"Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies in the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward."
Or maybe his lawyer should drop the offer and just let the statute run out now, since the prosecutor couldn't be bothered when it wasn't to her advantage.
He's also charged with rape, which has a longer statute of limitations (10 years, until 2020).
Edit: wukerplank is right, he wasn't charged, but (a kind of) rape is one of the crimes he allegedly committed and is wanted for questioning for (according to Wikipedia[1], it's "one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation, and one count of lesser-degree rape"), and this article and the Wikipedia[2] suggest that the statute of limitations for rape is 10 years.
He was not "charged", because that's not a Swedish word.
But all the courts involved in the matter, in Sweden and abroad, have come to the conclusion, that the procedural state Assange is in, is equivalent to the English word "charged".
If we are analyzing the words, then the term rape also get a qualifier. He is accused of initiating sex with a women who was half-asleep, which falls under "helpless state" in the rape laws.
The confusion is caused by Swedish laws having specific crimes and categories of crimes, in which "rape" is both a specific crime and a category.
In the law of England & Wales can you be charged without being taken in to custody?
I thought those on the run were "wanted for questioning concerning allegations of ..." and then when arrested they would be "charged under $statute for $crime" and read their rights, etc.?
In Assange's case, he didn't escape after being charged did he so ...? Can someone clear this up for me, thanks.
The critical point here is that British law has nothing to do with it. British police is co-operating only because of international treaties and obligations (europol etc) on handling fugitives from other countries. The effort intensity is suspect and likely politically motivated, but it's quite clear that Assange did not break any British law.
He did not break any British law until he jumped bail into the embassy. Once he exits the embassy Assange will still have to clean that up. Based on the amount of money being spent to monitor him in embassy I wouldn't expect them to let Assange off lightly.
Sorry I think I misread the meaning of the parent.
>the procedural state Assange is in, is equivalent to the English word "charged". //
I thought they meant the English word being used in legal terms - so that's where the application of English law comes in to the equation. Hence I was asking if in England & Wales if the term "charged" could be actually applied to Assange's situation if the investigation and proceedings thus far had happened in England & Wales.
Sweden can formally indict Assange anytime. The problem is that doing this would require the prosecutor to move her case beyond the "preliminary investigation" stage, at which point she would have to file actual evidence of the crime with the court and release it to Assange (who could publish it and show the prosecution for the farce that it quite obviously is). Indicting Assange would also make it impossible for the Swedish authorities to detain him indefinitely without trial (something otherwise possible in Sweden in the case of "preliminary investigations"). And the indictment would also make it possible for Assange to challenge his extradition on the basis of actual charges instead of vague and unsubstantiated allegations.
The Swedish prosecution was obviously interested in having their warrant evaluated on the much narrower question of whether it was technically valid.
The terminology dance you are referring to played out because while Sweden wanted to extradite Assange without coughing up any evidence supporting their case, it is not legal to extradite a subject for mere questioning. So for the arrest warrant to be technically valid, the Swedish prosecutor had to insist that while Assange was technically wanted only for questioning and no decision had been made to indict him, the prosecution was in an "advanced" state and he was virtually guaranteed to be charged. Anyone can see sections 142 and 144 (ii) from the High Court Ruling to watch the dance in action:
> But all the courts involved in the matter, in Sweden and abroad, have come to the conclusion, that the procedural state Assange is in, is equivalent to the English word "charged".
The procedure is different enough that there are meaningful substantive differences even though that may be the closest equivalent in American terms (it seems, though, that its really not, and the state he is in is more like someone who is both an uncharged suspect and subject to arrest as a material witness.)
This is an interesting question. If someone purposely hid out somewhere with no extradition treaty and the whole time was saying, "Nah, nah you can't catch me," to the authorities, should statutes be respected by the courts? I would think not.
While the conventional justification for statutes of limitations is to protect the defendant from late claims - something that I would agree would not make sense here -, in some countries - this certainly applies in Norway, for example - part of the argument for statutes of limitations is to give society a chance at closure by increasing the chance that a perpetrator that has been able to evade justice will be willing to confess in some form or other.
> Would the statute of limitations be tolled for the duration of Assange's stay at the embassy?
IANAL, but that sounds unreasonable: his presence isn't required in order for him to be charged. The statute limits the time in which he can be charged (regardless of his geographic location).
I know for certain under Roman-Dutch law, one can be charged (tried, and sentenced) in absentia. I suspect other justice systems have similar allowances
Now it would be interesting if he agree to answer. But can Assange leave the ambassador now? I thought that he would be arrested the moment he left because he broke the house arrest thing a few years ago.
Note that if he leaves the embassy he can be arrested by the British police and tried in English courts for failure to comply with conditions of bail. And I'm not sure anyone can reasonably argue that he didn't do that. He was bailed, and didn't show up to court upon summons — it's the textbook case.
From the point of view of English law, contempt of court and breach of bail are entirely unrelated to why you are in the court in the first place. It doesn't matter if the prosecution withdraws the case (or, in an extradition hearing, the Home Office stops seeking extradition), you have not followed the will of the court.
I'd expect him either to be found to have been under effective house arrest for the period, and let go with a slap on the wrist, or be made an example of for running away to somewhere where the police could not enter, and sentenced to at least six months in prison (there's a maximum sentence of twelve).
Not mentioned, the supreme court is right now starting their review of the case, and mentions the principle of proportionality (size of investigation in relation to size of the crime). Link: http://www.hogstadomstolen.se/Mer-om-Hogsta-domstolen/Nyhete...
[I'm specifically not talking about Assange here but a generalised situation.]
So, if there's a suspected rapist (someone accused of rape for example) who has been on the run for years then you wouldn't bother to take them to court as you'd consider their sentence to be served out whilst on the run?
Would you apply this to all crimes? How do you determine the length of "sentence" without having a court case? Or is it just "well, he says it wasn't a bad rape and he's been hiding out for a few months let's call it even"??
The 'statute of limitations' for a crime needs to be much longer than the crime's potential maximum sentence.
Paying a high cost now is necessary to avoid the well connected from being able to bypass the justice system in the future. It's not just about this one case; that can be seen as a flaw in precedence based systems.
If someone else accused of the crime was in a similar predicament - actively willing to speak to the prosecutor, but not willing to be extradited for questioning as the state may pursue them for other matters - then I imagine we'd apply the same reasoning, believing that we should perform the questioning as invited to rather than extraditing them.
That is plausible, e.g. we would not extradite a person for one offence if it was likely the offender would then be charged with a capital offence. However, you need quite a lot more than the accused's assertion that this might happen. Under what Swedish statute might Assange be unjustly extradited to the US (and indeed, for breaking which US law? They haven't actually charged him with anything because I don't think he's done anything illegal there).
no because they could be extradited back to sweden if there was sufficient evidence of their crime. This is a particular situation where extradition is not possible.
I don't know what the Swedish limits are, but in Finland the "right the charge a person of a crime" (whatever it would be called in English) will expire in:
- never, if the maximum sentence would be life
- 20 years, if the max is more than 8 years
- 10 years, if the max is 2-8 years
- 5 years, if the max is 1-2 years
- 2 years, if the max is less than 1 year or a fine
- if the crime was a "serious sexual crime
against a child" it will expire at earliest
when the victim turns 28
>The 'statute of limitations' for a crime needs to be much longer than the crime's potential maximum sentence.
No, they need to be set based on how far back the evidence can hold and how well someone can make a reasonable defense. Especially in cases that have begun leaning towards guilty until proven innocent.
Wouldn't that mean that when new techniques establish evidence that you'd need to change the law - that seems wrong, to base the law on technical limitations. Of course you still need to be evidence based in establishing whether there is even a case to answer.
All criminal cases in non-corrupt courts in the West have a presumption of innocence.
>that seems wrong, to base the law on technical limitations
Why? The point is to ensure that the defendant can receive a fair trial. With video and DNA evidence, shouldn't there be a longer limit than if there is only a single witness testimony?
I don't see it that way. What I meant however was that the application of justice in the future shouldn't be restricted because now of _apparent_ limitations in evidence collection.
For example if a rape victim doesn't get a rape-kit done does that mean that after a few months you declare the rapist to have served their time whilst at-large [obviously at that point you haven't determined legally if there was a rape] if a rape-kit is done then you give them 25 years when they could be held accountable before a court? The evidence doesn't have a bearing on the purpose of holding the criminal accountable.
It's always possible that a new technique could arrive to gather evidence or a new source of evidence - a hidden personal diary, say - turns up.
>For example if a rape victim doesn't get a rape-kit done does that mean that after a few months you declare the rapist to have served their time whilst at-large
No, you declare that without any concrete evidence, there is no way to have a fair trial, and thus it is a waste to pursue the case. If some new form of evidence comes up, it gets written into law about its statute of limitations, and if the cold case is now within the statute of limitations, the new form of evidence can be used (but there cannot be any witness testimony or other evidence that is considered past the statute of limitations).
As it currently stands, we place far too much weight on eyewitness testimony years after the fact that results in innocent people going to prison.
But as soon as you generalize the situation, the objection is much less relevant.
Assange is obviously not trying to evade justice, or "on the run". He reported to the Swedish authorities when he was first accused and wanted for questioning and then only left Sweden after they allowed him to. When he was in house arrest in the UK, he was reporting to the police every week and was being totally cooperative with the authorities. He has also repeatedly suggested that the questioning be done over Skype or by having the prosecutor visit him in the UK, which is standard practice for crimes of similar graveness in Sweden. Only after he was supposed to be extradited did he become a "fugitive" and hid in the embassy.
Furthermore, the women that could be the victims don't even want him to be persecuted, although the situation here is not clear-cut, as they could just say that to escape some retributive online justice, and since rape and similar crimes are considered crimes against the state and are persecuted by the state regardless of whether the victim wants that or not.
In a generalized rape or another similar crime, you would probably have a crime that is more obvious and has more proof, a victim that wants justice, and a criminal that is actively avoiding justice from the very beginning. You have none of that here.
Also, I don't know if that applies to all crimes or just to rape, but I find it rather funny that he cannot by persecuted "in absentia".
Roman Polanski serves a good example of the US pursuing someone accused of rape internationally with no statute of limitations. Of course Roman has son implicit support in Hollywood, being a famous director and all, but that has not stopped their efforts to apprehend him.
Polanski's situation is a bit different - he was charged, pleaded guilty, then fled the country before he was sentenced. The statute of limitations only sets a time limit for when a case can be initiated, not for when it must be completed, and Polanski's case from 1977 is still pending.
