Sweden will not extradite Assange if he faces death penalty in the US

[struggle4progress]

Tuesday, August 21st 2012 - 20:40 UTC
Sweden will not extradite Assange if he faces death penalty in the US

“We will never surrender a person to the death penalty,” the deputy director of the Service for Criminal Cases and International Cooperation of Sweden’s Justice Ministry said in an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper on Tuesday.

This means there should be strict guarantees from the US government that “the prisoner will not be executed in any case,” added Cecilia Riddselius. But so far her country has not received any extradition request from Washington.

In June, Cecilia Riddselius admitted there were opportunities for countries to request different types of guarantees in relation to extradition. Sweden may request that an extradited person will not be sentenced to the death penalty, he or she will not be tortured, should not be prosecuted for offences other than those which he or she was delivered for and not to be charged before a special court.

However, Riddselius then stressed, Sweden cannot guarantee in advance that Assange will not be extradited ...

http://en.mercopress.com/2012/08/21/sweden-will-not-extradite-assange-if-he-faces-death-penalty-in-the-us

[Cleita]

1. The last sentence on your post tells the story.

"Sweden cannot guarantee in advance that Assange will not be extradited..."

Therein lies the dilemma. Even with out the death penalty caveat, do you really think he would want to spend his life in prison?

[a geek named Bob]

2. Cleita...

If the USA is box-of-rocks dumb enough to extradite Assange, for life sentence, or death...

Then they richly deserve the great imi-nami of hacker attacks they'll get.

One of my rules: Federal government never hires the "best" of anything, especially not hackers.

I'll remember to stay off the 'net, that day.

[randome]

9. Right now he is spending his life in a prison of his own making!

[a geek named Bob]

10. morelike holed up in a sanctuary...

[Cleita]

11. Not a bad thing for him because it is of his own making not ours. n.t.

[pnwmom]

13. Under what law could we even prosecute a non-citizen who had signed no confidentiality

agreement for publishing information outside of this country that he obtained from a whistle-blower?

The legal situations of Manning and Assange are entirely different.

[Cleita]

14. So you agree?

This witch hunt of Assange should be stopped?

[pnwmom]

24. I don't agree that a witch hunt is going on. I don't agree that the Swedish women

are involved in a witch hunt.

I think that the US has to prove Manning's connection to Assange and Wikileaks in order to prosecute Manning, and this is what the grand jury is investigating.

But I've never heard of laws that would allow us to prosecute Assange.

[Cleita]

29. That's our grand jury. Sweden isn't part of it.

So why are they suddenly pushing something that really doesn't make sense that we seem to be involved in somehow, lurking in the bushes to be sure, but still involved.

[pnwmom]

30. They are investigating him for rape because two women have come forward

with stories of rape and sexual assault.

It doesn't appear to me that WE are involved in this. I think that's what Assange wants his supporters to believe, and it appears to be working.

[Cleita]

31. And you keep ignoring the fact that there is no proof that rape and

sexual assault occurred except the word of two women who had previously denied it. There were no witnesses, no rape kit evidence, nothing, nothing at all.

[pnwmom]

37. How do you know what evidence the Swedish police have collected?

How you know, for example, that other women haven't gone to the police with more stories?

And since when do we require witnesses in order to prosecute a rape?

[Cleita]

38. We don't know. So that's a big problem.

There could be a big case against him, but why aren't they releasing the evidence? Perhaps it's because it doesn't exist.

[pnwmom]

39. It's a different justice system. I have no idea how they do things there,

but it's not fair to the defendant when the prosecutor releases evidence -- and contaminates the potential jury pool -- prior to trial. Assange could rightly complain if the Swedish prosecutor were doing this.

Remember the Duke lacrosse false-rape case? That prosecutor tried the case in the media, and he lost his job because of it.

Maybe the Swedish prosecutor will turn out to have a good case, and maybe she won't. But I'm tired of people jumping to conclusions before a trial has even begun.

Based on my gut feelings and nothing else, I believe the woman's story. But that doesn't mean he'll be tried and found guilty. As you say, rape is difficult to prove.

I aso don't think Obama's trying to send him to Gitmo. Again, that's my gut feeling. I think that would be dumb, and Obama's not dumb.

[Cleita]

40. Like I said in another post, you have made up your mind, put

him on trial and passed sentence. Since the rock didn't drown him I guess he's guilty. No need for me to be here anymore. Have a nice day.

Oh, I agree about Gitmo. It will probably be somewhere in Eurasia, with no problems about torture, and where we aren't quite hands on but pulling the strings behind the scenes. I don't know if Egypt does our dirty work anymore, but I'm sure we have other friendly nations who help us out.

[struggle4progress]

21. Why don't you state your legal principle clearly?

A person, to be extradited under court order to face allegations of sexual assault, may refuse to be extradited if:

(A) he says some other jurisdiction might possibly indict indict him for espionage
(B) he says the women making the charges are extreme feminists
(C) he says he believes in open transparent government

[Cleita]

22. I'll go with A and C.

Those women are hardly extreme feminists if they allow themselves to be sexually exploited for political reasons or even if they were so morally lax to be doing it for fun.

[randome]

26. 'Morally lax'? WTF?

A lot of people actually enjoy sex, you know.

[Cleita]

28. Yes, and others use it as a commodity.

You figure out where the morally lax part fits in here.

[cr8tvlde]

3. US Death Penalty for a Whistleblower? Um, maybe, maybe not.

Civilized Western nation? I think not.

