Despite Assange claims, U.S. has no current case against him

[struggle4progress]

Wed Aug 22, 2012 5:31pm EDT
* U.S. investigating but has not issued indictment
* Obama officials divided over wisdom of charging Assange
* Assange claims a diversion from real issue - US spokeswoman
By Mark Hosenball

... Crowley said that Assange, in a speech on Saturday from an embassy balcony, had "challenged the president" to close down the investigation. But Assange's demand made it politically more difficult for President Barack Obama to do that, particularly during a presidential election season, he said.

Assange has "painted himself into a corner and he's going to stay there for some time," said Crowley ...

In light of WikiLeaks' waning influence and Assange's behavior, some U.S. and European officials believe that U.S. charges would backfire by rescuing them from irrelevance ...

Cecilia Riddseleus, a senior official of Sweden's Justice Ministry, said ... If Sweden took custody of Assange from Britain and then received a U.S. extradition request, Stockholm would have to go back to Britain to seek its permission before acting ...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/22/wikileaks-assange-usa-idUSL2E8JL96820120822

[Robb]

1. The beauty of being threatened by clandestine folks is that you're the only one who talks about it.

So really, you can claim whatever you want, they're sayin' nothin' one way or the other.

Which isn't to say he isn't necessarily being pursued in secret, only that it's convenient to say so, and technically impossible to refute.

[struggle4progress]

6. That's certainly true -- though if you make a great show of publishing all kinds of documents

from all kinds of people, by the thousands and thousands, and making a big point of twitting some of them in public (as with the BoA case), or sending emails to others to warn them that they might want to be ready cuz their emails are going public (as with the email correspondents of Venezuela's ambassador to Argentina), or if ... well, there's really a big long list here ... then you're eventually going to have a lot of people pissed at you, most of whom you know nothing whatsoever about, and some of them might be quite happy to fuck with your head for fun, without necessarily having any connection to the Company

[JRLeft]

2. I am willing to bet everything I own that the U.S. is behind

the UK's movement to extradite Assange.

[pnwmom]

14. The UK isn't trying to extradite Assange. Sweden is trying to extradite him FROM the UK,

based on rape charges of two Swedish women.

Did you know that the Swedish extradition law doesn't allow extradition in political cases? So that it would be easier for the US to extradite from England (where he has been for months and is now hiding out in Equador's embassy) than from Sweden?

Why do you think the US would want Sweden to extradite him when that would make it harder for the US to get him?

[bhikkhu]

3. So why the obsession with him here?

One would think there are more important things than another Assange thread, especially if the guy is not under threat of prosecution. So whadd'ya want?

[backscatter712]

10. Good question - obviously if this was just a case of a broken condom and shagging a sleeping girl,

why do certain people keep posting about it over and over and over and over and over...

and keep arguing and arguing and arguing and arguing?

Sounds to me like even s4p doesn't think this is a mundane date-rape case. Otherwise, why would he be so OCD about it?

[pnwmom]

15. Raping and "shagging" aren't the same thing. It's hard to see people implying

that it is without responding.

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. Of course there's no case, that's why he has every reason to fear for his life.

We don't do even the pretense of justice anymore, people that piss off TPB just have incredibly bad luck. And now it's been legalized.

[NYC_SKP]

5. I'm more of a fan of Daniel Domscheit-Berg and OpenLeaks.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, previously known under the pseudonym Daniel Schmitt (born 1978), is a German technology activist.[1] He is best known for his role, until September 2010, as a spokesperson for WikiLeaks, the whistleblower organization, in Germany. He is the author of Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website (2011).[2]

After leaving Wikileaks, he announced plans in January 2011 to open a new website for anonymous online leaks called OpenLeaks. At a Chaos Computer Club (CCC) event in August 2011, he announced its preliminary launch and invited hackers to test the security of the OpenLeaks system, as a result of which the CCC criticized him for exploiting the good name of the club to promote his OpenLeaks project and expelled him from the club.[3] This decision was revoked on February 2012.[4] In September 2011, several news organizations cited Domscheit-Berg's split from Julian Assange and Wikileaks as one of a series of events and errors that led to the release that month of all 251,287 United States diplomatic cables in the Cablegate affair.[5]

In 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers, with Sami Ben Gharbia and Alexey Navalny. He stated Occupy Wall Street was the Best Idea.[6]



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenLeaks

[Zorra]

7. :) We're talking about Julian here. You know, the guy who hacked inside info on, well...everything?

Obviously, Julian knows something that gives him very good reason to take the course of action he has chosen. I mean, hey, ya know, the guy has a genius IQ of like 2,000,000 or something like that.

So like, duh! Who we gonna believe ~ the guy who risks his life trying to make everything transparent, or the guys who are trying to hide and cover up everything, and want Julian in prison to prevent him from continuing to expose their dirty deeds in the light?

I mean. once again, I'm just sayin'...

And...yuh. Since we already know, "We want Assange thrown in prison, so extradite him to Sweden ASAP so we can finally get a hold of his sorry ass" is not going to be effective, this new approach is the lighthearted, humorous alternative.

