Judges retire to consider Assange’s last chance on extradition The UK Supreme Court judges have retired to consider their verdict in Julian Assange’s last shot at escaping extradition to Sweden, with a final verdict possible within weeks. The two-day hearing has been focusing on whether the Swedish prosecutor who issued the European arrest warrant (EAW) had the right to do so. Clare …
You may argue many points about the case, but this one seems hardly worth the time of the supreme court. I can only think they agreed to hear the case out of a desire to ostensibly give Assange™ the possibility to exhaust all possible recourses.
It is very likely that he will have spent more time on appeals than in Swedish jails.
I thought that, when he gets convicted and sentenced, he has to pay a € 150 fine (maybe with interest after all this time).
But I hope that the judge also forces him to apologize to those women for his boorish conduct.
Mind you, I wouldn't want to be on the same plane as him flying from the UK to Sweden.. I think he has more scary enemies than the Swedish judiciary.
In short, yes. Evidence is rarely presented at the point of arrest.
If you've ever seen an arrest take place, the UK Police Officer will state "I'm arresting you on suspicion of..." or "I have reason to believe..."
It is then up to the arresting officer to present the evidence to the custody officer to justify the arrest and continued detention or release on Police bail (or de-arrest and release).
There are very strict rules and penalties for officers who abuse their power of arrest, but legally they can arrest anyone at any time.
Just to point out the blindingly obvious: This isn't about a Swedish prosecutor traveling to the UK to make an arrest, it's about them issuing a warrant.
As some would argue, in Sweden the prosecutor does have that power, but is it in keeping with the terms of the EAW? A citizen in the UK can make an arrest, but that lacks the authority of a police arrest, which lacks the authority of a court issued warrant for an arrest (they can each be as valid, but the power to back up the arrest and the scope of the arrest increases as it moves to wards the warrant). So could a citizen issue an EAW? I'd hope not. The police, perhaps as they have additional authority, but does the Swedish prosecution have equal or greater powers in that regard? That's what's being argued over.
Personally, I think the Prosecution should have gone to the Swedish courts to get the EAW issued. That way there is no argument. But if the courts would not issue the EAW, it lends credibility to Assange's grounds for resisting (in my eyes at least).
Anyhow, popcorn's ready.
I would dearly like to see ToniBler and Dubbyer attend the Hague, plus all of the 'Blair's babes' who voted in favour of the Gulf War and against the enquiry; many of them 'strongly' for the war and 'strongly' against the enquiry. I have a long list of other items: I would like to arrest Golden Brown for selling 300 tons of gold when the market price was at a 20 year low; I would like to arrest him for his £120-150 billion pensions raid and for making the MOD pay for Labour's wars; I would like to arrest many Labour politicians for the overblown, ultra expensive vanity projects which failed and cost us billions, and I would like to see Blair, Roche and Straw arrested for their role as principal architects of the illicit, clandestine immigration scam that increased our population by some 7%, having said in their 1997 manifesto that the UK must like other countries 'maintain firm control' over immigration.
The Gulf War arrests will do for a start though; tagged, bagged and transported. The rest we can sort out later, but sentences cannot be served concurrently.
You're either too young to remember how much worse things were under the Tories, or you're one of them, waiting for your chance to piss blue poison over the rest of us once again.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2095549/Right-wingers-intelligent-left-wingers-says-controversial-study--conservative-politics-lead-people-racist.html
In the original research: "Clearly, however, all socially conservative people are not prejudiced, and all prejudiced persons are not conservative. We therefore differentiated our approach from that of earlier researchers who treated prejudicial attitudes and ideology as manifestations of conservatism".
Retrospective research has problems; an attempt to compare something from now with the past with no explicitly objective measures of differences between 'right wing' now, in the past & in between. No overt comparisons with other political groupings with/out 'right wing' traits, now/the past.
Good research tracks independent conditions (left/right wing/liberalism over time), checks for significant differences between each, then and now. There has to be a) an agreed measure of what is 'right wing', b) measures of other 'wings'. So no clear definition of 'right wing', nor of good and bad, no comparison of differences between (e.g.) North American & UK 'right wing' politics; US democrats (e.g.) are right of the Tory party.
Authoritarian 'left'; at any time the USSR had 11 million 'prisoners' in Siberian labour battalions; post revolution, murderers, rapists & violent offenders were released while nuns, monks & similar were imprisoned out of socialist PC (read Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago); Comrade Doik in Cambodia; North Korea; Mao Tse Tung's cultural revolution; French revolution & guillotine; post WWII 'left wing' troops marched into Eastern Europe installing socialist dictatorships, purges followed.