It is a precedent, and it hasn't been followed in this case. 2010 case, linked article is in Swedish: Irish musician batters swedish citizen; prosecutor doesn't want to do anything. "Extradition can only be used in serious cases, like murder", http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article12621641.ab
It seems that in that case, the prosecutor initially dismissed the case as a drunken brawl on a ferry to Finland, and did not want to bother. Then there was some publicity and it was evident that it was a case of actual bodily harm.
In a manner somewhat similar to Assange, the Irish musician evaded court sessions in Sweden by going to Portugal, but unlike Assange, did not seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in Lisbon, and was returned to Sweden to stand trial.
I disagree. Proportionality is a very important principle. Precedents and laws are appropriate. I'm not sure how important precedents are in Swedish law though.
First, we need limits against abuse of the law and legal system. I imagine Assange's representatives will be arguing that this is what is going on here. Being free of all proportionality restrictions allows bodies and individuals within the legal system the ability to pursue other agendas (say, strategic or diplomatic relations with the US) by abusing the legal system. If you put enough resources into investigation you can probably put anyone in jail. At the very least, you can disrupt their life dramatically with lengthy processes.
Second, there's the practical issue of resources. Indictments are abandoned regularly because court systems are backlogged, expensive and limited in resources. Prosecuting 100 minor indictments per year needs to be weighed against timely prosecution of more serious crimes. This is triage, prioritizing resources (court days) in the face of limited resources.
This is a strange case. Assange is accused of "non-consensual behaviour within consensual sexual encounters." This crime/law unique to Sweden. Very few people have been prosecuted under for it. Swedish authorities did not treat the case very seriously when they first investigated it and didn't make much effort to keep him in the country, apparently happy to let him leave the country.
That aside, resources are always limited. Say you have a serious sexual harassment case. It takes place in a University. Prosecuting it require, extradition and millions in resources. Is the public better served by prosecuting the crime or staffing an entire police unit dealing specifically with sexual harassment cases in Universities? The costs are comparable, and the latter will result in tens or hundreds of convictions, far more deterrence and far more justice. I think it's entirely appropriate to refer to proportionality in cases like this.
For certain crimes like large scale racketeering, corruption, murder, rape, and others proportionality is irrelevant. There are few limits that make sense for prosecuting a serial killer or a corrupt government minister.
I'm not anywhere informed enough to disagree, but all I can think about is Al Capone. He was ultimately taken down for tax evasion, but his crimes were widely known to be much worse. He merely took great care to have enough plausible deniability that he couldn't be charged for his worse crimes.
I consider that an argument in favor of proportionality, not against. It illustrates how legal systems can be abused.
The Al Capone case is ultimately a failure in rule of law, of sorts. If he was indeed the gangster that Al Capone the pop character was, the police failed to catch and prosecute him for those crimes. In light of that failure, they basically abused laws (and maximum sentences) to convict him for a different crime.
We are open to that sort of abuse so long as prosecutors and police have big discretionary powers. If the average jail term for crime X is 1 year on parole, but the maximum sentence is 10 years in prison and the prosecutor plays a big role in determining which one it will be… that's open to abuse. If a prosecutor really wants you but can't prove your guilt, she can get you for something small and push for an oversized sentence. This basically bypasses the rule of law.
In any case, I don't think the Al Capone investigation would have violated the proportionality principle. He was being investigated (I assume) for murder, racketeering and the like. That merits a big investigation. It failed, but it wasn't disproportionate. The only thing that was disproportionate was the sentence relative to the (proven) crime. Maybe the scale of the prosecution itself too. Police were investigating a major criminal. That investigation should be (and will be) well resourced.
Precedents are important in Swedish law too, but they don't at all play the central role they do in Anglo-Saxon / Commonwealth law. Swedish law is, not surprising, closer to German / Central European in that sense. There's a whole tree of Wikipedia articles available for those easily amused by these things.
It is only not surprising if one believes that all of this is a plot to get him extradited to the US. Which always seems far fetched, till the behaviour of the prosecution made it clear that is the only sane explication - apart from complete incompetence combined with arrogance, a "he has to come crawling to us if we say so" attitude.
An alternate hypothesis involving a legal system being a bit legalistic (maybe throw in a hardline "we're definitely not making an exception to our usual procedure for you because you're a public figure who fled the country and then claimed it was a conspiracy" stance, if that counts as arrogant) has a lot to recommend it over a null hypothesis involving a conspiracy to use the most difficult, legally complex and embarrassing procedures imaginable to try to get a target to a third party country (a third party country which often takes a very direct and efficient approach to extraordinary rendition)
During the UK extradition hearing, Swedish police travelled to an Eastern European country (can't remember which) to interrogate two murder suspect.
In other words, they had no problems carrying out interrogations outside of Sweden at the time. Just not of Assange.
If the Swedish legal system had been "a bit legalistic" and not wanted to make exceptions, a lot of what happened in the Assange case could not have happened. E.g. illegal leaks of lots of information to the press, irregular interview procedures, and this curious stubbornness about interviewing him abroad when Swedish police does not seem to have a problem with that in other cases.
There may well be provision to make exceptions to the standard interview process which are permissible under Swedish law. The question is what constitutes a good basis for making those exceptions. Does "the suspect left the country when asked to interview, refused to come back, contested the ensuing extradition order using every conceivable technicality whilst insisting the charges were politically motivated, then fled bail after exhausting appeals, but is now willing speak to you, conditional on the interview taking place in their current place of residence, which happens to be guarded by a foreign government opposed to your pursuit of the case" ?
Some people - even those not especially rigid and legalistic in their thinking, which individual prosecutors are perfectly entitled and possibly even encouraged to be - might reasonably think not. Even now they've opted to back down and talk on Assange's terms, I think it's staggeringly unlikely he's going to walk out of the embassy wearing handcuffs if he is unable to satisfy them of his innocence, so I'm not sure it really advances the case further.
I've never understood the "US extradition" theory. He went to the UK, which is a co-founder of NATO (which Sweden isn't even in), and has a "special relationship" with the USA. Why go to a country that's more friendly to the USA if you're actually worried about being sent to the USA?
Exactly. Looking at the whole business from a Nordic perspective, the idea of this process being some kind of a plot to extradite Assange to be tortured by the Americans is just silly. Britain is the poodle in U.S.'s pocket, not Sweden.
A more rational perspective to the situation can be seen from the point of view of rape statistics. They are an indication of how seriously countries take accusations of sexual molestation. The rate of police-recorded rape offenses is
- US: 27.3
- UK: 28.8
- Sweden: 63.5
Are there really more than twice as many rapes per capita in Sweden than there are in UK or US? Of course not, if you use the same definition for rape. The issue is that Sweden records things differently. I'm quite convinced that if we're looking at what actually happens, Sweden has less rape then UK or US, but Sweden records them with a much lower threshold for what constitutes a "rape" so that the statistics looks different.
> Britain is the poodle in U.S.'s pocket, not Sweden.
Sweden has a history of actively handing asylum seekers to the CIA for illegal rendition without even the knowledge of any courts.
The UK doesn't to my knowledge have a history of handing over people without proper extradition proceedings, some that have dragged out in the court system for years.
The point was that no extradition request was made, or reviewed by any court, and that the renditions were done in flagrant violation of international law, and directly led to the torture of at least two political asylum seekers.
Not only that, but the rendition flights with complicity of Swedish staff continued for years after they were initially uncovered and condemned and the government promised they would end.
Not that I'm condoning his behaviour, but unless I'm missing a piece of the puzzle that I'm not understanding: Last I checked, anywhere outside of Sweden, having sex with a partner who appeared to be willing (until after the fact) is not rape. If that's the case, how do people not get charged with rape all the time?
Girl gets drunk, wakes up the morning after, looks over and would rather chew her own arm off than wake him up before escaping...
This kind of scenario has played out in countless movies and every university dorm since the beginning of time. Usually it's the guy who gets drunk and tries to escape, but the plot is the same.
So he woke her up with sex... something many millions of partners the world over have done countless times... and enjoyed. She appeared willing, consensual, into it - at least that's how it allegedly looked at the time, and then she cries foul after the fact...
Sounds an awful lot like she had sex with this guy, then she was jealous about him having sex with another girl, they both found out he was double dipping (as it were), were pissed that they weren't the center of his attention and thus decided to have him slapped with a rape charge.
Of course, that's just what one can glean from the various hyperbolic media reports. I'm quite sure it's more nuanced than that. But even with the hyperbole, that doesn't sound like rape, that sounds like a revenge tactic for jealousy. The fact that this could also play favour for a U.S. rendition really just compounds how suspicious this whole situation sounds.
If you were in the shoes of Assange, with 2 girls throwing themselves at you for sex (which is how it comes across in the media) and then in the midst of you leaking the largest trove of politically embarrassing documents that have ever been leaked, having them come forward with allegations of rape, in a country that until you start digging you had no idea they have a history of conspiracy to perform illegal rendition to the U.S...
It seems to me that the worst thing that happened here was poor judgment. If you have sex with two people at the same time and get busted, it's not unusual for them both to be pissed that they're not the only one... and I hate to say it, but people in that situation tend to do irrational things such as you might hear about in songs written by Carrie Underwood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaSy8yy-mr8 or worse... abuse the legal system for revenge.
Am I mistaken in recalling that this information was added to the story after the fact? Like it was an afterthought thrown in to try and give weight to an accusation that wasn't going to stick in the first instance?
I will admit that without going back and digging through the all original news stories again that my memory could be misleading me here... but I recall at the time that everything about this charge seemed sketchy to the point of suspicious.
Putting aside the details of Assange's case for a moment:
> Not that I'm condoning his behaviour, but unless I'm missing a piece of the puzzle that I'm not understanding: Last I checked, anywhere outside of Sweden, having sex with a partner who appeared to be willing (until after the fact) is not rape. If that's the case, how do people not get charged with rape all the time?
That's actually not true at all - there are a number of situations in which a person can be legally incapable of consent. In various jurisdictions this can include someone who is too intoxicated, someone who is under the age of consent, someone who is a ward of the state (e.g. prisoners are legally unable to consent to sex), someone who is emotionally pressured or coerced, etc.
Rape convictions are very hard to secure for a number of reasons (the biggest one being that most victims don't pursue charges[0]), but that shouldn't confuse what is and isn't rape under the law.
> This kind of scenario has played out in countless movies and every university dorm since the beginning of time. Usually it's the guy who gets drunk and tries to escape, but the plot is the same.
Yes, and this is what is often referred to with the statement "rape culture" (which is often misunderstood and dismissed). There are a lot of things that are commonplace in movies that would be considered sexual assault in real life.
[0] Even if you were 100% sure that you could get a conviction, it's an incredibly exhausting, taxing and humiliating process for the victim, so most ultimately choose not to risk their mental health in the process.
