Still looking forward to…
The day he's finally shipped off to Sweden, where he's sentenced to a month of community service.
Sweden's Supreme Court has decided not to let Julian Assange discontinue his ongoing attempt to extend the world couch-surfing record. The five-judge court yesterday released a decision (PDF) on Assange's application to have his arrest warrant quashed. Assange's legal team argued that his ongoing residence in London's …
The day he's finally shipped off to Sweden, where he's sentenced to a month of community service.
I heard rumours the Swedish people were now indeed coming to the UK. That could be interesting, because if he is indeed convicted in absentia after that interview the Ecuadorians will be actively harbouring a criminal. Not sure how well that one will go down in the annals of diplomatic history, but I have a feeling in that embassy is yet another person who is regretting the day they befriended St Jules. So, in short, you may have your wish soon. It's about time too.
Assange's legal team argued that his ongoing residence in London's Ecuadorian embassy is a disproportionate response to the investigation into his alleged crimes.
LOL - this shows a serious degree of desperation. The Swedes had nothing to do with that, so it won't influence matters one iota. That St Jules decided to bolt is not their problem, even less so that the embassy was stupid enough to abuse the asylum process.
The "dispropotionate response" Is by Assange to the issuance of an arrest warrant and it is nothing to do with Sweden or its courts. It was his choice to go to Ecuador to continue to evade arrest, and no matter how noble the cause, let's not forget that he has chosen to evade arrest.
"Please someone explain the down votes (the single one I get, always get at least one).
Please explain HOW it's Sweden's fault he is in an Embassy?"
It happens to me also and I consider it to be a badge of honour that, for citing facts, I elicit disapproval; it demonstrates how out of touch with the truth these people are; it occurs, not because they have some superb a priori argument against you, based on laws and morals, and no one has yet offered any coherent argument about the alleged rapey-man whose followers appear to accord him some latter day Neo status.
As to Julie himself, he absconded from Sweden (soon after his lawyer was informed the police wanted to interview and then arrest him as per Swedish legal practise, thereby causing his lawyer's professional society to interview him), having prior made it clear he wanted to reside there - it being that he felt safe from the US - but now feels they have banana republic justice, even though they subscribe to the same legal standards/ECHR/HRA that the Brits (for the while at least) do, and then locked himself in a a Latinate closet.
Julie's Knightsbridge balcony scenes were amusing, a sign of desperate manipulation. Not long now. Soon he'll need either a medical or dental operation that will require him to leave the building. He can be assured of an excellent escort, a clear route, and people at the point of treatment who will guard and protect him. Unless of course he chooses to have a sordid death in the closet. I'm sure the NHS won't mind this single instance of health tourism. ;-)
Please arrow this post down. I want to see as many down arrows as possible. Thank you.
I understand that there's a clock ticking in Sweden so Assange doesn't have long to wait to forget about that mess due to a statue of limitations
I still don't believe that the clock can be counted as running down when you're deliberately fleeing from justice and obfuscating the investigation of the crime.
As I've said before, it surely can't be the right that you could visit Sweden, get all rapey with the natives, then return home. When they don't find you for a few years, because they have no idea where in the world you are, you get off free as a bird? I just don't buy that. If, however, it is true, then Sweden should be urgently looing towards reforming its judicial process.
While I am not sure how the statute of limitations would be applied under Swedish law, I am curious as to whether he could be charged and tried in absentia. At least in a generic sense, the limitation is on the time between the crime and a person being charged with it. If he has been charged, I would think there would no longer be a ticking clock in that sense.
More seriously - who's paying the lawyers?
Because I'm assuming that, apart from the odd media interview, Assange isn't in full time employment or education. Presumably, the same people who bailed him out (which out worked really well!), or he's receiving funding from Wikileaks etc.?
Who's paying his day-to-day expenses while he's in the embassy? And who's funding these lawyers (plural)? And, secondly, they aren't actually very good at what they do (I mean, it's hard when your client is on the run, but even so).
Roll on the day when he's slung in a British jail, transported to Sweden, maybe slung in a Swedish jail, and then forgotten about when he comes out. Nobody cares any more. Along with Royal babies and who's now minister of whatever, I'm so bored of him I couldn't care less.
ISTR that he set his Wikipedia salary at around £80,000. Then there is the considerable advance given him by a publishing house for his autobiography, from which agreement he withdrew whilst keeping the money, thereby proving himself to be completely untrustworthy and pefidious. I believe there are other sizeable chunks hanging around. The whole Wikipedia set up seems to me to belong to the Dear Leader, who uses it as a milch cow.
You will remember that his earlier benefactors, the ones who stumped up bail for him, lost their money. I'd like to say that he's blown it in that respect, but I somehow think that some of them will continue to bet on this horse.
Say you need 5 plods to guard the embassy (assuming there's more than one entrance/exit). Mounting that guard 24x365 would require 30 bodies plus a few 'chiefs' to manage the 'indians'. Cost of those bodies is over £3 million a year* (not just salary, you need to include all their kit, pensions funding etc).