[Posteritatis]

34. I can see someone trying to push the espionage angle or something like that. (nt)

[ananda]

4. OK, there are way of disappearing Assange without killing him.

Sheesh.

[a geek named Bob]

5. That would probably have

The same result as giving him a death penalty/life imprisonment

[hack89]

6. It is in America's best interest to have Assange in a Swedish prison cell

the last thing the president wants is a huge spectacle of a trial that creates a political martyr if he is convicted or a huge embarrassment if he is acquitted. Being branded a common rapist is a much better way to neutralize Assange.

[treestar]

8. Oh come on

This defies reason.

[randome]

12. Any of which could have been done two years ago.

[Cleita]

15. I think this is his concern.n/t

[hifiguy]

7. Anyone who is delusional enough to think

that Assange would ever be seen alive again if he were turned over to the US probably believes in rainbow-farting unicorns that poop Almond Joy bars.

The CIA and/or military "intelligence" would disappear him, rendition him or "suicide" him so fast it would make your head swim.

[Cleita]

16. Or they would turn him into a vegetable and then let him go.

It's already been done.

[pnwmom]

17. What U.S. law did Assange break that could serve as the basis for an extradition?

A grand jury is investigating the connection between Manning and Assange, because they need to prove that link in order to prosecute Manning, who as a service member was entrusted with confidential information and appears to have provided it to Wikileaks.

But I have never heard of any US laws that would allow for Assange's prosecution.

[Cleita]

19. There really isn't but then many of our detainees in Gitmo didn't

have any legitimate US laws behind their detainment either, which is why many of them were never put on trial. They were just kept in custody and that's probably what could happen to Assange, but IMHO I think they would just render him to one of our worldwide torture places operated in foreign countries and backed by the CIA.

[pnwmom]

25. If they were going to do that, they could have done that a long time ago. n/t

[Cleita]

27. That means nothing, could have, would have.

[pnwmom]

33. That's all anyone here is doing when they speculate on US behind-the-scenes

involvement in this rape case.

I think if the US were involved in a "honey trap" they would have done a lot better job with the women's stories. Based on these women's accounts, we have people here arguing about whether rape without a condom (even though one was insisted on) is really rape; or, if a man puts a condom on only the head of his penis, does that mean next time he can leave it off entirely?

If this was a "honey trap" then why did they give the women such complicated stories to tell? Why didn't they make these "fake" rapes more clear-cut?

I think they have the ring of truth.

[Cleita]

35. So you are giving them a lot of credit for doing a good job?

Often that is not the case and they do bumble a lot. We really don't know about the condom story. Again she said but there is no proof. A rape kit would have taken care of that or even an exam in the doctors office the next day. Instead the women had another party.

[hifiguy]

41. Assange is too high-profile to just snatch off the street at this point.

And there is the Internet and instantaneous worldwide communication now. TPTB pretty much have to give the (utterly false) appearance of proceeding through the legal system. If he ever hit US soil he would immediately be declared an "enemy combatant" or some such other happy horseshit and he'd vanish from the face of the earth. There is absolutely no evil that the CIA and military intelligence are incapable of perpetrating. Nearly 50 years ago they killed the President of the United States in public and got away with it. No POTUS has stood up to them since. The Repigs are in bed with them and the Dems are all very well aware of the "example" of JFK and the consequences of defiance.

Search Octafish's posts. He has explained all of this is superbly researched and documented detail.

[Autumn]

18. Death, life in a prison, perhaps Gitmo.

What's the difference? I could easily imagine the people held in Gitmo would prefer death because they know they will never have a fair trial or be given their freedom, neither would Assange

[pnwmom]

36. Obama hasn't put anyone new in Gitmo, has he? I don't think he'd put

someone high profile like Assange there, who has done nothing more than publish leaks supplied to him by a whistleblower.

Unfortunately, when Obama took office, Gitmo was already full of people with backgrounds that were difficult to sort out.

[Autumn]

42. Don't go looking for slams that don't exist.

America does do indefinite detentions, that can not be denied. I am well aware that Obama tried to close Gitmo and I am well aware of how it was denied.

You can put your trust in the American justice system if you chose. As for me, I wouldn't trust it one bit.

[musiclawyer]

20. Sweden realizes it being used like one of Assange's hookers

Assange is our Gerald Gold from the Pentagon Papers. Nothing more. He's just the publisher. Manning is Daniel Ellseberg. What has our country become? The Soviet Unio?. If Manning put some troops in harm's way then he should get punished after proof. Assange is nobody. If the theory is that we need Assange to shore up a case against Manning, we cannot compel a foreigner to do what we want and we have to prove up the case some other way. If we want assange simply because he has our dirty laundry, then the taxpayer must ask, why is it dirty?

If Assange was American, and the government tied up in knots over wht he was hollding was Russia, would we feel the same way?

[Cleita]

23. Nope in that scenario he would be a hero and whatever his

sexual peccadilloes are, they would be neatly swept under the rug, if there was in fact rape. I don't believe there was. The evidence is just not there other than, he said, she said. However if there was a rape committed, those victims would be monetarily compensated in exchange for their silence if this was about Russia.

This doesn't pass the smell test.

I have a theory though that Assange has a bunch of other documents he hasn't released and if he does get arrested and ends up in the CIA's clutches, he will get them out for the world to see. If the CIA knows this, you know they will want to torture him to find out where he has them hidden before making them public.

He's a smart guy and I believe he knows there is a trap set for him.

[LadyHawkAZ]

32. Keep trying. n/t