What I'm saying is that this is applying a "rape culture" label to something that I'm not really sure should be considered rape culture. I can point you in the direction of countless men and women that have had drunk sex and enjoyed it and gone back for more... many of whom proclaim the joys of morning sex and being woken up that way.
How do you differentiate that from someone who is only having sex with you because they're drunk and waking up the next morning and regretting it? They're surely equally as likely to wake up the next morning, think they've scored and go back for second helpings...
There is a morally fine line for sure... but I think "legally incapacitated" is reaching. She wasn't drugged to the point that she wasn't able to make decisions. Arguably she was drugged (by her own alcohol consumption) enough to make shitty decisions (perhaps). Lord knows we've all done that to ourselves at some point or another. But being drunk and making shitty decisions comes in the realm of don't drink and drive. It's not illegal for someone to get in the car with you while you're drunk at the wheel. Stupid, for sure, but if they get behind the wheel drunk and you get in the passenger seat equally drunk and they get in an accident and kill someone, are you an accessory to that crime? If they kill themselves because you let them get behind the wheel is that your fault? They made the shitty decision, you let them. Sure you'll probably feel terrible for letting that happen, their family might blame you for not keeping them out of trouble, but legally...? At what point does being drunk excuse you? How much alcohol do you have to consume? Did she initiate? Did he? Was he that drunk too? Does that matter? Can any of it be proven either way?
In a court of law, being drunk doesn't legally excuse you from the ability to make decisions... which is why when you drink and drive, they're still legally able to charge you with "Causing death by careless driving when under the influence of drink." (in the UK) and "Driving While Intoxicated" or "Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol" in North America. If you are legally culpable for decisions contributing to a crime when under the influence of alcohol, then you cannot claim that someone is legally incapacitated from making decisions regarding sex when they consent to do so. You can have it one way or the other, but not both. If they're legally incapacitated from making decisions about their sex life, then surely they're legally incapacitated from making the decision to drink and drive, and thus are not legally responsible. Where does legal culpability draw the line?
> Arguably she was drugged (by her own alcohol consumption) enough to make shitty decisions ... being drunk and making shitty decisions comes in the realm of don't drink and drive...
This comparison is wrong to the point of being offensive. It's classic victim blaming. You're drunk, get raped? Your fault! "Being raped" and "driving a dangerous piece of equipment" seem very obviously different in terms of who is the victim and who the perpetrator.
That's not at all what I'm saying. You're twisting my words to fit your own agenda...
What I'm saying is they were drunk and horny and wanted sex - both parties, consensual (from the way the media portrayed it.) Not rape. It wasn't until after the fact that she backtracked and changed her mind and decided that she retroactively didn't want sex after all and cried rape.
That's like me going back to a partner and saying, yeah, I know we had sex last night, but I'm regretting it now because I heard you had sex with my room mate, so I'm going to report you for rape. Which is exactly how it was portrayed.
Making a shitty decision to have sex with someone while under the influence of alcohol is entirely different than getting shit-face drunk (or drugged) and getting raped. These are two entirely different scenarios. The first is what I'm getting at - bad decision to have (consensual) sex, regretting it after the fact; the second is what you're getting at - getting too drunk to be in charge of your own destiny and unable to fend yourself off from someone you don't want sex with - this is rape and is inexcusable. In the scenario you're presenting, I'm entirely in agreement with you, but that's not the scenario as I perceived it, nor as I presented it. As the media presented it, I didn't see any real victim. I saw someone that played the victim card only as a result of coercion. The way her testimony was portrayed, I'm not even convinced that she felt she was a victim, she was a willing participant and only seemed to be going along with the rape allegation as part of some outside coercion or pressure. I genuinely read it like she had some affection for him and that she was sexually into him.
My point regarding the getting drunk and driving a dangerous piece of equipment is about legal culpability with regards to the ability to make decisions while under the influence of alcohol - not victim blaming. It's not about the indirect consequences of her decisions. It's about making a decision to participate in sex while under the influence of alcohol. In the legal sense this is no different than making a decision to drive a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. If you're legally considered to have the mental capacity to make decisions in one scenario, you're legally considered to have the mental capacity to make decisions in the other.
If someone decides to have sex with someone while under the influence of alcohol, they can't use the legal excuse they were drunk. In exactly the same way as you can't get into a car accident and claim legal immunity because you were were drunk. In other words, you cannot be deemed legally able to make a decision in one scenario but not the other because you're drunk.
If it was rape and indeed it was non-consensual on her part, then her being drunk is irrelevant, just as it would be irrelevant what she was wearing. Rape is rape. But this was not portrayed as rape.
You can only be extradited from one country to another if it's a crime in both countries. The UK High & Supreme Court looked at the charge(s), and concluded that if he did what was alledged in the UK, it would be a crime in the UK.
One of the 4 things he's wanted for is sex with someone who's asleep. That's rape in the UK. In fact "It's only a crime in the Sweden" would have been a perfect way to legally defeat the extradition request. His lawyers tried it. It didn't work.
That's a simplification that's so far stretched it doesn't make sense.
The UK has also extradited people under terrorist laws, just like the Swedish case you keep referring to. Sweden also has a history of protecting deserters from the US army, from the Vietnam era onwards.
But neither of this matters, because the whole theory doesn't make sense. If Assange was sent to Sweden for questioning, the very same international agreements that got him sent there would only allow him to be sent back to the UK, nowhere else.
The UK has a history of imprisoning people without trail, and suspending trail by jury within British courts in Northern Ireland. They don't need to hand them over to anywhere.
I dont get why people keep thinking the UK has a special relationship with the US anymore
“There’s nothing special about Britain,” the US state department official said. “You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment.”
Obama "We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people."
and equally... every other "friend" and "ally" are as strong as France. It's meaningless filler, it doesn't mean that the French are their strongest friends and allies... just that nobody is more of a friend and ally. It's like a hat tip to one of your friends, but nothing more. Even if you do take this statement literally, it's meaningless.
France and the U.S. also have a special relationship.
France was technically the first ally of the U.S. That alliance has been pretty stable, except under the following circumstances:
- France or the U.S. is having a civil war.
- France and Britain are at war.
- France is under foreign occupation.
That's not just diplomacy. France and the U.S. are very consistently on the same side of international issues, and when exceptions occur, it is usually when the U.S. has a conservative government while France has a liberal one, and there is little more than pro forma dissent, as one side or the other remains neutral rather than truly oppose.
If NATO did not exist, France would be one of the few non-Commonwealth nations for whom the U.S. would declare an actual, full-engagement war to defend, without even much argument from the voting public--unless it was the UK attacking it, obviously.
The full "special" list is probably Canada, UK, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel.
> I dont get why people keep thinking the UK has a special relationship with the US anymore
Probably because fucking Henry Kissinger insisted it exists (Diplomacy, chapters for post WWII). And he is a guy that knows something about US foreign policy.
Considering how much of the NSA's workload GCHQ do (as a legal loophole to spy on American citizens) the relationship is definitely unique. I mean it is one thing to have diplomatic relations with 190+ countries, it is another thing entirely to trust them with your country's secrets as the US does.
Along with the other of the Five Eyes (New Zealand, Australia, Canada) who are all in cahoots with one another... behind closed doors... or not since Snowden gave us all the red pill.
"I dont get why people keep thinking the UK has a special relationship with the US anymore"
I can't say I am a fan of the "special relationship" (I'm in the UK) - but worth noting that I don't think the US sells Trident missile technology to anyone else? UK warhead designs are probably US based as well although we do manufacture them ourselves.
My understanding is that the US was not particularly open with nuclear technology initially. The UK developed fission bombs and designed thermonuclear bombs more or less independently, demonstrating that they had done that to the Americans, and the Americans then became more open to cooperation.
The US even allowed the UK to test some of their bombs on American soil, in Nevada. (The UK also tested nuclear bombs in Australia. They don't have much wide-open desert of their own).
He went to the UK and for a substantial period of time was both aware there was a Swedish prosecutor wishing to interview him back in Sweden, and at liberty to do what he liked in the UK (including leave for another third party country with no extradition treaty arrangements with Sweden or the US) unless and until Sweden arranged for a European Arrest Warrant. If he truly feared the impending prosecution was driven by attempts to get him extradited to the US, he would have had ample warning and the opportunity to find a much better refuge from the legal systems of the US and her allies than the Ecuadorian embassy.
Edit: if you're inclined to disagree, please point out any factual inaccuracies or weaknesses in my reasoning rather than reflexively reaching for the down vote button. Assange entered the UK in late September 2010 and the arrest warrant became valid in the UK in December. That's a lot of time to book a flight elsewhere. The Ecuadorean embassy was a last-ditch move when his appeals failed.
Assange obviously stayed in the UK because he had excellent legal support, the linguistic ability to understand what was going on, the ability to continue his professional work, and access to a legal system that should not have granted extradition. How is this baffling?
More generally, the "weakness in [your] reasoning" is partly the arrogance to imagine that you understand Assange's legal options better than his lawyers did. But it is also partly the logical fallacy of ad hominem rhetoric, since you accuse him of hypocrisy and then use that accusation to try to discredit concerns of his that very clearly have nothing to do with questions of personal character.
As other commenters on this thread have mentioned, and as minimal research will confirm, Sweden has a long history of illegal rendition. Its handling of this case is extremely unorthodox, politically motivated, and shows a fairly clear attempt to maneuver Assange into indefinite detention through a legal process that even the UK High Court commented on as being unreasonable.
Because UK judges have a history of demonstrating some degree of independence, whereas Sweden has a history of the police illegally handing political asylum seekers to the CIA, knowing they'd be handed over to the very regimes they were fleeing in order to be tortured.
Not only did they do this (and Sweden was forced to pay restitution), but part of the Wikileaks documents revealed how Sweden objected after Swedish military intelligence years after these renditions had supposedly stopped, caught Swedish airport staff assisting CIA rendition flights.
While one might hope this has now finally stopped, Sweden is pretty high on the list of countries I would not like to be in if I was wanted by the US, given recent history.
Swedens official neutrality has been a joke in Scandinavia for decades. "Everyone" knows that there is a lot of close cooperation with the US behind the scenes.
