He was in the UK when he was arrested for extradition to Sweden. He was in the UK [1] when he was arrested for extradition to the USA.
As I have said before, the very fact that the USA is having essentially zero difficulty with extraditing him from the UK even thought the rape case preceded the USA case and is ongoing and is nearly facing the statute of limitations demonstrates that his claim “going to Sweden will cause me to be face the death penalty in the USA” is bogus — the USA neither needed nor benefited from him being in Sweden.
If anything, I am as angry with the USA for preventing him from facing his rape accusers in trial in Sweden as for interfering with anti-warcrime whistleblowing (journalism or not) by going after him like this.
[1] I neither know nor care if he was technically in the embassy at the time as they had just kicked him out anyway.
I think he went to the embassy, to avoid being extradited from either the UK or from Sweden, to the US. The point is not to be extradited; avoiding the interrogation for the trumped up rape charges, which would have resulted in a Swedish slap on the wrist even if convicted, was not his fear.
Are you really arguing that since he could have been extradited from the UK at some point before going to the embassy, that going to the embassy wasn't to avoid ultimate US extradition? I don't even get why you might draw that conclusion.
The US isn't getting him for anything. The US has filed no charges against him. He is wanted by Sweden to answer questions regarding rape allegations and not regarding any charges in the US.
His claim that the rape allegations are a setup by the US make little sense. If the US were to set him up in order to have him extradited from another country Sweden would be far down the list of countries to chose. The terms of Sweden's extradition laws and previous court rulings on extradition cases make it very unlikely the US would be successful in extraditing him.
His behavior strikes me more as that of someone guilty and desperate to avoid punishment. Maybe I am wrong but he could have cleared the whole thing up long ago by returning to Sweden.
The “the rape allegations were made up so Sweden can extradite me to the U.S.” line never made sense. The UK is even friendlier with the US than Sweden is, there's no way he couldn't be extradited from the UK.
It is entirely self-consistent to say both that he should’ve faced his accusers in Sweden and that the American charges look like an outrageous attempt to stifle legitime journalism.
I don’t see how it is self-consistent to say Sweden would’ve been more dangerous than the UK, when it is the conduct of the UK that led to condemnation by the UN and Amnesty International, and the UK is currently in the process of considering his extradition to the USA.
My own personal belief (which is merely at the level of “well I reckon“), is that he probably did the Sweden crimes, and also that the prosecution only even attempted because he was also a political thorn.
This belief is based partly on the surveys which show that an enormous number of women have been sexually assaulted and also that they don’t generally report this to the police, partly on his behaviour.
It is also partly based on the fact that — as is currently being demonstrated by the very extradition hearing currently occurring — the US is quite capable of extraditing him directly from the UK without going via Sweden.
There is little reason to believe he is more likely to be extradited to the USA after being exonerated of a crime in Sweden than before being charged with a crime in Sweden, or from the UK before the courts had exhausted all options to stop him being from extradited to Sweden. His jurisdiction-hopping simply doesn't square with someone fearing US power rather than Swedish courts (cf. Snowden)
Frankly, the probability of the USA torturing or executing a celebrity journalist from a Western country isn't particularly high anyway, especially not when it involves extradition from a European country, but of course asking countries to rewrite their statute book to offer him a special personal guarantee it won't happen is a good way of deflecting a rape charge.
The ease by which the US can extradite him from the UK is precisely why I thought poorly of the claim that he felt his life was endangered by going to Sweden.
His specific claim was that the Swedish rape charges were a cover so that Sweden could extradite him to the US. He still hasn't been extradited by Sweden. I wonder if he wouldn't have been better of going to Sweden.
He has skipped bail, which is most definitely illegal. Why he skipped bail is a different issue, but it cannot be denied that he has skipped bail.
Secondly and more importantly, you don't need to be guilty of something under UK law to be extradited. That's the whole point of extradition. If you commit a crime abroad, you are almost certainly not guilty of it at home, because you are out of your home country's jurisdiction.
Also I've never understood the whole Sweden is a stepping stone to the US. in my little understanding, I don't see why the US would seek to only issue an extradition order when he was in Sweden. They won't grant extradition to a place where there is a material risk of the death penalty (well, unless you're an asylum seeker, but that's a different issue.)
I've never understood why anyone thinks being charged with rape in Sweden gives the US any advantage.
If the claim was that it was some sort of backhanded punishment - that he's going to be stitched up for rape and go to prison as some sort of punishment beating from the US because they know they're not going to get him convicted of what they want to get him convicted of, I could understand that, but how does it aid or enable an extradition to the US?
No US citizen was involved, the crime didn't happen in the US, the Swedes would want him to serve any prison sentence before they'd release him elsewhere, the extradition from Sweden will be more complex than from the UK (as if he's been extradited from the UK the UK also have to agree to him going to the US) and it's not as if the UK aren't massively friendly (indeed in cahoots with) US intelligence.
I can completely see the idea that the US want Assange on US soil to try, but I don't see how this helps them to that end.
This misses the point so ridiculously badly. As I said on twitter yesterday.
Is there a chance in hell that he is being extradited for these crimes if the US didn't want him for leaking documents? Once you realize the answer is a firm no, this whole side story becomes irrelevant. There is no way Sweden is extraditing a rapist from the UK UNLESS someone like the US puts on pressure because of something else.
The problem is that he cannot clear himself from rape allegations without risking being extradited to US. Neither Sweden nor UK can't guarantee that he isn't extradited. There is in fact good probability that he will be.
Can you expect somebody to hand himself voluntarily to US "judicial" system when it is known that he has bleak chances of having proper case in US court, that US routinely ignores human rights in such cases?
I think it's extremely unlikely that Sweden would extradite him to the US. The UK is far more likely to do that. In Sweden, however, he runs the risk of getting imprisoned for rape.
That result was entirely his choice. He chose to go to the UK. That's not where you go if you're fearful of the US picking you up.
He chose to leave Sweden where he wouldn't likely be extradited to the US as Sweden considers espionage a political crime and does not extradite people for political crimes ....
That doesn't make sense because he was walking around freely in Sweden and was not afraid of being extradited before the rape allegations. If the US wanted to, they could have asked any allied or friendly nation to arrest and extradite him many years earlier.
He's not been convicted because he's skipped bail. He may be innocent, in which case he should trust the Swedish courts. His excuse that it's a ruse so the US can take him makes no sense. If the US was so eager to snatch him, why didn't they ever do so in months that he was sitting in a country house in England? And why didn't the US request extradition, when it's so much easier to extradite from the UK than from Sweden?
As I have said before, the very fact that the USA is having essentially zero difficulty with extraditing him from the UK even thought the rape case preceded the USA case and is ongoing and is nearly facing the statute of limitations demonstrates that his claim “going to Sweden will cause me to be face the death penalty in the USA” is bogus — the USA neither needed nor benefited from him being in Sweden.
If anything, I am as angry with the USA for preventing him from facing his rape accusers in trial in Sweden as for interfering with anti-warcrime whistleblowing (journalism or not) by going after him like this.
[1] I neither know nor care if he was technically in the embassy at the time as they had just kicked him out anyway.
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