Assange should be compensated.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange should be allowed to walk free and be compensated for his “deprivation of liberty”, a UN legal panel has found.
Bollocks. The UK has not deprived him of his liberty. He sought refuge after skipping bail. His choice. The UK was executing an arrest warrant. Okay, so I have problem with the EU arrest warrant in principle, but that is beside the point here. He chose to skip bail, he chose to hide away in the Ecuadoran embassy. He could have walked out and faced the music any time he wanted. He chose not to. No one owes him a penny and no one should pay him.
He has been arbitrarily detained since his arrest in 2010, the panel said.
The panel is wrong. He could have left at any time had he chosen to. Being a fugitive from the justice system does not mean that he was arbitrarily detained because no one detained him.
The UK Foreign Office said the report “changes nothing” and it will “formally contest the working group’s opinion”.
Contest it? They should stick two fingers up and ignore it.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the panel’s opinion was “ridiculous” and Mr Assange was a “fugitive from justice”. He said Mr Assange can come out “any time he chooses” but will still have to face justice in Sweden.
Well, quite. He is free to leave and upon doing so, will be arrested. Irrespective of Sweden’s claims against him, he skipped bail in this country, so has that one to face first.
The Met Police said it will make “every effort” to arrest Mr Assange should he leave the embassy.
Good.
The panel’s ruling is not legally binding in the UK…
Well, that says it all, really.
Yes, best go to Sweden on a trumped-up rape charge then get extradited to the US to spend 35 years in jail with Bradley Manning.
Or perhaps not.
Well, if he was prepared to face justice we’d find out if the charges were trumped up. The suggestion that he could face extradition from Sweden is tripe as he’d face the same risk of extradition from the UK if the US actually asked. Which leaves rational people to conclude that his reluctance to go to a Sweden is directly related to the rape charges. I’d be more than happy for the weapons grade bastard to be extradited to the US and be incarcerated until he popped his clogs.
We don’t know if they are trumped up. But even if they are, he has not been arbitrarily detained and to suggest that he has is risible. We owe him nothing. He can face the charges and contest them in court in Sweden. His choice.
Maybe you’re both right, let’s see what happens. He wasn’t detained, granted, but in view of the Manning verdict -35 years for revealing military abuses which he had tried to report – it may be that Assange felt it necessary to go to ground. I’ll bet he ends up in a US jail for decades.
Yeah, but if the US wanted him, they could get an extradition order via us, not Sweden. He was arrested over charges in Sweden.
But, even then, he wasn’t detained and to claim that he was is disingenuous.
As an aside, I wouldn’t want to face the corrupt US system where they blackmail people into pleading guilty for a plea bargain.
No, he got 35 years for releasing 250,000 State Department cables and 470,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield logs to WikiLeaks. He pleaded guilty to some of the charges. He is not a hero. The sentence was harsh, the defence thought 25 years would be fairer, but his leaks harmed the U.S. as he himself conceded.
The left makes these bastards their heroes though their cases have nothing to do with free speech, justice or public interest.
http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/assange-dirtier-tricks-than-i-thought.html
Another viewpoint and a valid one perhaps?
Most of the European systems are pretty crap, frankly. Look at the Italian one where they just keep coming back time after time over years in an attempt to get the “right” verdict.
That doesn’t alter the fact that Assange has not been detained, nor is any of this our fault. He is in the Ecuadoran embassy by his own volition. He can come out any time he chooses. That is all that matters here. The Swedish legal system is another matter entirely.
Of course, if we weren’t in the EU, the arrest warrant wouldn’t have been served…
@Richard:
Whether the Swedish justice system is flawed — they all are — is irrelevant. Assange skipped bail *in the UK* by claiming asylum from Ecuador, and has to answer for that *very definitely illegal* action.
What might, potentially, possibly, happen after he is arrested, tried and, most likely found guilty of skipping bail in the *UK*, then punished for his crime, matters not one whit. That said crime has been committed is not in dispute.
They’re waiting to arrest him for breaking the *UK’s* laws, not Sweden’s.
A true hero doesn’t piss and moan about how he’s now having to face the consequences of his actions, while implying that national and international laws shouldn’t apply to him.