They did obtain assurances from Egyptian authorities that the asylum seekers would not be tortured, but didn't do anything to ensure this could be enforced, and of course they ended up getting tortured. (EDIT: But even if one were to believe that Swedish authorities actually believed those assurances, a parliamentary investigator also determined that the treatment in Sweden violated Swedish law - they were arrested and violated and handed over without any required legal procedures, and even if they had been legally extradited, the treatment itself still would be illegal - see below)
Here's an article about Swedish military intelligence interfering after the CIA continued the rendition flights via Sweden for years after they had supposedly stopped:
This article also has more details about the Egyptian incident, including:
> Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, two Egyptians who had been seeking asylum in Sweden, were arrested by Swedish police in December 2001. They were taken to Bromma airport in Stockholm, had their clothes cut from their bodies, suppositories inserted in their anuses and in diapers, overall, handcuffs and chains put on an executive jet with American registration N379P with a crew of masked men.
> They were flown to Egypt, where they were imprisoned, beaten, and tortured according to reports by Swedish investigative pogramme "Kalla fakta". The Swedish ambassador visited them only six weeks later.
We can hope that was the end of it, given that Swedish military intelligence did act, but the fact of the matter is someone high up authorised it initially, given that it required the cooperation of police, security services and the CIA, and to this date it is not clear who did. Either someone did it under the nose of top levels of government, or the very same people who claimed to have put a stop to it authorised it in the first place.
What we do know is that there's been no proper investigation apart from a finding by a parliamentary investigator that the rendition flights were in violation of Swedish law. In other words there are no guarantees that the arrangement haven't simply been changed.
The UK has treated it's own political prisoners horribly. Ever watch the film Hunger? Sweden might be shite (I don't know much about it), but the UK is no angel.
Admittedly the article states that to date (in 2006) Sweden hadn't actually coughed up yet, however the ruling had been made against them by the UN, which at least answers the spirit of your question.
"The Swedish government must now comply with the Human Rights Committee’s decision in the al-Zari case. The committee has indicated that monetary compensation for the petitioner is one appropriate remedy."
It has been said a million times, but if Assange was extradited to Sweden, in that case in order for him to be extradited to the US they would need approval of Sweden AND of the UK per the extradition treaties
Extraditing Assange to Sweden makes it harder for him to end up on the US.
You missed the part were Sweden has illegally handed people over to the US before, perhaps.
They've shown a willingness to blatantly violate both Swedish and international law to satisfy US requests in the past. Why should Assange trust they won't do the same in his case?
Why trust the UK? They helped the US invade Iraq. You think the UK will stand up for "terrorists"? They removed trail by jury to tackle some of their own terrorists
If you got a international arrest warrant sent after you for something which every lawyer you talk to (and lawyers media talk to) describe as a "he said, she said situation that has zero chance to ever reach a court", and this days after you made international news, what would your theory be?
My conclusion would be that the Swedish investigators are trying to gain some diplomatic points. A "US extradition" might or might not be on that road map, but equally likely (or unlikely) is justice. When a suspected witch hunt is launched, you don't stay and see what kind of punishment the mob is going to do. You think of the worst possible thing they might do, and then hide.
Or you use the U.S. tactics of smearing the accusors and prosecutors with ad hominem attacks to the point that there's no way a fair trial can be achieved... unfortunately, the U.S. has far greater experience in this arena than Assange does so is it any wonder he's in hiding, there's no way he'll ever beat them at their own game.
The last man that tried to take a one man stand against the U.S. was shot in his bedroom, the one before that was found in a rat hole...
If Assange wasn't holed up somewhere as politically sensitive as a foreign Embassy on foreign soil, he'd have either ended up in the same boat or would have "disappeared" to a U.S. black site somewhere never to be heard from again until it was politically advantageous for the U.S. to "find" him.
But the point stands, which is all the discussion of "why he picked the UK" as a place to avoid extradition seems to be missing the point. If he were comfortable with the government of the UK he'd be relaxing in a pub or reading in the park rather than holed up inside an embassy somewhat out of the reach of UK law for two years.
This page [0] says otherwise (about embassies in general, not specifically the Ecuadorean embassy in London):
> U.S. embassies and consulates abroad, as well as foreign embassies and consulates in the United States, have a special status. While diplomatic spaces remain the territory of the host state, an embassy or consulate represents a sovereign state.
The UK has a more mature legal system, more public support for Assange and, because of its size, is less subject to influence, particularly economic influence.
We also have evidence that the UK courts resist US extradition requests via the McKinnon proceedings.
Finally, the US obviously wants to prosecute Assange and the publicly acknowledge existence of a grand jury investigation proves it.
So of course, it's actually just a bunch of emails where, in context, it's some people speculating in the exact same way, with the exact same information, as people here on HN (i.e. none).
So not actually at all like what the original poster implied.
OR it could be GCHQ employees with relevant inside information and full familiarity of their own organization's modus operandi, making an informed judgment.
Then again, maybe they're just tin foil crazed conspiracy theorists who just happen to be, err, employed by GCHQ.
If one of the goals was to hinder Julian Assange greatly, then that would explain it.
I'm not saying that Mr Assange is definitely blameless, I wouldn't know. But it does seem that if you go up against the very powerful, any shortcomings will be ruthlessly exploited.
According to SPON it's because
under Swedish law, the criminal investigation into Assange will lapse in August 2015.
Die schwedische Staatsanwaltschaft änderte nun ihre
Meinung, weil einige der Vorwürfe gegen Assange im August
verjähren.[1]
My own translation:
The Swedish prosecutor recently changed his mind because
some of the allegations against Assange will lapse in
August.
Sorry, I couldn't find a source in English.
Google has snipped [2] for a Wired article [3] that says
"in Sweden means that the charges would expire in August 2015.", but the article is gone.
I took German long enough ago to trust Google better than my own memory... it was a minor nit before, now it's even minor-er.
Anyway, if it's Die Staatsanwaltschaft which the possessive applies to, that's a feminine noun anyway (in German nouns have either masculine, feminine, or neuter gender), so I think that ihre is used either because the noun is feminine or because the person being talked about is female. IANA grammatician.
But I wrote "the prosecutor" and not "the prosecution".
Shouldn't it be really "her" then, if the prosecutor is a woman, like in this case? Now I'm confused?
The gender of the person might not change the gender of the noun that refers to it (I'd suppose the noun's gender is actually fixed.) But, possessive pronouns might not care about the gender of the noun in cases where a person is the referent and the person's gender is known. It seems (intuitively, and as a grammarian you should be innately used to discarding your intuition since it's often going to be irrelevant) if the gender of the person is known, it should take the correct gender of personal pronouns. But it might be more important that the word for prosecutor in the sentence actually has an (innate) feminine gender?
That's why you should be confused, same as I am.
If I had to guess, prosecutor is a noun that is either masculine or feminine depending on the gender of the referent, but if I had to second-guess, I'd say that's in fact probably wrong and nouns always have concrete genders of their own. Hopefully someone knows and comes along to tell us both, I'm curious now.
I agree with the interpretation that it's "its mind", referring back to the grammatically feminine "Staatsanwaltschaft". The individual prosecutor in this case would be referred to as a Staatsanwältin, and one of her male counterparts would be a Staatsanwalt. leo.org defines Staatsanwaltschaft only as: public prosecutor's office, department of public prosecution, office of the district attorney (etc.), making it clear that it refers to a government agency or competency rather than an individual person.
Edit: German Wikipedia agrees:
Ein Staatsanwalt (Kürzel StA, weibliche Form: Staatsanwältin), in manchen Staaten auch Procurator, Procureur bzw. Prosecutor genannt, ist bei Gericht oberster Vertreter der Anklage.
Die Staatsanwaltschaft (StA) in Deutschland ist eine weisungsgebundene Behörde, die für die Strafverfolgung und -vollstreckung zuständig ist und als solche ein Teil der Rechtspflege ist.
I also had a brainfart and incorrectly assumed that the gender of the noun in German has anything to do at all with the English translation. I guess it wouldn't matter, all that matters is does the pronoun refer to a person personally, or "the prosecution" which is a non-human neutral entity in English.
Whether it translates "her" or "its" depends entirely on what the rest of the sentence means in English, the fact that nouns in German are gendered and this one is innately feminine does not even enter into the equation.
According to the press release(http://www.aklagare.se/Media/Nyheter/Aklagaren-begar-att-fa-...), the reasons to do it now is because the statue of limitation will run out in august, and that the court document from last time criticized the investigator for failing their responsibility in progressing with the case.
This decision serves thus two purposes. It abides the decision of the court which makes the prosecutor look good, and it serves the case.
What is more remarkable is that it's taken this long and cost so much money to get here. Assange's lawyers and the Ecuadorians have been asking for this for years.
If you have your law enforcement just wander into embassies after common criminal suspects, it creates a precedent for other countries to do the same for your embassies. And it's not hard to accuse someone of a common crime, true or otherwise.
"My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorean embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview, and that he would need to be present in Sweden in any case should there be a trial in the future," lead prosecutor Marianne Ny said in a statement.
"Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies in the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward."
There are a few different things he is accused of doing so Im not 100% what you are referring to with "it".
He is accused of initiating sex with a woman later an evening after consensual sex had finished and she became "half-asleep". The legal questions to be answered is: was she half-asleep, ie, does he contest that statement and if so, what conclusion can be reached by a court.
Furthermore, there is an accusations that consensual sex was agreed under a condition, and that Assange broke that verbal agreement by ejaculating inside her. Its a rather odd situation for a sexual molestation case, but I guess that the court would first have to establish if both parties had reached the same understanding, and if the above mentioned act then broke it.
On either of the two cases, my best guess is that we will never know.
Where are you getting "half-asleep" from? From gillianseed's translation of the actual case file "They went to sleep and she awoke with the sensation of him entering her." (see his comment in reply to yours).
In many jurisdiction initiating sex with an unconscious person is consider the same as non-consensual sex (one can't consent if one is unconscious). Some jurisdictions, like England and Wales, explicitly include sleep in the legislation around consent (i.e. a sleeping person cannot consent to sex, a reasonable person could not believe sex was consensual when the other party is asleep).
This is much more serious than "half-asleep" makes it appear.
The confusion seems to stem from a text message she wrote afterward, in which she called it half-asleep. The police document however wrote that she was asleep. Which should be seen as more accurate depend I guess.
> Sofia also said that, when she was half asleep on her side, she had been aroused from slumber to feel that Assange was inside her.
Which is quite different from a plain "half asleep", especially with the rest of the sentence: "aroused from slumber to feel that Assange was inside her".
Even in its best light, assuming "half asleep", this begs the question of whether someone in that state can consent to sex (under the Swedish legislation), and/or whether a reasonable person could believe that there was consent.
I'd say no... but I will grant that this sort of question is why judges and juries are necessary.
It indeed begs the question and the concept of "helpless state" in which the law talks about. I am not sure that there exist any precedence, as I think the law that this would normally trigger has so far only address situations when a person is in a helpless state because of drugs or mental status.
