h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Christ - me, Hoo, FB and swl all making the same argument. Isn't that the hootoo equivalent of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

This is hootoo. Two horsemen, one cyclist and the paraglider of the apocalypse if you please

This is a bit like finding yourself, as (say) a Labour politician, on a panel, vociferously agreeing with a Lib Dem, AND a Tory, AND Bonnie Greer...

And when you're the person being disagreed with, it's possible it's time to have a bit of a talk with yourself.

Why do I get the feeling I'm Bonnie Greer in that analogy?

Dunno. Is it because you is black?

I think the whole Assange thing is one of those issues a lot of people will look back at and think "WTF were we thinking".

What I don't understand is why it in some circles isn't seen to be an entirely rational and consistent to be able to at the same timwe think:-

* The work of wikileaks is broadly good.
* Julian Assange should not be extradited to the US for wikileaks related things.
* Julian Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face lawful due process around allegations of rape.

I have time and time again looked at these three things and for the life of me cannot see why there is any reason a sensible person could not think all three.

Presumably the lizard people have addled my thinking. Or possibly I am a lizard person.

Who knows!

FB

Well I think massive egg on our faces boys. Have a read on this one. Case Closed:-

http://loveandgarbage.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/some-light-on-a-key-legal-issue-surrounding-the-assange-case/

FB

FB

Brilliant set of comments underneath, including the obviously correct point that the relevant common law was made in Pimlico, where of course Burgandy law stands, not English

It is brilliant isn't it!

Best thing is the sheer number of credulas Assange tinfoil hat wearers who have been tweeting the link triumphantly! Ha ha ha!

FB

That thread is fantastic. One of the best examples of sustained deadpan humour I've seen in quite a while. Top banana.

It occurs to me to answer the original question.

"Diplomatic immunity" means immunity from prosecution in the receiving country. So you can, for instance, drive around the centre of London without paying congestion charge, and nobody can pursue you for it. Or you can shoot a police officer, and can't be arrested for it.

That immunity can be rescinded, but crucially if it is, that doesn't then give the host country the right to prosecute the diplomat. Rather, the diplomat has to leave. They're immune from prosecution, not from removal from the host country.

All of which is irrelevant in the Assange case, because he's not a diplomat. And even were Ecuador to try to get him accredited as a diplomat (as some have suggested), his accreditation would have to be agreed with the UK government, which of course wouldn't happen.

Assange does not have diplomatic immunity, and (prediction alert) never will.

Furthermore, if diplomats are declared persona non grata and ordered to leave the country, they are guaranteed safe passage from the embassy/consulate. Assange isn't.

R.E immunity to congestion charge see
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18725937
argument being used is that diplomats don't pay taxes - they do pay for services

Congestion charge is being argued to be a traffic-reducing service

Heavy arguments over the money owed (or not)

Reportedly, some high-ranking members of the United Nations (possibly Kofi Annan himself) have in the past been reprimanded (but nothing more) for flouting parking laws around New York, since diplomatic immunity gave them the right to ignore parking tickets.

Coming into this conversation a bit late, because I've been away for a week.

My point of view on this is something like this:

(1) The original events were suspicious in that the rape allegations followed very shortly after the publication by wikileaks of some very embarassing documents to the US.

(2) Subsequent events have also seemed extraordinary in this regard, the UK threat to go into the Ecuadorian embassy (potentially having to dissolve diplomatic relations with Ecuador in order to do so), suggest extraordinary pressures being applied and not just adherence to EU law. (This is where I may have missed something being away for the last week: swl seems to think that there was nothing unusual about this, but when I left last week the day it all came out everything I read seemed fairly unanimous that it was an extraordinary thing.)

(3) There is clearly a valid case against Assange that he should face in Sweden.

(4) You cannot reasonably attempt to understand what is going on without considering the propaganda element. A priori, the logically correct thing to think is that Assange may or may not have done anything to warrant all this. However, the logically correct thing can often be an instrument of propaganda. When the cigarette companies wanted to discredit the research showing a link between smoking and cancer, their strategy (as revealed by internal documents) was to create the appearance of a valid debate. They didn't need to prove that there wasn't a link, they needed to suggest that there was a debate going on - this was enough to stop action from taking place for many years which is all they needed. The same thing is happening today with climate change. It also works the other way around: if we say simply that we don't know if Assange did or didn't rape anyone, we are implicitly giving equal status to these two points of view, but since one of them is so horrendous (i.e. that he did rape them) it becomes much more salient in our minds. Consider being introduced to someone and being told "This is Bob, he's a teacher at our local school" compared to "This is Bob, he's a teacher at our local school, and he may or may not be a paedophile". The two statements carry the same logical information, but they would clearly be understood differently. Finally on this point I should add: this is the potential propaganda element of the case, it has to be taken into account when trying to understand it but you don't necessarily have to think that this propaganda element motivated the case. Simply, that it cannot be dismissed in our evaluation.

(5) Similarly to the propaganda element, you also can't understand what is going on without considering the deterrent element. This case has made life intolerable for Assange regardless of what happens next. Anyone considering setting up an equivalent of wikileaks now knows the likely consequences will be the end of their life as they knew it. Again, as with the propaganda element, it doesn't mean that the case was motivated by this deterrent element, but it's certainly a possibility that needs to be considered.

