Thanks to the UN tribunal
It's a really weird decision, in many ways. It starts off with a statement on their website, where a bit of the press release has been copied and pasted twice. They had the complaint in September 2014, decided in December 2015! And so two months later seem to have screwed up the deadline.
There's then a statement from the chair of the tribunal that their decision is legally binding. At least in the sense that it's based on international law. Huh? Are they a court? I'm not sure they're even all lawyers! So what it actually is, is a legal opinion. Hopefully based on the law, though their press statement makes bugger-all sense, and doesn't say why they've come to the decision. Other than Sweden's lack of diligence in pursuing the case.
I tried to read the full document, but it's incredibly badly laid out. You open the nice Word document, and get an error message, followed by this horribly formatted thing in columns.
And rather than laying out their decision, it covers the submissions from each party. Sometimes with comments. I got bored halfway through Sweden. The even weirder bit is that it comments on the Swedish stuff, saying where it's failed to cover points made by Assange's team, but in the bits on his submissions doesn't say where they're batshit insane, or actually have a point.
So one of their points is he was apparently in solitary in Wandsworth. For ten days. I'm assuming this is because you don't tend to mix celebrity prisoners with the general population, but didn't get to the UK bit, so don't know.
They then describe being out on bail as house arrest. He was under restrictive conditions, on a tag and not allowed to sleep anywhere else. But then he was accused of fleeing from arrest in Sweden, so he was definitely a flight risk. Given he later ran from justice to hide in the Ecuadorian embassy.
They complain about the length of his "house arrest". But that was entirely because he was appealing extradition. No mention seems to be made that this is a) his choice. And more importantly, b) proof that it's not arbitrary in that there was an ongoing legal process being followed.
There is some play of the fact that he's not actually been charged. I don't know if they've therefore decided that Sweden's legal system doesn't meet international norms. Because that's clearly an artefact of him fleeing Sweden before they could do their pre-charge interrogation.
There's then some comment on the fact that Ecuador have granted him asylum. And how this should be recognised, and therefore we should grant him safe passage to Ecuador to enjoy his right to that asylum. I'm out of my depth on international law here - so can't help. Does the deliberations of a proper court system (UK and Sweden) trump an embassy and government granting asylum - given that one uses public due process and the other is a private decision? Or are they saying that anyone who can get asylum from any government has a get out of jail free card? They may have covered it in the bit I didn't read.
They make the fair point that forcing someone to flee to an embassy for asylum by persecution is the same as imprisonment. But nowhere could I find that they'd said this was what had happened. I guess I'll have to read it again, at the weekend.
Their summary only says that Sweden should have acted faster. But doesn't say this wasn't possible due to Assange fleeing justice twice.
Which is the exact point that their one dissenting opinion made.
I've not seen much decent dissection of the report. Other than a bit from the Guardian here.
He also didn't find much justification for the findings, but hasn't had much more time to study it than me.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