Anyway, here's my translation of the accusation (to the best of my ability):
Sexual Assault
They were sitting in bed talking and he took off her clothes. They had sex again and she realised that he had only put the condom over the tip of his penis, but she let it pass.
They went to sleep and she awoke with the sensation of him entering her. She immediately asked 'Are you wearing anything?' and he replied 'You'.
She told him 'You better not have HIV' and he replied 'Of course not'. She felt it was too late, he was already in her so she let him continue, she was too tired to tell him once more, she had been nagging him about using a condom all night.
She never had unprotected sex before. He said he wanted to come inside her, he did not say when he would but he did. A lot leaked out of her afterwards.
She told him 'What if I get pregnant?'. He answered that Sweden is a good place to have kids. She jokingly told him that if she became pregnant he would have to pay her student loans.
On the train to Enköping he had told her that he had slept in Anna Ardins bed after a party. She asked if he had sex with Anna but he said Anna liked girls, that she was a lesbian.
Now she knows that he did the same thing with Anna. She asked him about how many he has had sex with, he responded that he didn't keep count. He said that he had HIV tested himself 3 months earlier and that he had sex with a woman after that and that she was tested and not positive.
She said sarcastic things to him in a joking tone, she believes that she was trying to de-dramatize what had happened, he in turn did not seem to care. When he was told the size of her student loans he said that if he was to pay her loans then she would have to give birth to a baby.
They joked that the child would be named Afghanistan. He also said that he ought to keep abortion-pills with him that would in reality be sugar-pills.
His phone rang and he had a meeting with Aftonbladet (swedish newspaper) on tuesday at 12. She explained that he would not make it to that meeting, so he pushed his whole schedule ahead by one hour.
After that he rode a bicycle with her on the back down to the train station. She paid his ticket to Stockholm. Before they separated he told her to keep her phone on. She asked if he was going to call and he said he would.
She took the bike home, showered and changed sheets. Since she didn't make it in time for work she called in sick and stayed home. She wanted to clean up and wash everything. There was semen on the sheets and she thought it was disgusting. She also went by the drugstore and bought 'dagenefterpiller' (abortion pills).
After she had discussed with her friends she realized that she had been the victim of a crime. She went to Danderyd hospital and from there to Södersjukhuset (another hospital). There she was examined and also tested using a so called 'rape-kit'.
If leaked info on flashback.org about the victims is to be trusted, then it seems unlikely that he did it. Much there pointed towards false accusations for personal revenge. But it has been a long time since I read it and everything on Flashback should be taken with more than a grain of salt.
Interesting that under Swedish law, the statute of limitations keeps ticking even while the suspect is a fugitive. That's not the way it works in the US:
"If the criminal is a fugitive, out of the state in which the crime was committed or otherwise living in hiding, this tolls, or suspends, the statute. (Once the criminal reenters the state the statute resumes running.)"
"My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorean embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview," Marianne Ny said in a statement.
Can anyone explain to me why they couldn't simply question him over a teleconferencing connection? Are they seriously claiming that this has gone on as long as it has simply because they couldn't figure out a way to talk to him?
He's been kept in limbo at the direction of the US government. You don't mess with the bull and not get the horns. If you keep in mind that this is a man exposing some of the deepest darkest secrets of the most powerful governments in the world...is there nothing they would do to silence him? Rape seems like a good charge as any.
I believe before he was living in the Ecuadorian embassy, he offered to cooperate with the investigation in the UK. Swede could have sent investigators to interview him in person. The UK police would have assisted. They could have gone further with their investigation, without extradition.
The worst part of this is Australia's role. Where are they in protecting their citizen? Can you imagine an American journalist (wikileaks is journalism) pissing off the German Government, then being subjected to these insane attempts at extradition without the US stepping in?
Australia need to arrange safe passage for Assange to Australia and guarantee him his legal rights.
Australia fails to do anything when their citizens are killed for a bit of cannabis, about as blatantly disproportionate as a government could possibly get. They're in a perfect position to economically encourage Indonesia to be reasonable, and they would have the backing of a fair bit of the western world. And yet they don't do anything.
Why would you think they would do anything when it's less politically expedient?
It's interesting you mentioned that. I'm backpacking around Europe right now (doing the whole digital nomad thing) and every Australian I've met has had zero sympathy for those guys who got caught in Indonesia. Could it be that the political pressure simply isn't there? It's also entirely possible that widespread opinion is much more diverse than the sunset of the population I've met while in Europe.
I would say the opposite based on all the people of I have spoken to about it in Sydney over the last month or so.
Noone is saying they shouldn't be punished for their crime, but all indications are that the two Australians currently on death row in Indonesia have been genuinely reformed during their decade in prison.
One is now a pastor, and the other has completed a fine arts degree. And many of their fellow prisoners speak highly of them. Some Indonesian prisoners have even offered to be killed in their place.
I think the outrage about their imminient executions is due to the fact that Indonesia is about to execute two men who have shown they can both be valuable members of society.
The Australian government is now offering to pay the costs of keeping them in prison for life, but I doubt that will have any sway with the Indonesian government.
> Australia fails to do anything when their citizens are killed for a bit of cannabis
When has this happened?
I know Schapelle Corby served 9 years for cannabis trafficking, and I know there are two Australian men facing execution for heroin trafficking. Have Australians been executed for cannabis trafficking?
Because it is during this interview that the prosecutor makes it official what you are or are not accused of. If this was made over telephone to a foreign country, odds are that what is now a suspect would not come to the questioning. That's why you are required to be present in person.
A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?
The anwer to that is probably that the justice system can be inflexible and slow moving at times. (I hesitate to take stronger words in my mouth, but those may be true as well.)
Ludicrous or not, all justice systems have their reasons why they work in a certain way.
> A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?
He was interviewed during this period, and the transcript of the police interview was leaked onto the internet: http://pastebin.com/HAc6HjVn
After the interview the allegations were dropped, but then the prosecutor reopened them. And he didn't stay there just for a week after that. He stayed there over a month, and only left after having been given permission to leave by the prosecutor.
For those without showdead, lepidoptera[noobtor] wrote:
> A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?
He was interviewed during this period, and the transcript of the police interview was leaked onto the internet: http://pastebin.com/HAc6HjVn
After the interview the allegations were dropped, but then the prosecutor reopened them. And he didn't stay there just for a week after that. He stayed there over a month, and only left after having been given permission to leave by the prosecutor.
> A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?
Different prosecutor, one less high up in the system there.
The original prosecutor made the right decision. The chance of a conviction is zero. No sane jury in a civilised country will find a man guilty of raping a woman who made him breakfast and went out with him the next day, tweeted about the incident positively and generally acted as happy as can be until she decided ... much later ... that actually she had been raped. (then she started trying to delete the evidence that she was lying). The case just has no merit at all, which is why Assange thinks it's a set up - the new prosecutor is either a tool of the USA or some kind of bizarre ultra feminist who thinks women never ever lie about rape. Whatever the cause, Assange doesn't want to go there for obvious reasons.
It's pretty clear, given the resources being put into serving this warrant, that Sweden is going to charge him with at least some of these crimes regardless of what he says (or doesn't say) during the interview. That's probably why they are conceding here. After all, even if he were successfully arrested and brought to Sweden, he could refuse to answer any questions during the interview.
Once charges are filed, Ecuador will have to face the question of whether or not they want to be viewed by the world as shielding an accused rapist from justice. I'm just guessing here, but I see no scenario in which he doesn't eventually wind up in Sweden to face these charges (and if he did it, then he should IMO).
The purpose of the European Arrest Warrant is to "arrest and transfer" a suspect for criminal prosecution. It shouldn't be issued just for "an investigation".
So yes unless the Swedish prosecutor wants to open herself up to charges of abuse of power then at this point she will have to prosecute Assange.
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189 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 284 ms ] threadOr maybe his lawyer should drop the offer and just let the statute run out now, since the prosecutor couldn't be bothered when it wasn't to her advantage.
Edit: wukerplank is right, he wasn't charged, but (a kind of) rape is one of the crimes he allegedly committed and is wanted for questioning for (according to Wikipedia[1], it's "one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation, and one count of lesser-degree rape"), and this article and the Wikipedia[2] suggest that the statute of limitations for rape is 10 years.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Swedish_legal_po...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_A...
But all the courts involved in the matter, in Sweden and abroad, have come to the conclusion, that the procedural state Assange is in, is equivalent to the English word "charged".
The confusion is caused by Swedish laws having specific crimes and categories of crimes, in which "rape" is both a specific crime and a category.
I thought those on the run were "wanted for questioning concerning allegations of ..." and then when arrested they would be "charged under $statute for $crime" and read their rights, etc.?
In Assange's case, he didn't escape after being charged did he so ...? Can someone clear this up for me, thanks.
See for example: https://www.gov.uk/charged-crime/overview which doesn't quite answer this specific question. But https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights says [roughly] after arrest you will be "charged with a crime" or released.
>the procedural state Assange is in, is equivalent to the English word "charged". //
I thought they meant the English word being used in legal terms - so that's where the application of English law comes in to the equation. Hence I was asking if in England & Wales if the term "charged" could be actually applied to Assange's situation if the investigation and proceedings thus far had happened in England & Wales.
Sweden can formally indict Assange anytime. The problem is that doing this would require the prosecutor to move her case beyond the "preliminary investigation" stage, at which point she would have to file actual evidence of the crime with the court and release it to Assange (who could publish it and show the prosecution for the farce that it quite obviously is). Indicting Assange would also make it impossible for the Swedish authorities to detain him indefinitely without trial (something otherwise possible in Sweden in the case of "preliminary investigations"). And the indictment would also make it possible for Assange to challenge his extradition on the basis of actual charges instead of vague and unsubstantiated allegations.
The Swedish prosecution was obviously interested in having their warrant evaluated on the much narrower question of whether it was technically valid.
The terminology dance you are referring to played out because while Sweden wanted to extradite Assange without coughing up any evidence supporting their case, it is not legal to extradite a subject for mere questioning. So for the arrest warrant to be technically valid, the Swedish prosecutor had to insist that while Assange was technically wanted only for questioning and no decision had been made to indict him, the prosecution was in an "advanced" state and he was virtually guaranteed to be charged. Anyone can see sections 142 and 144 (ii) from the High Court Ruling to watch the dance in action:
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html
The procedure is different enough that there are meaningful substantive differences even though that may be the closest equivalent in American terms (it seems, though, that its really not, and the state he is in is more like someone who is both an uncharged suspect and subject to arrest as a material witness.)
Would the statute of limitations be tolled for the duration of Assange's stay at the embassy?
