to think Julian Assange should bugger off to Sweden, sharpish

[MarysBeard]

...to face rape/sexual assault allegations?

Sweden has a history of handing everyone over
As a signatory to the ECHR, Sweden can't hand people over to face the death penalty any more than we can, surely. And we have also participated in rendition (and torture at Baghram).

Oh and Sweden have still handed people over and it doesn't matter what they are signed to, it is much easier to place pressure on a small country to subvert their laws. Swedish politicians are involved in the smear campaign, it was them that pressured the prosecution to change their mind on a case which they previously claimed had no merit.

But the UK hand people over, ever heard of Christopher Tappin?

Handed over yes, as have we. But on the condition that the death penalty cannot be imposed (even assuming that an espionage charge could carry the death penalty).

Bobble, agree with you.

This is not an issue of rape or the persona of one man, JA ( whom I don't particularly like, either).

It is about something that matters hugely to all of us...the struggle to have a free media and entrenched powers that want to act in the dark and spread propaganda for their own narrow interests. It is literally a matter of life and death, for many people around the world, whom our countries are waging war on on, openly or subversively.

And JA is well within his rights to want to protect his name or suppress parts his 'biography'. There is a difference between the right to privacy for individuals and the rights of privacy for government bodies. The latter shouldn't have the same rights as individuals, they should not be able to withhold information from the public. The notion of public interest and security has been misuse to hide government killing, torture and corruption. Unbelievable that people can be so complacent about this.

Oh right so its ok for him to release the names and address of afgans who worked with nato then

As long as his privacy is protected

The government should spend a few hundred pounds on a one way ticket to Sydney. Problem solved.

As an Austrailan citizen let them deal with all the fuss.

He is nothing at all to do with the UK.

Australian

Blackout, I don't think it is ok. But the hunting down of JA is not about protecting the Afgans. It is about punishing anyone who dares to go against the giant state/war machine.

Why are we, ordinary people, cheering the state winning the war against government transparency? This is definitely not to our benefit!

No it isn't its about a man who is accused of sexual offences who refused to answer any questions or even put his side in. Court of law

Why are we the public not as outraged about the 100 000 innocent women and children killed in Afganistan that was only revealed by wikileaks?

"The sexual offence in question is not an offence in UK.

Do we ever actually extradite for acts which are not offences here? (Bit of a risky precedent for some other countries/laws). Or are we bound by some EU treaty on this?"

The UK will hand over people if it is an offence in the country seeking the extradition - this has happened with the appeals against the US extradition requests, saying that what they had done was not an offence in the UK. The appeals were overturned because they are offenses in the US

I wonder if the Embassy make him a citizen and then an ambassador, if he'll be able to leave British Jurisdiction?

It has been suggested that would not work PKW, because an ambassador's credentials have to be presented to the host country and so the UK could refuse to accept them.

One lawyer has said the only possible way to get JA out of the country without arrest would be to make him Ecuador's ambassador to the UN (because no issue of the UK having to accept his credentials would then arise). Even this is apparently doubtful. If I were Ecuador's current UN ambassador I'd be very very hacked off with that as a solution.

Eldritch will he end up holed up there forever? Like Miss Haversham, surrounded by his Wiki-Leak reports ?

I rather hope so, PKW. I have a vision of him looking grubby and lonely in a little corner holding up his feet while a fed-up Ecuadorean cleaner vacuums around him.

Ironically, he could end up staying longer in there than he would have gone to prison for if he'd just sloped off to Sweden and been tried and convicted (and it is still not a certainty he would be tried or convicted).

But on the plus side, he can stay a cause celebre a bit longer and proclaim his victim status and conspiracy theories, so that's ok.

It might be easier to respect JA as a brave leaker if he'd had the slightest empathy for the Afghans his disclosures might have killed, or even for poor old Bradley Manning.

ThePathanKhansWitch

Just had a terrible mental image of JA in a wedding dress peering out of the top window of the Ecuadorean Embassy!

What?

I mis-read something and now it's a smear campaign?

Gosh, who knew I was that influential?

He is a strange individual to say the least.

Don't think they meant you started the smear campaign. Well that's how I read it