Taking all of the above into consideration, my personal feeling is that there is too much that is dubious about the circumstances and politics surrounding this case for me to be able to unequivocally support his extradition to Sweden, despite the fact that he clearly does have a case to answer there. Given the valid doubts, and the international attention, it feels like there should be a way to find a solution that resolves some of the doubts. Previously, I had thought that his being questioned in the UK or at the Ecuadorian embassy would suffice, but as I understand from this thread that wouldn't be valid under Swedish law, is that right? What about if he could be transferred to the Ecuadorian embassy in Sweden and questioned there? If the UK and Sweden could agree to give him safe passage to that embassy, perhaps that could be made to work?

Hitting the blogs, I found this one that expresses my point of view rather more eloquently than I did. But it's strictly optional, because what I said above stands.

http://www.leninology.com/2012/08/assange-asylum-seeker.html

A quick response Dogster - most of your argument seems to presuppose that getting Assange to Sweden may be the first step in extraditing him to America.

Why would anyone want to do that when it is easier to extradite him from the UK?

I think the key thing here is that Assange is NOT fleeing political persecution. He has walked around free and clear in Sweden and in the UK, and not felt any need for "asylum", right up to the point that the slow, tedious but fair and reasonable justice systems of those two countries looked, after giving him every possible chance, like doing something he didn't like. Note that even his own legal team do not, at this stage, dispute the validity of the proceedings thus far.

The "political persecution" element is something that is, at the moment, almost entirely hypothetical, whereas the warrant for his arrest on a charge of rape is very much real. At no stage while he's been wandering around getting his bail paid for him by celebrities in the UK have the US tried to extradite him. If they want hands on him, this seems an odd strategy, given the UK's supine response to other extradition requests even against UK citizens who've never set foot outside the UK and have committed no crime here. Our extradition treaty with the US is massively, scandalously asymmetrical and the tinfoilhatters don't seem to be able to explain why, if the US realy want him, why he wasn't take from here at any stage.

Where I think your argument is inconsistent, Dogster, is here:
On the one hand, you say "There is clearly a valid case against Assange that he should face in Sweden". Which is true.
"my personal feeling is that there is too much that is dubious about the circumstances and politics surrounding this case for me to be able to unequivocally support his extradition to Sweden".

Let me boil that down a bit: a man should be able to get away with rape (or, if you prefer, should not be required to face charges of rape) if his (alleged) victim's accusations are inconveniently timed and the (alleged) rapist has political enemies and a reputation that would be harmed by the accusation. That's the logical corollary of what you're saying.

That cannot stand. If a man is accused of something, and there is reasonable suspicion and evidence etc. enough to bring him to court, then he damn well should go to court, regardless of who he is. (Wouldn't it be lovely if that were the case. We don't have a very good record on that, unfortunately, but the principle stands).

Questioning in embassies is a red herring. They've already DONE all the questioning they want to do. The next step is to arrest him. There are no other steps between here and there. There is a valid warrant for his arrest, prepared at some length and disputed at some length, whose validity can no longer be questioned.

Ultimately, this is about a suspected criminal trying to dictate the terms of his treatment by the justice system. He's basically saying the he prefers not to be arrested. Well, yeah, we'd all prefer not to be arrested. But arrest on suspicion of a sex crime is not something done by consent. If you don't consent to being arrested - tough. Usually. We cannot afford for Assange's approach to work, otherwise every chancer with a charge over their head will be hotfooting it to an embassy to claim asylum from the nasty policeman.

swl,

> Why would anyone want to do that when it is easier to extradite him from the UK?

I very much doubt that either of us is expert enough to be a good judge of that. As far as I can see, there are different legal opinions about that, with experts arguing both sides. I also find it surprising that it may be the case that it's easier to extradite from Sweden than the UK. It's counter to our prejudices/ill-informed opinions I guess, but that doesn't mean it's not the case.

Hoo,

There certainly is political persecution (independent of this case), but not of the life-threatening kind yet.

> Let me boil that down a bit: a man should be able to get away with rape (or, if you prefer, should not be required to face charges of rape) if his (alleged) victim's accusations are inconveniently timed and the (alleged) rapist has political enemies and a reputation that would be harmed by the accusation. That's the logical corollary of what you're saying.

That's not the logical corollary of what I'm saying. First of all, I'm not talking about what should or should not be the law. Clearly, the legal forms are being followed here, and I have no issue with those forms. Like all law, it works well in general but sometimes fails. What is law is not the same as what is right.

Secondly, even if we were talking about legal principles rather than moral ones, there is a strong tradition of erring on the side of caution in the law: better that a hundred guilty go free than that one innocent is wrongly punished. When there is doubt about the process, the accused goes free even if the evidence against them is overwhelming. That's not the case here, but something similar is happening: there is doubt about the motivations behind the process and the likely consequences.

Thirdly, I'm not arguing that he should go free and not face the charges, as I said. I'm arguing that given the circumstances, it warrants Sweden and the UK making some effort to find a way to make it work even though that might not be standard procedure.

> We cannot afford for Assange's approach to work, otherwise every chancer with a charge over their head will be hotfooting it to an embassy to claim asylum from the nasty policeman.

Ridiculous. What possible reason would the embassies have for doing this? In this case it's either that the Ecuadorian officials feel that his case is valid (which wouldn't be the case for 'every chancer'), or that they want to annoy the US (so only 'chancers' who are also high-profile political enemies of the US).