IANAL, but that sounds unreasonable: his presence isn't required in order for him to be charged. The statute limits the time in which he can be charged (regardless of his geographic location).
I know for certain under Roman-Dutch law, one can be charged (tried, and sentenced) in absentia. I suspect other justice systems have similar allowances
Now what Ecuador will reply is another matter...
Edit: Timeline of case. http://www.thelocal.se/20141028/timeline-julian-assange
The bail has been forfeited. And if the prime cause for the arrest warrant is gone, he would (and should) walk free.
At least I think so.
I'd expect him either to be found to have been under effective house arrest for the period, and let go with a slap on the wrist, or be made an example of for running away to somewhere where the police could not enter, and sentenced to at least six months in prison (there's a maximum sentence of twelve).
So, if there's a suspected rapist (someone accused of rape for example) who has been on the run for years then you wouldn't bother to take them to court as you'd consider their sentence to be served out whilst on the run?
Would you apply this to all crimes? How do you determine the length of "sentence" without having a court case? Or is it just "well, he says it wasn't a bad rape and he's been hiding out for a few months let's call it even"??
The 'statute of limitations' for a crime needs to be much longer than the crime's potential maximum sentence.
Paying a high cost now is necessary to avoid the well connected from being able to bypass the justice system in the future. It's not just about this one case; that can be seen as a flaw in precedence based systems.
So if someone leaves Sweden for (more than?) the length of their sentence, that is comparable to carrying out their sentence?
- 25 years, if max is life
- 15 years, if max is more than 8 years
- 10 years, if max is 2-8 years
- 5 years, if max is 1-2 years
- 2 years, if max is 1 year
- for sexual crimes against children the limit is counted from the victim's 18th birthday.
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preskription
No, they need to be set based on how far back the evidence can hold and how well someone can make a reasonable defense. Especially in cases that have begun leaning towards guilty until proven innocent.
All criminal cases in non-corrupt courts in the West have a presumption of innocence.
Why? The point is to ensure that the defendant can receive a fair trial. With video and DNA evidence, shouldn't there be a longer limit than if there is only a single witness testimony?
For example if a rape victim doesn't get a rape-kit done does that mean that after a few months you declare the rapist to have served their time whilst at-large [obviously at that point you haven't determined legally if there was a rape] if a rape-kit is done then you give them 25 years when they could be held accountable before a court? The evidence doesn't have a bearing on the purpose of holding the criminal accountable.
It's always possible that a new technique could arrive to gather evidence or a new source of evidence - a hidden personal diary, say - turns up.
No, you declare that without any concrete evidence, there is no way to have a fair trial, and thus it is a waste to pursue the case. If some new form of evidence comes up, it gets written into law about its statute of limitations, and if the cold case is now within the statute of limitations, the new form of evidence can be used (but there cannot be any witness testimony or other evidence that is considered past the statute of limitations).
As it currently stands, we place far too much weight on eyewitness testimony years after the fact that results in innocent people going to prison.
Assange is obviously not trying to evade justice, or "on the run". He reported to the Swedish authorities when he was first accused and wanted for questioning and then only left Sweden after they allowed him to. When he was in house arrest in the UK, he was reporting to the police every week and was being totally cooperative with the authorities. He has also repeatedly suggested that the questioning be done over Skype or by having the prosecutor visit him in the UK, which is standard practice for crimes of similar graveness in Sweden. Only after he was supposed to be extradited did he become a "fugitive" and hid in the embassy.
Furthermore, the women that could be the victims don't even want him to be persecuted, although the situation here is not clear-cut, as they could just say that to escape some retributive online justice, and since rape and similar crimes are considered crimes against the state and are persecuted by the state regardless of whether the victim wants that or not.
In a generalized rape or another similar crime, you would probably have a crime that is more obvious and has more proof, a victim that wants justice, and a criminal that is actively avoiding justice from the very beginning. You have none of that here.
Also, I don't know if that applies to all crimes or just to rape, but I find it rather funny that he cannot by persecuted "in absentia".
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article17836961.ab
It seems that in that case, the prosecutor initially dismissed the case as a drunken brawl on a ferry to Finland, and did not want to bother. Then there was some publicity and it was evident that it was a case of actual bodily harm.
In a manner somewhat similar to Assange, the Irish musician evaded court sessions in Sweden by going to Portugal, but unlike Assange, did not seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in Lisbon, and was returned to Sweden to stand trial.
First, we need limits against abuse of the law and legal system. I imagine Assange's representatives will be arguing that this is what is going on here. Being free of all proportionality restrictions allows bodies and individuals within the legal system the ability to pursue other agendas (say, strategic or diplomatic relations with the US) by abusing the legal system. If you put enough resources into investigation you can probably put anyone in jail. At the very least, you can disrupt their life dramatically with lengthy processes.
Second, there's the practical issue of resources. Indictments are abandoned regularly because court systems are backlogged, expensive and limited in resources. Prosecuting 100 minor indictments per year needs to be weighed against timely prosecution of more serious crimes. This is triage, prioritizing resources (court days) in the face of limited resources.
This is a strange case. Assange is accused of "non-consensual behaviour within consensual sexual encounters." This crime/law unique to Sweden. Very few people have been prosecuted under for it. Swedish authorities did not treat the case very seriously when they first investigated it and didn't make much effort to keep him in the country, apparently happy to let him leave the country.
That aside, resources are always limited. Say you have a serious sexual harassment case. It takes place in a University. Prosecuting it require, extradition and millions in resources. Is the public better served by prosecuting the crime or staffing an entire police unit dealing specifically with sexual harassment cases in Universities? The costs are comparable, and the latter will result in tens or hundreds of convictions, far more deterrence and far more justice. I think it's entirely appropriate to refer to proportionality in cases like this.
For certain crimes like large scale racketeering, corruption, murder, rape, and others proportionality is irrelevant. There are few limits that make sense for prosecuting a serial killer or a corrupt government minister.
The Al Capone case is ultimately a failure in rule of law, of sorts. If he was indeed the gangster that Al Capone the pop character was, the police failed to catch and prosecute him for those crimes. In light of that failure, they basically abused laws (and maximum sentences) to convict him for a different crime.
We are open to that sort of abuse so long as prosecutors and police have big discretionary powers. If the average jail term for crime X is 1 year on parole, but the maximum sentence is 10 years in prison and the prosecutor plays a big role in determining which one it will be… that's open to abuse. If a prosecutor really wants you but can't prove your guilt, she can get you for something small and push for an oversized sentence. This basically bypasses the rule of law.
In any case, I don't think the Al Capone investigation would have violated the proportionality principle. He was being investigated (I assume) for murder, racketeering and the like. That merits a big investigation. It failed, but it wasn't disproportionate. The only thing that was disproportionate was the sentence relative to the (proven) crime. Maybe the scale of the prosecution itself too. Police were investigating a major criminal. That investigation should be (and will be) well resourced.
http://jackofkent.com/2012/06/assange-would-the-rape-allegat...
In other words, they had no problems carrying out interrogations outside of Sweden at the time. Just not of Assange.
If the Swedish legal system had been "a bit legalistic" and not wanted to make exceptions, a lot of what happened in the Assange case could not have happened. E.g. illegal leaks of lots of information to the press, irregular interview procedures, and this curious stubbornness about interviewing him abroad when Swedish police does not seem to have a problem with that in other cases.
Some people - even those not especially rigid and legalistic in their thinking, which individual prosecutors are perfectly entitled and possibly even encouraged to be - might reasonably think not. Even now they've opted to back down and talk on Assange's terms, I think it's staggeringly unlikely he's going to walk out of the embassy wearing handcuffs if he is unable to satisfy them of his innocence, so I'm not sure it really advances the case further.
Sweden did not interrogate those suspects in order to "charge" them, but in an earlier state of the murder investigation.
In fact, Swedish courts have even convicted a dead man in absentia, after deciding (before knowing he was dead) the trial could go on in absentia:
http://www.thelocal.se/20100526/26862
A more rational perspective to the situation can be seen from the point of view of rape statistics. They are an indication of how seriously countries take accusations of sexual molestation. The rate of police-recorded rape offenses is
- US: 27.3
- UK: 28.8
- Sweden: 63.5
Are there really more than twice as many rapes per capita in Sweden than there are in UK or US? Of course not, if you use the same definition for rape. The issue is that Sweden records things differently. I'm quite convinced that if we're looking at what actually happens, Sweden has less rape then UK or US, but Sweden records them with a much lower threshold for what constitutes a "rape" so that the statistics looks different.
Sweden has a history of actively handing asylum seekers to the CIA for illegal rendition without even the knowledge of any courts.
The UK doesn't to my knowledge have a history of handing over people without proper extradition proceedings, some that have dragged out in the court system for years.
Not only that, but the rendition flights with complicity of Swedish staff continued for years after they were initially uncovered and condemned and the government promised they would end.
Girl gets drunk, wakes up the morning after, looks over and would rather chew her own arm off than wake him up before escaping...
This kind of scenario has played out in countless movies and every university dorm since the beginning of time. Usually it's the guy who gets drunk and tries to escape, but the plot is the same.
So he woke her up with sex... something many millions of partners the world over have done countless times... and enjoyed. She appeared willing, consensual, into it - at least that's how it allegedly looked at the time, and then she cries foul after the fact...
Sounds an awful lot like she had sex with this guy, then she was jealous about him having sex with another girl, they both found out he was double dipping (as it were), were pissed that they weren't the center of his attention and thus decided to have him slapped with a rape charge.
Of course, that's just what one can glean from the various hyperbolic media reports. I'm quite sure it's more nuanced than that. But even with the hyperbole, that doesn't sound like rape, that sounds like a revenge tactic for jealousy. The fact that this could also play favour for a U.S. rendition really just compounds how suspicious this whole situation sounds.
If you were in the shoes of Assange, with 2 girls throwing themselves at you for sex (which is how it comes across in the media) and then in the midst of you leaking the largest trove of politically embarrassing documents that have ever been leaked, having them come forward with allegations of rape, in a country that until you start digging you had no idea they have a history of conspiracy to perform illegal rendition to the U.S...
It seems to me that the worst thing that happened here was poor judgment. If you have sex with two people at the same time and get busted, it's not unusual for them both to be pissed that they're not the only one... and I hate to say it, but people in that situation tend to do irrational things such as you might hear about in songs written by Carrie Underwood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaSy8yy-mr8 or worse... abuse the legal system for revenge.
I will admit that without going back and digging through the all original news stories again that my memory could be misleading me here... but I recall at the time that everything about this charge seemed sketchy to the point of suspicious.
