AIBU that I support Julian Assange‘s quest for asylum?

Yes, YABU. How many other good deeds cancel out a rape? How many for multiple rapes?

None, is the answer. There is nothing that he could do that would make it OK for him to be aided in escaping rape charges by a government offering him asylum.

Also, some of the information he was responsible for leaking put innocent people (some of them activists) in danger. He is not a hero.

Saskia My thoughts exactly.
And really. What a prat. How long does he plan to stay in his self imposed prison?
He would probably have more protection if he'd faced the music in Sweden than he'll end up getting when he finally leaves his safe place. And I feel so sorry for the embassy workers. He must be a massive pain to have around. By all accounts it's quite a small building and his presence is a real imposition.

I have absolutely no sympathy for him. He should stand trial for all the things he is accused of.

And the poor cat should be rehomed with someone who isn't a self-absorbed arsehole.

Oh, and his behaviour towards the Ecuadorians is like the worst kind of cocklodger behaviour. If they posted in relationships we'd all be telling them to LTB, except they can't.

I agree with LauraMipsum and for the same reasons she's stated. The whole thing reeks of conspiracy theory - his supporters circulate the idea that the US somehow cooked up the rape charges so that he could be extradited to Sweden and from there to the US. That makes no sense whatsoever - why not simply extradite him straight from the UK (which has an extremely friendly relationship and permissive extradition arrangement) rather than from Sweden? (In April 2013, the Washington Post a US Justice Department spokesperson saying, "Espionage is considered a ‘political offense’ that, therefore, falls outside the scope of Sweden’s extradition treaty" - www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/woman-indicted-in-cuba-spy-case-is-in-sweden-and-out-of-us-reach/2013/04/25/de27da3c-ade7-11e2-8bf6-e70cb6ae066e_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2e64c53d9417 . So if Assange were to be extradited to the US, he would have had to be charged with a non-political offence - how on earth could Sweden be expected to be guarantee that it wouldn't extradite him for non-political offences? And if the theory is that he was going to subject to extraordinary rendition - well, that's ludicrous in such a high-profile case, and the only two known examples of such extraordinary rendition from Sweden took place at the height of the war on terror and have been completely repudiated by the government.)

So it would seem Olennas

Why does the CIA keep getting mentioned? I and pretty much everyone else is talking about the military, which is a whole different thing. I get that everyone loves their pet misogynist, but I don't think you can make a silk purse out of the sow's ear that is Assange.

It is indicative of the sloppy ass stuff Assange puts out there and y'all sigh and pat his head as the big brave boy.

And yes, the generals (not CIA) have gone to Congress to testify how many they moved.

Only damn thing he did of value was the original video tape of an assassination and killing of an AP reporter, but since the thing was stolen from an army lawyer's desk while the guy was negotiating a wrongful death payment to the widow (ie, the US had admitted culpability), it had very little value other than increasing that payment.

Corruption in the D party? No. You had one candidate everyone except one dude had stepped aside for, and that one dude whining about how it was rigged because that one candidate was also the one raising money. A bunch of silliness thinking Bernie is all that.

As for indicting the man, the US is within its rights to indict for espionnage. Whether or not you believe the indictment pages is not up to you. It's up to a grand jury, and even with an indictment he's still innocent until proven guilty.

Let's see whether he can make the case his involvement with Trump and Putin's buddy Roger Stone was all coinky dink.

Indeed, Melanippe. I'd have hoped that anyone who thought that US and British army personnel were fair game would have drawn the line at the Afghan civvies, but there are some real tossers out there

That is not how it works‘ doesn‘t cut it. It works how I as a state decide it works.

Not when it comes to the European Arrest Warrant - it works as the Member States jointly decide it works, or it doesn't work at all.

Why could Sweden not have guaranteed him not to extradite for any request related to the Wikileaks publications citing freedom of the press?

a) because a state cannot generally bind itself as to future unknown actions

b) because Sweden would have no way of knowing if this was a ploy from JA knowing that actually he was wanted for something else - or whether if they did this for him, another person would use the same tactic to avoid merited extradition

c) because this is not how it works: the question has to be (i) whether the requesting state has a good case (which cannot be known if there is no request) and (ii) whether the resulting treatment arising from extradition would breach the ECHR (which cannot be known if the request is not known)

d) because it would set a terrible precedent

e) because Sweden already protects from political extradition to the USA, so there would be no need to go further

f) (possibly the crucial one) because he actually abandoned this ground of appeal against extradition to Sweden and only pursued one ground to the Supreme Court, which was a technicality about the meaning of "judicial authority" www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2012/22.html

In 2016, Assange released the names and credit card numbers of donors to the Democratic Party. The credit card numbers.

When asked why he released such sensitive information, he mumble mumbled about not have the resources to redact, plus "it's important for history"

FYI: There is a federal law stating the names of donors donating a certain amount have to be made public. Several websites are already dedicated to doing so, and none of them include credit card numbers.

Curation my ass. IMO people were not killed after the cables because the US military got a lot of them out.

WL is a data dump organization, not journalism.

I appreciate that Sweden wouldn’t guarantee not to extradite him. I still think he should have gone to Sweden and fought the extradition charges had they happened. That would have been the right thing to do.

However I don’t see how that makes it ok for the US to charge him in secret with a (presumably) separate crime.

And if the leaks revealed corruption in the Democratic Party then as far as I’m concerned the people to blame for that are the Democratic Party and nobody else.

Olennas the list also potentially risked both the British and American military personnel who worked with those Afghan civilians, some of whom were still in theatre at the time. Although, I suspect that to some, they would be merely collateral damage and therefore unimportant.

One of the most egregious examples of Wikileaks endangering lives is their publication of documents containing the names of Afghan civilians who worked with US troops - something that the Taliban (and others in Afghanistan) aren't too keen on, and tend to show that by murdering the civilian and / or their family.

Humanitarian organisations asked Wikileaks to redact the names but a) it's awful that Wikileaks didn't consider doing this in the first place; and b) it's unclear whether they ever did it, even after being asked

Why would they when no requests had been made? That's not how this works.

So, journalists should not ‚play fast and loose‘ with national security by only reporting what the respective secret services approve? Interesting view.

Again, that's not what I said

Decent journalists work independently to gather information to support a story and are responsible in how they use it. Where it is likely to directly endanger national security (aka actual people's very lives), there is an even greater onus on them to treat the information with respect. Not just dump it all out there

If he has a valid asylum claim and is recognised as a refugee, that trumps extradition. However, since the ECtHR didn't find that Abu Hamza's extradition would breach Article 3 despite his disabilities and that he was likely to be imprisoned for life in a supermax facility, I can't see how they would possibly find in favour of Assange.

He couldn't possibly have had a guarantee from Sweden that they wouldn't extradite him to the US when the US had not at the time made a request.

If you're not American, I can see why some people think it's a matter of the US getting its own back. Never mind that the original CableGate cables included clues to the hunt for OBL, and the never ending fight to keep rogues nukes from exploding....

K, that dramatic. True but a bit over-dramatic.

He promised proof of war crimes. He delivered squilch. Guy walked into an embassy to escape having to answer questions about rape.

That last bit is where I think YABU.

And all that is before he worked with Russians to give us Trump.

Also, s.8 of Asylum & Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, Etc) Act 2004* requires a decision maker to disbelieve an applicant who doesn't make his claim at the first opportunity, and he's six years late.

*probably the most sinister sounding name for an act of Parliament I've ever encountered