Assange to go!

BBC said:
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has suggested he will be leaving London's Ecuadorean embassy "soon".

He said he understood from Wikileaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson he would be "leaving the embassy" after two years' refuge but gave no more details.

Mr Assange is wanted for questioning over alleged sex assaults in Sweden and faces arrest if he leaves the embassy.

Mr Hrafnsson later said the plan "as always" was for Mr Assange to depart when the UK "calls off the siege".

"The world is not coming to an end," Mr Hrafnsson told reporters inside the embassy.
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I'll believe it when I see it. What a weasel.
 
He's worries about extradition to the USA (from Sweden), not the alleged charges in Sweden.

The authorities in Sweden want to question him.

Can he invite them to the embassy to conduct an interview there? If they then want to arrest him then there is an issue (they'll have to wait for him to leave), but if they decided they don't need to investigate further then he'd be free to go.
 
He will end up in the US, whether he likes it or not. With everything that happened to Snowden, they probably want to make an example of him even more.
 
FoxEye said:
He will end up in the US, whether he likes it or not. With everything that happened to Snowden, they probably want to make an example of him even more.
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Absolute Tosh. If anything, leaving him alone will be more of an example of what a self-serving pile of drivel he has spouted to try and save his own worthless hide.

He cant be extradited from sweden anyway.

“Sweden should guarantee that there be no extradition to USA”

It would not be legally possible for Swedish government to give any guarantee about a future extradition, and nor would it have any binding effect on the Swedish legal system in the event of a future extradition request.

By asking for this 'guarantee', Assange is asking the impossible, as he probably knows. Under international law, all extradition requests have to be dealt with on their merits and in accordance with the applicable law; and any final word on an extradition would (quite properly) be with an independent Swedish court, and not the government giving the purported 'guarantee'.

Also Sweden (like the United Kingdom) is bound by EU and ECHR law not to extradite in circumstances where there is any risk of the death penalty or torture. There would be no extradition to the United States in such circumstances.
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Devlish said:
He cant be extradited from sweden anyway.
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That doesn't say he can't be extradited from Sweden to the US at all. All the US has to do is promise to try him in a state without the DP but they don;t even have to do that given he wouldn't be on trial for murder (which is the only crime they use the DP for anyway).
 
estebanrey said:
That doesn't say he can't be extradited from Sweden to the US at all.
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He would never be extradited from Sweden to the USA because it would be against their law to do so. They have already confirmed that they view his "crimes" against the US as political crimes, and extraditing people for political crimes is against their laws hence why they have previously refused to extradite bigger fish than Assange to the USA (Such as a former CIA agent who defected to the USSR).

Of course Assange knows all this, his big show about being persecuted and pursued by the USA is all a smokescreen because he doesn't want to face rape charges in Sweden.
 
ubersonic said:
He would never be extradited from Sweden to the USA because it would be against their law to do so. They have already confirmed that they view his "crimes" against the US as political crimes, and extraditing people for political crimes is against their laws hence why they have previously refused to extradite bigger fish than Assange to the USA (Such as a former CIA agent who defected to the USSR).

Of course Assange knows all this, his big show about being persecuted and pursued by the USA is all a smokescreen because he doesn't want to face rape charges in Sweden.
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Pretty much sums it up Assange is a scum bag but wants the world o go on thinking of him as some do gooder. Personally I'd remove the guard from the embassy and let him leave he can rot in South America for all I care.
 
I thought that the UK was always being accused of being in the pocket of the US yet he chose to come to the UK for safety. Is the UK less likely to extradite than Sweden, I don't know the statistics?

His appeal failed so he skipped bail, does anyone know if anyone has had to pay up his bail money?

I think we have been thoroughly shafted with this case. If we turn a blind eye and let him vanish we will be dammed, if we spend a fortune and keep the siege going we are also dammed.

The UK is only keeping up its international legal requirements in my mind.

Still Assange conspiracy theorists will always argue that. I thought he was meant to be coming out about a year ago.
 
ubersonic said:
Of course Assange knows all this, his big show about being persecuted and pursued by the USA is all a smokescreen because he doesn't want to face rape charges in Sweden.
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It is a fact that the US has an ongoing investigation against Assange and Wikileaks and would seek his extradition from either the UK or Sweden. Even if Sweden refused, they would have to hand him back to the UK where any extradition request would very likely be accepted.

At the moment the status quo is preventing the case from moving forward, preventing justice (if there was wrongdoing), and costing the UK millions.

Why is it then, that the Swedish prosecutor refuses to question Assange either via video or in person in London? This would allow the case to move forward (if it was decided to then charge Assange for anything) and save both the Swedish and British taxpayers a lot of money.

There is no logical reason this has not happened.
 
AGD said:
It is a fact that the US has an ongoing investigation against Assange and Wikileaks and would seek his extradition from either the UK or Sweden. Even if Sweden refused, they would have to hand him back to the UK where any extradition request would very likely be accepted.
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Not quite right, if the US applied to extradite him the request would be denied as he is currently awaiting extradition to Sweden and they have priority. If he was extradited to Sweden he could not then be extradited to the US as it would be against Swedish law, if the UK applied to have him extradited back here because we had received an extradition request from the US then Sweden would deny it because it doesn't work that way. If we tried to pull a fast one by demanding his extradition in order to prosecute him for jumping bail (with the intent to extradite him to the US afterwards) it would also be denied as that is not a serious enough charge to warrant extradition.

If Assange left the embassy today the only things he would face are extradition to Sweden, trial for rape, and depending on the verdict either 2-6 years in prison or freedom.
 
AGD said:
It is a fact that the US has an ongoing investigation against Assange and Wikileaks and would seek his extradition from either the UK or Sweden. Even if Sweden refused, they would have to hand him back to the UK where any extradition request would very likely be accepted.

At the moment the status quo is preventing the case from moving forward, preventing justice (if there was wrongdoing), and costing the UK millions.

Why is it then, that the Swedish prosecutor refuses to question Assange either via video or in person in London? This would allow the case to move forward (if it was decided to then charge Assange for anything) and save both the Swedish and British taxpayers a lot of money.

There is no logical reason this has not happened.
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It has not happened because there is no actual case against him. The apparent victims have already admitted they were coerced in to making the claims in order to get him to sweden so that he could be sent to the US.
 
anything I don't mind said:
It has not happened because there is no actual case against him. The apparent victims have already admitted they were coerced in to making the claims in order to get him to sweden so that he could be sent to the US.
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Source? From something other than Crazy Weekly.

acemastr said:
Not much of a life hiding in some embassy, I'm fairly sure this is punishment to him as well.
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Really disagree, anything self inflicted isn't punishment. It might be atonement, if he was doing it for the purposes of genuine repentance rather than to cater to the massive yellow streak running down his back, but even then its still nothing in the eyes of the law.
 
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The Swedish prosecutors have finally done a U-turn and will now question Assange in London.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/13/julian-assange-wikileaks-swedish-prosecutors-london-interview

Initially they claimed it was illegal to question him here, then they made more excuses, but political and public opinion has shifted against them. It also looked like the prosecutor would lose the supreme court case and the statute of limitations would expire.

The prosecutor wasted millions of pounds (Swedish and British) but at least the case can move forward now.

I fully expect that the case will be dropped once questioning has happened as there doesn't seem to be much of a case to answer. So what will happen then?

The US will likely immediately put in an extradition request to the UK for him and another lengthy legal battle will ensue. Yay.
 
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