> Not that I'm condoning his behaviour, but unless I'm missing a piece of the puzzle that I'm not understanding: Last I checked, anywhere outside of Sweden, having sex with a partner who appeared to be willing (until after the fact) is not rape. If that's the case, how do people not get charged with rape all the time?
That's actually not true at all - there are a number of situations in which a person can be legally incapable of consent. In various jurisdictions this can include someone who is too intoxicated, someone who is under the age of consent, someone who is a ward of the state (e.g. prisoners are legally unable to consent to sex), someone who is emotionally pressured or coerced, etc.
Rape convictions are very hard to secure for a number of reasons (the biggest one being that most victims don't pursue charges[0]), but that shouldn't confuse what is and isn't rape under the law.
> This kind of scenario has played out in countless movies and every university dorm since the beginning of time. Usually it's the guy who gets drunk and tries to escape, but the plot is the same.
Yes, and this is what is often referred to with the statement "rape culture" (which is often misunderstood and dismissed). There are a lot of things that are commonplace in movies that would be considered sexual assault in real life.
[0] Even if you were 100% sure that you could get a conviction, it's an incredibly exhausting, taxing and humiliating process for the victim, so most ultimately choose not to risk their mental health in the process.
This comparison is wrong to the point of being offensive. It's classic victim blaming. You're drunk, get raped? Your fault! "Being raped" and "driving a dangerous piece of equipment" seem very obviously different in terms of who is the victim and who the perpetrator.
What I'm saying is they were drunk and horny and wanted sex - both parties, consensual (from the way the media portrayed it.) Not rape. It wasn't until after the fact that she backtracked and changed her mind and decided that she retroactively didn't want sex after all and cried rape.
That's like me going back to a partner and saying, yeah, I know we had sex last night, but I'm regretting it now because I heard you had sex with my room mate, so I'm going to report you for rape. Which is exactly how it was portrayed.
Making a shitty decision to have sex with someone while under the influence of alcohol is entirely different than getting shit-face drunk (or drugged) and getting raped. These are two entirely different scenarios. The first is what I'm getting at - bad decision to have (consensual) sex, regretting it after the fact; the second is what you're getting at - getting too drunk to be in charge of your own destiny and unable to fend yourself off from someone you don't want sex with - this is rape and is inexcusable. In the scenario you're presenting, I'm entirely in agreement with you, but that's not the scenario as I perceived it, nor as I presented it. As the media presented it, I didn't see any real victim. I saw someone that played the victim card only as a result of coercion. The way her testimony was portrayed, I'm not even convinced that she felt she was a victim, she was a willing participant and only seemed to be going along with the rape allegation as part of some outside coercion or pressure. I genuinely read it like she had some affection for him and that she was sexually into him.
My point regarding the getting drunk and driving a dangerous piece of equipment is about legal culpability with regards to the ability to make decisions while under the influence of alcohol - not victim blaming. It's not about the indirect consequences of her decisions. It's about making a decision to participate in sex while under the influence of alcohol. In the legal sense this is no different than making a decision to drive a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. If you're legally considered to have the mental capacity to make decisions in one scenario, you're legally considered to have the mental capacity to make decisions in the other.
If someone decides to have sex with someone while under the influence of alcohol, they can't use the legal excuse they were drunk. In exactly the same way as you can't get into a car accident and claim legal immunity because you were were drunk. In other words, you cannot be deemed legally able to make a decision in one scenario but not the other because you're drunk.
If it was rape and indeed it was non-consensual on her part, then her being drunk is irrelevant, just as it would be irrelevant what she was wearing. Rape is rape. But this was not portrayed as rape.
One of the 4 things he's wanted for is sex with someone who's asleep. That's rape in the UK. In fact "It's only a crime in the Sweden" would have been a perfect way to legally defeat the extradition request. His lawyers tried it. It didn't work.
Maybe he did, but neither you nor I know what actually happened. Unless you're Assange or one of the women.
The UK has also extradited people under terrorist laws, just like the Swedish case you keep referring to. Sweden also has a history of protecting deserters from the US army, from the Vietnam era onwards.
But neither of this matters, because the whole theory doesn't make sense. If Assange was sent to Sweden for questioning, the very same international agreements that got him sent there would only allow him to be sent back to the UK, nowhere else.
“There’s nothing special about Britain,” the US state department official said. “You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment.”
Obama "We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people."
England and the US nothing special anymore.
That is the kind of thing presidents say in speeches. It just means "I want to be polite to you". It's diplomacy, don't take it literally.
France was technically the first ally of the U.S. That alliance has been pretty stable, except under the following circumstances:
That's not just diplomacy. France and the U.S. are very consistently on the same side of international issues, and when exceptions occur, it is usually when the U.S. has a conservative government while France has a liberal one, and there is little more than pro forma dissent, as one side or the other remains neutral rather than truly oppose.If NATO did not exist, France would be one of the few non-Commonwealth nations for whom the U.S. would declare an actual, full-engagement war to defend, without even much argument from the voting public--unless it was the UK attacking it, obviously.
The full "special" list is probably Canada, UK, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel.
Probably because fucking Henry Kissinger insisted it exists (Diplomacy, chapters for post WWII). And he is a guy that knows something about US foreign policy.
I can't say I am a fan of the "special relationship" (I'm in the UK) - but worth noting that I don't think the US sells Trident missile technology to anyone else? UK warhead designs are probably US based as well although we do manufacture them ourselves.
The US even allowed the UK to test some of their bombs on American soil, in Nevada. (The UK also tested nuclear bombs in Australia. They don't have much wide-open desert of their own).
Edit: if you're inclined to disagree, please point out any factual inaccuracies or weaknesses in my reasoning rather than reflexively reaching for the down vote button. Assange entered the UK in late September 2010 and the arrest warrant became valid in the UK in December. That's a lot of time to book a flight elsewhere. The Ecuadorean embassy was a last-ditch move when his appeals failed.
More generally, the "weakness in [your] reasoning" is partly the arrogance to imagine that you understand Assange's legal options better than his lawyers did. But it is also partly the logical fallacy of ad hominem rhetoric, since you accuse him of hypocrisy and then use that accusation to try to discredit concerns of his that very clearly have nothing to do with questions of personal character.
As other commenters on this thread have mentioned, and as minimal research will confirm, Sweden has a long history of illegal rendition. Its handling of this case is extremely unorthodox, politically motivated, and shows a fairly clear attempt to maneuver Assange into indefinite detention through a legal process that even the UK High Court commented on as being unreasonable.
Not only did they do this (and Sweden was forced to pay restitution), but part of the Wikileaks documents revealed how Sweden objected after Swedish military intelligence years after these renditions had supposedly stopped, caught Swedish airport staff assisting CIA rendition flights.
While one might hope this has now finally stopped, Sweden is pretty high on the list of countries I would not like to be in if I was wanted by the US, given recent history.
Swedens official neutrality has been a joke in Scandinavia for decades. "Everyone" knows that there is a lot of close cooperation with the US behind the scenes.
Source?
They did obtain assurances from Egyptian authorities that the asylum seekers would not be tortured, but didn't do anything to ensure this could be enforced, and of course they ended up getting tortured. (EDIT: But even if one were to believe that Swedish authorities actually believed those assurances, a parliamentary investigator also determined that the treatment in Sweden violated Swedish law - they were arrested and violated and handed over without any required legal procedures, and even if they had been legally extradited, the treatment itself still would be illegal - see below)
Here's an article about Swedish military intelligence interfering after the CIA continued the rendition flights via Sweden for years after they had supposedly stopped:
http://www.swedishwire.com/politics/7497-cia-rendition-fligh...
This article also has more details about the Egyptian incident, including:
> Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, two Egyptians who had been seeking asylum in Sweden, were arrested by Swedish police in December 2001. They were taken to Bromma airport in Stockholm, had their clothes cut from their bodies, suppositories inserted in their anuses and in diapers, overall, handcuffs and chains put on an executive jet with American registration N379P with a crew of masked men.
> They were flown to Egypt, where they were imprisoned, beaten, and tortured according to reports by Swedish investigative pogramme "Kalla fakta". The Swedish ambassador visited them only six weeks later.
We can hope that was the end of it, given that Swedish military intelligence did act, but the fact of the matter is someone high up authorised it initially, given that it required the cooperation of police, security services and the CIA, and to this date it is not clear who did. Either someone did it under the nose of top levels of government, or the very same people who claimed to have put a stop to it authorised it in the first place.
What we do know is that there's been no proper investigation apart from a finding by a parliamentary investigator that the rendition flights were in violation of Swedish law. In other words there are no guarantees that the arrangement haven't simply been changed.
"The Swedish government must now comply with the Human Rights Committee’s decision in the al-Zari case. The committee has indicated that monetary compensation for the petitioner is one appropriate remedy."
http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-b...
It has been said a million times, but if Assange was extradited to Sweden, in that case in order for him to be extradited to the US they would need approval of Sweden AND of the UK per the extradition treaties
Extraditing Assange to Sweden makes it harder for him to end up on the US.
They've shown a willingness to blatantly violate both Swedish and international law to satisfy US requests in the past. Why should Assange trust they won't do the same in his case?
http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/fact_sheets/extradition/
Even Russia (who is in the CoE) doesn't extradite for death penalty.
My conclusion would be that the Swedish investigators are trying to gain some diplomatic points. A "US extradition" might or might not be on that road map, but equally likely (or unlikely) is justice. When a suspected witch hunt is launched, you don't stay and see what kind of punishment the mob is going to do. You think of the worst possible thing they might do, and then hide.
The last man that tried to take a one man stand against the U.S. was shot in his bedroom, the one before that was found in a rat hole...
If Assange wasn't holed up somewhere as politically sensitive as a foreign Embassy on foreign soil, he'd have either ended up in the same boat or would have "disappeared" to a U.S. black site somewhere never to be heard from again until it was politically advantageous for the U.S. to "find" him.
But the point stands, which is all the discussion of "why he picked the UK" as a place to avoid extradition seems to be missing the point. If he were comfortable with the government of the UK he'd be relaxing in a pub or reading in the park rather than holed up inside an embassy somewhat out of the reach of UK law for two years.
> U.S. embassies and consulates abroad, as well as foreign embassies and consulates in the United States, have a special status. While diplomatic spaces remain the territory of the host state, an embassy or consulate represents a sovereign state.
[0] http://diplomacy.state.gov/discoverdiplomacy/diplomacy101/pl...
We also have evidence that the UK courts resist US extradition requests via the McKinnon proceedings.
Finally, the US obviously wants to prosecute Assange and the publicly acknowledge existence of a grand jury investigation proves it.
I'm honestly surprised anybody still thinks this. Particularly after the GCHQ emails confirming it as a 'fit up'.
