Sweden and Britain are abject lackeys to the USA, far more than say France or Russia.
How exactly is Sweden an abject lackey of the U.S.? Because they dare seek to question Assange in the first place?
If the U.S. and the UK were really such police states back in 2010, Assange would simply have disappeared and been kidnapped or just executed by CIA/MI-6 goons. Or, more recently, the UK could have simply revoked the diplomatic credentials for everyone in the Ecuadorian embassy and ordered them to leave the country, leaving Assange nowhere else to go and then apprehended him once he tried to leave the embassy.
Not a direct interest, but indirect, I would say. The US has extradition treaties with the UK and Sweden. Extradition from the UK is governed by the Extradition Act 2003, which applies to the Swedish request for extradition and for any requests for extradition which the US may make to the UK for anyone wanted for a criminal matter in the US.
I think it is in the interests of the US that the British extradition process work in an orderly and transparent way, governed by law, so the that the US knows what the rules will be for any extradition request it makes, the standards of proof, and the willingness of the British government to stand by its treaty obligations.
That US interest is a general one, that applies to any request for extradition it may make to the UK, not simply what is happening in the Assange matter.
I think he would have been off surrendering to Sweden years ago.