How do people trained in psychology pass axiological judgements on 'conservatism'? Four legs good, two legs bad, Animal Farm?
In the 70s a bankrupt Labour government had to call in the IMF; then the winter of discontent; the dead not buried, rubbish was piled high on the streets (http://linkbun.ch/4czk); I saw them ruin our economy in the 70s; I know them, I voted for them in 1997. I've seen them ruin the country twice. The people's flag is deepest red.
Do we know the truth yet? There are only a few people who have any idea of the truth. You seem to be judging him guilty before he's been tried in a court and PROVEN guilty. If you look at the circumstances of what's happened and the order it's happened in etc.etc., it does look very dubious. Now, that might be just coincidental, but he is as entitled to take all this through the judicial system as anyone else, even you. Just hope you don't stand accused of something and want to exact your rights. We'll remind you of your comment.
>>"We don't know but surely it would be better for his reputation to go to Sweden and defend the charge if he believes himself innocent than attempt to get of facing a judge by way of a legal technicality."
I'd have thought that even a win might only delay things, with some way round the situation being found, and the process re-started.
Would he be likely to have much luck in a second round?
Have there been many decisions against him so far that were borderline, and which had much chance of coming out differently even if the whole thing was re-run in its entirety?
Whether people think he didn't really have a case or think the UK courts were corrupt, would it be likely that things would be different in a repeat of the process?
I was not referring to the guilt or innocence of Assange in this case. I was, for example, referring to one stout defender of this convict that he is not a convict; he is, on 25 counts. There have been many other examples where his troupe of merry supporters claim the truth is false.
That you read in my response something which is not there says much about the current situation. To repeat: I did not refer to Assange's supposed guilt or innocence, you chose to.
No go back to your crayons.
I admit, that occasionally I can be a little paranoid, but I have to say in this instance I don't believe I am. Having had dealings with Americans (and their authorities) I would dare to say, that the American politicians are amongst the corruptest in the world!
To be elcted you have to do what the industry wants you to do, in turn you also get campaign money.
sounds to me like corruption, as it is not the will of the people being done, but the will of the industry!
ACTA, DMCA are prime examples. I do not believe, that we need socialism or communism, but the laws in the US do not represent the the will of the people!!!
I do realise that commerce and business is important, and I do think making money is absolutely fine but what you see in the US, is just simply pure greed!!!!
And greed leeds to corruption! As they say money is power, and power corrupts! absulute power corrupts absolutely!!!
In my oppinion, the vast majority of American politicians is no better than Al Capone!!!
And I hate to say it, but the state of a government can be seen in it's paranoia.
To say that the American authorities are not paranoid, would be to say Saddam Hussain was a good man.....
At the same time, I think that the vast majority of American people are good and honest! Although, when you look at it, you can see that the Governments of the past 50 years, have done their level best to try and "dumb down" or "brainwash" them. in some cases successful!!! in some not so much!
Skipping out of the country to avoid prosecution is exactly why extradition treaties exist. The Swedes properly processed a request for extradition. Ship Assange back and let him stand trial like any other accused person. If he's innocent he should be set free. If he's guilty he should go to prison. End of song and dance routine.
Re Mr. Assange: -All diplomats know that no one will tell you an important confidence if they can't trust you absolutely to preserve their anonymity. So as a result of Wikileaks, who wants to tell secret info to the Americans? The damage done is incalculable for us all - no key Russian poposals on Syria! Several countries ideas about how the US can get out of Afghanistan with least damage!
But who is responsible? The Americans left the stable door open for the horse to walk out into Wikileaks arms! It is unconscionable that the Americans, with all their cuting edge cyber expertise, left their State Department secrets available to a low ranking person in the Defense Department!
Those responsible for such gross inefficiency should rightly be punished - not Mr. Assange! But we hear nothing about that!
And of course the extradition demand is not about sexual peccadillos in Sweden, it's about getting the Swedes to hand him over to American "justice" where he could "lose his head" quite literally, or spend the rest of his life in one of their "for profit" prisons.
We are very sorry indeed that American diplomacy, so essenial for the rest of us, has suffered such a terrible blow - to our detriment as well as to theirs. Confidential Diplomacy is an outpost of sanity in a world too often of venal, bombastic, bellicose, sel-seeking, know-nothing politicians.
"QAnd of course the extradition demand is not about sexual peccadillos in Sweden, it's about getting the Swedes to hand him over to American "justice" where he could "lose his head" quite literally, or spend the rest of his life in one of their "for profit" prisons."
This is silly; the Swedes have already said that they will not allow extradition to the USA and have offered to leave Assange in the UK so the US can have first go; the US declined saying they do not have good enough/sufficient evidence.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