So not actually at all like what the original poster implied.
Then again, maybe they're just tin foil crazed conspiracy theorists who just happen to be, err, employed by GCHQ.
I'm not saying that Mr Assange is definitely blameless, I wouldn't know. But it does seem that if you go up against the very powerful, any shortcomings will be ruthlessly exploited.
[1] http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/julian-assange-sc...
[2] https://www.google.de/?q=+into+Assange+will+lapse+in+August.....
[3] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-03/13/assange
Die Staatsanwaltschaft => The Prosecution
their, her, theirs, hers
I took German long enough ago to trust Google better than my own memory... it was a minor nit before, now it's even minor-er.
Anyway, if it's Die Staatsanwaltschaft which the possessive applies to, that's a feminine noun anyway (in German nouns have either masculine, feminine, or neuter gender), so I think that ihre is used either because the noun is feminine or because the person being talked about is female. IANA grammatician.
Thanks for the correction.
The gender of the person might not change the gender of the noun that refers to it (I'd suppose the noun's gender is actually fixed.) But, possessive pronouns might not care about the gender of the noun in cases where a person is the referent and the person's gender is known. It seems (intuitively, and as a grammarian you should be innately used to discarding your intuition since it's often going to be irrelevant) if the gender of the person is known, it should take the correct gender of personal pronouns. But it might be more important that the word for prosecutor in the sentence actually has an (innate) feminine gender?
That's why you should be confused, same as I am.
If I had to guess, prosecutor is a noun that is either masculine or feminine depending on the gender of the referent, but if I had to second-guess, I'd say that's in fact probably wrong and nouns always have concrete genders of their own. Hopefully someone knows and comes along to tell us both, I'm curious now.
Edit: German Wikipedia agrees:
Ein Staatsanwalt (Kürzel StA, weibliche Form: Staatsanwältin), in manchen Staaten auch Procurator, Procureur bzw. Prosecutor genannt, ist bei Gericht oberster Vertreter der Anklage.
Die Staatsanwaltschaft (StA) in Deutschland ist eine weisungsgebundene Behörde, die für die Strafverfolgung und -vollstreckung zuständig ist und als solche ein Teil der Rechtspflege ist.
Whether it translates "her" or "its" depends entirely on what the rest of the sentence means in English, the fact that nouns in German are gendered and this one is innately feminine does not even enter into the equation.
Thank you for figuring that out.
This decision serves thus two purposes. It abides the decision of the court which makes the prosecutor look good, and it serves the case.
Because the laws forbid them to. Not because your house is extraterritorial.
They did threaten to do this a few years ago.
"My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorean embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview, and that he would need to be present in Sweden in any case should there be a trial in the future," lead prosecutor Marianne Ny said in a statement.
"Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies in the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward."
He is accused of initiating sex with a woman later an evening after consensual sex had finished and she became "half-asleep". The legal questions to be answered is: was she half-asleep, ie, does he contest that statement and if so, what conclusion can be reached by a court.
Furthermore, there is an accusations that consensual sex was agreed under a condition, and that Assange broke that verbal agreement by ejaculating inside her. Its a rather odd situation for a sexual molestation case, but I guess that the court would first have to establish if both parties had reached the same understanding, and if the above mentioned act then broke it.
On either of the two cases, my best guess is that we will never know.
In many jurisdiction initiating sex with an unconscious person is consider the same as non-consensual sex (one can't consent if one is unconscious). Some jurisdictions, like England and Wales, explicitly include sleep in the legislation around consent (i.e. a sleeping person cannot consent to sex, a reasonable person could not believe sex was consensual when the other party is asleep).
This is much more serious than "half-asleep" makes it appear.
The confusion seems to stem from a text message she wrote afterward, in which she called it half-asleep. The police document however wrote that she was asleep. Which should be seen as more accurate depend I guess.
Did you just guess at this? Or do you have something to contradict the police interview (http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/docs/protocol.pdf, top of page 6)?
Allegedly SW was re-interviewed and confirmed that she was half-asleep.
Page 54 of the document you cite also says that she was "half-asleep".
However the full quote is:
> Sofia also said that, when she was half asleep on her side, she had been aroused from slumber to feel that Assange was inside her.
Which is quite different from a plain "half asleep", especially with the rest of the sentence: "aroused from slumber to feel that Assange was inside her".
Even in its best light, assuming "half asleep", this begs the question of whether someone in that state can consent to sex (under the Swedish legislation), and/or whether a reasonable person could believe that there was consent.
I'd say no... but I will grant that this sort of question is why judges and juries are necessary.
Anyway, here's my translation of the accusation (to the best of my ability):
Sexual Assault
They were sitting in bed talking and he took off her clothes. They had sex again and she realised that he had only put the condom over the tip of his penis, but she let it pass.
They went to sleep and she awoke with the sensation of him entering her. She immediately asked 'Are you wearing anything?' and he replied 'You'.
She told him 'You better not have HIV' and he replied 'Of course not'. She felt it was too late, he was already in her so she let him continue, she was too tired to tell him once more, she had been nagging him about using a condom all night.
She never had unprotected sex before. He said he wanted to come inside her, he did not say when he would but he did. A lot leaked out of her afterwards.
She told him 'What if I get pregnant?'. He answered that Sweden is a good place to have kids. She jokingly told him that if she became pregnant he would have to pay her student loans.
On the train to Enköping he had told her that he had slept in Anna Ardins bed after a party. She asked if he had sex with Anna but he said Anna liked girls, that she was a lesbian.
Now she knows that he did the same thing with Anna. She asked him about how many he has had sex with, he responded that he didn't keep count. He said that he had HIV tested himself 3 months earlier and that he had sex with a woman after that and that she was tested and not positive.
She said sarcastic things to him in a joking tone, she believes that she was trying to de-dramatize what had happened, he in turn did not seem to care. When he was told the size of her student loans he said that if he was to pay her loans then she would have to give birth to a baby.
They joked that the child would be named Afghanistan. He also said that he ought to keep abortion-pills with him that would in reality be sugar-pills.
His phone rang and he had a meeting with Aftonbladet (swedish newspaper) on tuesday at 12. She explained that he would not make it to that meeting, so he pushed his whole schedule ahead by one hour.
After that he rode a bicycle with her on the back down to the train station. She paid his ticket to Stockholm. Before they separated he told her to keep her phone on. She asked if he was going to call and he said he would.
She took the bike home, showered and changed sheets. Since she didn't make it in time for work she called in sick and stayed home. She wanted to clean up and wash everything. There was semen on the sheets and she thought it was disgusting. She also went by the drugstore and bought 'dagenefterpiller' (abortion pills).
After she had discussed with her friends she realized that she had been the victim of a crime. She went to Danderyd hospital and from there to Södersjukhuset (another hospital). There she was examined and also tested using a so called 'rape-kit'.
"If the criminal is a fugitive, out of the state in which the crime was committed or otherwise living in hiding, this tolls, or suspends, the statute. (Once the criminal reenters the state the statute resumes running.)"
http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/time-limits-...
Isn't this what he put on the table years ago?
This seems ludicrous.
I believe before he was living in the Ecuadorian embassy, he offered to cooperate with the investigation in the UK. Swede could have sent investigators to interview him in person. The UK police would have assisted. They could have gone further with their investigation, without extradition.
The worst part of this is Australia's role. Where are they in protecting their citizen? Can you imagine an American journalist (wikileaks is journalism) pissing off the German Government, then being subjected to these insane attempts at extradition without the US stepping in?
Australia need to arrange safe passage for Assange to Australia and guarantee him his legal rights.
Australia fails to do anything when their citizens are killed for a bit of cannabis, about as blatantly disproportionate as a government could possibly get. They're in a perfect position to economically encourage Indonesia to be reasonable, and they would have the backing of a fair bit of the western world. And yet they don't do anything.
Why would you think they would do anything when it's less politically expedient?
Noone is saying they shouldn't be punished for their crime, but all indications are that the two Australians currently on death row in Indonesia have been genuinely reformed during their decade in prison.
One is now a pastor, and the other has completed a fine arts degree. And many of their fellow prisoners speak highly of them. Some Indonesian prisoners have even offered to be killed in their place.
I think the outrage about their imminient executions is due to the fact that Indonesia is about to execute two men who have shown they can both be valuable members of society.
The Australian government is now offering to pay the costs of keeping them in prison for life, but I doubt that will have any sway with the Indonesian government.
When has this happened?
I know Schapelle Corby served 9 years for cannabis trafficking, and I know there are two Australian men facing execution for heroin trafficking. Have Australians been executed for cannabis trafficking?
A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?
The anwer to that is probably that the justice system can be inflexible and slow moving at times. (I hesitate to take stronger words in my mouth, but those may be true as well.)
Ludicrous or not, all justice systems have their reasons why they work in a certain way.
He was interviewed during this period, and the transcript of the police interview was leaked onto the internet: http://pastebin.com/HAc6HjVn
After the interview the allegations were dropped, but then the prosecutor reopened them. And he didn't stay there just for a week after that. He stayed there over a month, and only left after having been given permission to leave by the prosecutor.
It's all in this court document: http://www.scribd.com/doc/80912442/Agreed-Facts-Assange-Case
> A better question would be why the prosecutor didn't conduct this interview during the week the stayed in Sweden after the accusations were officially in the media?
He was interviewed during this period, and the transcript of the police interview was leaked onto the internet: http://pastebin.com/HAc6HjVn
After the interview the allegations were dropped, but then the prosecutor reopened them. And he didn't stay there just for a week after that. He stayed there over a month, and only left after having been given permission to leave by the prosecutor.
It's all in this court document: http://www.scribd.com/doc/80912442/Agreed-Facts-Assange-Case
Different prosecutor, one less high up in the system there.
The original prosecutor made the right decision. The chance of a conviction is zero. No sane jury in a civilised country will find a man guilty of raping a woman who made him breakfast and went out with him the next day, tweeted about the incident positively and generally acted as happy as can be until she decided ... much later ... that actually she had been raped. (then she started trying to delete the evidence that she was lying). The case just has no merit at all, which is why Assange thinks it's a set up - the new prosecutor is either a tool of the USA or some kind of bizarre ultra feminist who thinks women never ever lie about rape. Whatever the cause, Assange doesn't want to go there for obvious reasons.
Once charges are filed, Ecuador will have to face the question of whether or not they want to be viewed by the world as shielding an accused rapist from justice. I'm just guessing here, but I see no scenario in which he doesn't eventually wind up in Sweden to face these charges (and if he did it, then he should IMO).
So yes unless the Swedish prosecutor wants to open herself up to charges of abuse of power then at this point she will have to prosecute Assange.