Julian Assange: Wikileaks founder in last-ditch bid to avoid US extradition
Julian Assange: Wikileaks founder in last-ditch bid to avoid US extradition
The Wikileaks founder is trying to overturn an extradition order signed in 2022 by then UK home secretary Priti Patel.
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I wish more people would understand that it is possible to believe both that Assange has not been treated fairly and that he's a colossal douchebag.
It’s the tribal nature of humans - they try to make everyone they like flawless and everyone they hate completely flawed.
It sure seems that way sometimes.
Assange is a colossal douchebag, rapist and Russian asset, who is terrified of faceing the consequences of his own actions. In November 2010, Sweden issued a European arrest warrant for Assange, for questioning in a Swedish investigation, He was suspected of rape of a lesser degree, unlawful coercion and multiple cases of sexual molestation. After losing his appeal against the warrant, he breached bail and took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London.
You know Sweden has declined to prosecute Assange, right?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/nov/19/sweden-drops-julian-assange-investigation
It's the U.S. that wants him, not Sweden.
That tends to happen when you hide in an embassy until the statue of limitations runs out. The US didn't want to extradite him until 2017 after WikiLeaks interfered with the 2016 election.
His election interference was part of why he lost his asylum "We did notice that he was interfering in the elections and we do not allow that because we have principles, very clear values, as we would not like anyone to interfere in our elections," he said. "We are not going to allow that to happen with a foreign country and friend like the US."
and Russian asset
Where I can get my personal Assange?
Assange has not been treated fairly
How and who? Details please.
For one thing, not being allowed to leave for the country where he's sought and been granted asylum.
He had an arrest warrant in the country he was located. It's called law.
The country where he is located Ecuador. That's how embassies work. He is on Ecuadorian soil and should be allowed to leave for Ecuador.
And stayed at the embassy until he couldn't any more and was arrested by the Brits. I still don't see what's unfair.
Again, the unfair part was not allowing him to leave for Ecuador. His Ecuadorian citizenship got revoked when the British arrested him, but he should not have been arrested because he was an asylum seeker granted Ecuadorian citizenship.
Would you also oppose Jews seeking asylum in foreign consulates in pre-WWII Germany and Italy being taken out of Germany and Italy? One of those people was Albert Einstein.
Or is Assange somehow a special case when it comes to seeking asylum.
This isn't even about Assange personally or whether or not he deserves to be prosecuted for what he did. This is about how the U.S. and Britain can get away with ignoring someone who has both been granted asylum and citizenship of a third country. And I don't care if you are guilty or innocent of your crimes, that is simply wrong.
That's not how it works. In order to leave the embassy he would have to set foot on Brit soil, and he had an arrest warrant. He was not granted asylum by Britain, only Ecuador. As I remember, they were the only country to say yes. They changed government, and there you go.
And in order to leave the American embassy, Einstein had to cross German soil. He was allowed to because he was granted asylum.
Sorry but untrue
Weird, because William H. Geist famously refused to give Einstein a visa and public outcry forced him to flip on that. And then he was taken to the U.S.
Do you think the plane took off from the embassy?
The country where he is located Ecuador. That’s how embassies work. He is on Ecuadorian soil
That is not true, though it's a common misconception. Embassies are not extraterritorial. They are granted specific legal protections by treaty by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that prevents the host country's law enforcement from entering and arresting people, but the territory on which they are located does not belong to the guest country.
The ability to provide asylum in an embassy is based on this text:
https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf
Article 22
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The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
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The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.
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The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.
The only case I can think of off-the-cuff where territory was explicitly made extraterritorial was during World War II. The Dutch royal family had fled abroad due to the Netherlands being occupied by the Nazis, and Princess Margriet was born there. I vaguely recall that there is some restriction in Dutch law that requires a member of the royal family to be born on native Dutch soil to remain in the line of royal succession or something like that.
The Canadian parliament passed a law to, for a brief period of time, render the maternity ward of the hospital in which Princess Margriet was to be born, Dutch territory.
googles
Actually, looks like I misremembered that. According to Wikipedia, even in that case, they didn't declare it to be Dutch territory, just to not be part of Canada:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Margriet_of_the_Netherlands
The Dutch royal family went into exile when the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940, and went to live in Canada. Margriet was born in Ottawa Civic Hospital, Ottawa. The maternity ward of the hospital was temporarily declared to be extraterritorial by the Canadian government.[3][4] This ensured that the newborn would not be born in Canada, and not be a British subject under the rule of jus soli. Instead, the child would only inherit Dutch citizenship from her mother under the principle of jus sanguinis, which is followed in Dutch nationality law. Thus, the child would be eligible to succeed to the throne of the Netherlands. This would have applied if the child had been male, and therefore heir apparent to Juliana, or if her two older sisters died without eligible children.
It is a common misconception that the Canadian government declared the maternity ward to be Dutch territory. That was not necessary, as Canada follows jus soli, while the Netherlands follows jus sanguinis. It was sufficient for Canada to disclaim the territory temporarily.
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