[tiny elvis]

8. it is a jackalope named mcguffin

contrariwise
that's logic

U.S. has no current case

For about 18 months, a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, has investigated
Based on emails hacked from a Texas consulting firm, Assange claimed that U.S. authorities issued a secret indictment against him
authoritative U.S. and European sources disputed this claim
British authorities obtained a court order authorizing them to extradite Assange to Sweden for questioning in a sexual molestation case
British authorities have indicated Assange will be arrested
Assange made it more difficult for Washington to abandon a continuing U.S. probe of Assange
Assange's demand made it politically more difficult for President Barack Obama to do that

twisted corruption of thought

[moondust]

9. It might fall under the heading "cybercrime."

I'm not sure how well developed cyberlaw is yet.

Manning is a different story. What he allegedly did would probably fall under well-established intelligence law.

One detail that might be interesting is whether or not Assange offered Manning any kind of payment for information--as a would-be "intelligence broker" might do if he had a buyer lined up someplace.

[cprise]

11. Manning is not a different story

A foreigner like Assange could very well end up in the same predicament as Bradley Manning, and they will more than likely seize him claiming he is a co-conspirator.

To the US military, "intelligence broker" is just some fluffy words that liberals like to type in Internet forums. The State Dept. and the Pentagon will use or coin the credible terminology as needed to dispense with their enemies, and the corporate media will OK those terms as long as they do not cut against the grain of globalization.

[Bonobo]

12. If you think...

that talk of storming a sovereign embassy is purely due to some claims of sexual misconduct between fuck-buddies, you are welcome to your beliefs.

But I am welcome to think you are either unhinged from reality or pursuing an agenda.

[struggle4progress]

13. The UK, of course, has every interest in not returning to that long-gone era when every embassy

thought it had the right to shelter fugitives from justice

Otherwise, it risks the chance of ever-more-frequent recurrence of fugitives seeking shelter in embassies: the UK would prefer not to wake up one morning to the news that (say) fifty bailees had just asked for asylum in various embassies and that five of those embassies had decided to telll the UK to go to hell

And the UK has a distinct interest in the perception of its treaty-partners, such as Sweden, that it upholds its side of its treaty obligations: appropriate reciprocity lubricates such agreements and facilitates further understandings

Ecuador is telling both Sweden and the UK that Ecuador is competent to intervene in their internal affairs, and for very strange reasons. The Swedish arrest order was issued by competent court, and Assange lost his appeal of that in Sweden. The warrant was upheld through an appeal to the High Court in the UK, an appeal to the Supreme Court, and a second appeal to the Supreme Court. Assange was willing to accept conditions for bail, and then -- he jumped bail

Correa has justified his action by claiming that the alleged rape would not be a crime under Ecuadorian law, which may or may not be the case -- but, frankly, behavior in Sweden is governed by Swedish law, and the UK courts found that the behavior alleged would also be called rapein England, so it's difficult to understand why Correa, thousands of miles away and a representative of neither Sweden nor the UK, thinks he has any say in the matter

Correa has further justified his action by objecting to the fact that the UK in 2000 sent Pinochet back to Chile rather than sending him to Spain for prosecution -- but the Pinochet extradition lawsuit, a dozen years back, involved Spain and the UK, and Pinochet's black crimes were crimes against the people of Chile, so (again) it's difficult to understand why Correa, represerting neither the UK nor Spain nor Chile nor Sweden, considers himself himself competent to waive a sexual assault prosecution in Sweden on behalf of two Swedish women, on the grounds that the UK once sent a Chilean back to Chile rather than to have him face charges in Spain for crimes against Chileans in Chile

[cprise]

16. The PM of Sweden, his proclivities and bedfellows

are obviously no concern of yours, which does make your analysis look one-sided. You seem very cozy with Fredrik Reinfeldt's history and motivations here.

You keep hammering on about Swedish law, but the Swedish courts and one of the prosecutors dropped this case before another prosecutor pursued it. "Swedish law!" we hear... well to my understanding Swedish law considers these accusations to carry a minor fine. Swedish law says the police can interview Assange at the Ecuadoran embassy, but Reinfeldt and Rove don't want to. So you're being very selective about Swedish law, though that is not what Assange is intended to be subjected.

And not only that:

The general disregard for what Bradley Manning is suffering and the pattern of illegal torture renditions exhibited by these executive-branch actors -- and stalwart denials that people from both Bush and Obama administrations are involved -- really puts the anti-Assange take on this issue beyond the pale, IMHO. It may fly on CNN and FOX but that ought to be a warning sign.

"I returned to the UK today to be astonished by private confirmation from within the [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] that the UK government has indeed decided -- after immense pressure from the Obama administration -- to enter the Ecuadorean Embassy and seize Julian Assange.

Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador

Don't talk to me about "Justice" and "appropriate reciprocity". Torture isn't just or lawful!

This whole affair is about Assange being a favorite target of political renegades who tear up treaties and make sh!t up to justify bloody conquests, people who don't just "cover up" crimes against humanity, but have suffered shame because their misdeeds were revealed. That automatically makes Julian Assange a candidate for asylum.