* Met police current budget £3.7bn pa for 37,000 pairs of boots on the ground.
Can't see any problem with a Rough order of Magnitude estimate of a plod being £100k pa. But "cost to the taxpayer" stuff is not as simple as adding this up.
Firstly, a figure of 'millions' is negligible compared to the tax pot, so reporting it in absolute terms can mislead those who are not aware of the annual tax take. Secondly, at least half of the salary of the plod ends up back in the tax system (and the purchase equipment with which he is supplied benefits the businesses who supply that equipment, and their employees, and the taxman benefits from both of these --- same is true for the coffee and doughnuts he buys when off duty etc.). Thirdly, the police keeping an eye on Assange are presumably not exclusively dedicated to that: if a high priority incident occurs nearby, some of them will surely be redeployed appropriately.
"Where does this £10m cost supposedly come from?"
It's one of those magic numbers usually reserved for phrases, like "... with a street value of £X,000 ...", beloved by official spokespersons.
It's calculated on the basis that the ambassador used to just leave the keys in the door when he nipped out to the shops, and the police had no idea it was even an embassy, before you-know-who turned up.
Employing people isn't just their take home salary costs. There's the NI, holiday pay, sick pay, maternity, recruitment, training, HR overhead, management of said staff, desk space, payroll run costs, IT overhead, uniforms, equipment, welfare vehicles, shift costs, plus the cost of what those coppers aren't able to at the same time. Employing people is expensive, the overhead is huge.
They'd simply appoint him to a role, and he's free to leave with them to the airport. A little like the Libyan embassy thing, where due to international law we had to let a murder of WPC Fletcher simply walk away. Of course, if the building were to catch fire Assange would be facing some uncomfortable choices...
I'm quite amazed he has lasted this long.... Self appointed house arrest for years on end, and all the charges will still be waiting for him when he eventually walks out the door. Certainly he will be looking at arrest and jail time for his bail jumping, and any extradition to the USA will happen during that period anyway. He seems to be acheiving little with his time, and may be better just serving whatever tariff is due.
"I'm quite amazed he has lasted this long.... Self appointed house arrest for years on end..."
You've answered your own statement. Without his self appointed house arrest he'd have disappeared into the mists of obscurity years ago. His continued "situation" merely keeps him in the (increasing diming) spotlight.
They'd simply appoint him to a role, and he's free to leave with them to the airport.
Nope, diplomatic protocol has been explained ad infinitum. The UK would have to first accept that appointment for it to have any status, and that is really not going to happen.
A little like the Libyan embassy thing, where due to international law we had to let a murder of WPC Fletcher simply walk away.
Unfortunately, in that case diplomatic immunity was in place so the only solution was to close that shop and expel the lot of them :(. However in Assange's case that would not protect him, because he has no way to acquire diplomatic status (as explained above) so he'd simply be arrested anyway the moment the cleaners carried him out with all the other rubbish that they would leave behind.
"They'd simply appoint him to a role, and he's free to leave with them to the airport"
No, utterly wrong; it would have to a) be done in advance, and b) be approved by the Court of St James, and you can bet your anus that they will not approve the application.
Yvonne Fletcher was another matter.
Assange does not have long left in the embassy. He will at some point face a pressing need of greater importance than avoiding the Swedish authorities. Perhaps they could relinquish their claim on him - and they have offered this to the US - then the UK CJS could arrest him for bail jumping, jail him on remand, and wait for the Americans to accept him into Hillary Clinton's loving bosom, or failing that into the Guantanamo womb, where Lindy could lead him around on a dog leash. Oh happy ironical thoughts.
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One bizarro option is that "Ecuador could theoretically appoint Assange one of its representatives to the United Nations, under rule 25 of the UN General Assembly’s Rules of Procedure."
http://www.headoflegal.com/2012/06/26/julian-assange-can-he-get-out-of-this/
Don't you think that if that was an option he would not have taken it already? That *theory* was put forward in 2012, but I think it has been disproved by people who are actual UK diplomats. In addition, Assange had no diplomatic status when he skipped bail, and you cannot apply diplomatic status retrospectively.
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Not so; the Swedish CJS protocol for charging an offender is to first interview then charge. The police had informed Assange's Swedish council of their intention to do just that. Mysteriously and overnight, Julie disappeared and reappeared in the UK, like a game of whack a mole. Worse still, aside from his counsel's claim that the police had not been in touch with him (and, in retrospect/examining his cell phone in a UK court he rescinded that statement, confirming they had [1]), his professional association publicly announced their intention to interview said counsel on the matter of this behaviour.
Thus, Julie is an absconder twice over; he absconded when his counsel learned of the Swedish police intention to interview and charge/arrest him; he absconded when on bail in the UK. He has a behavioural history of fleeing from one country to another, and he has a criminal record (17 counts in Oz, where he was convicted for among other things hacking a USAAF/Pentagon server), and it all holds together very tightly, that is to say, his history speaks for itself, it discredits him. On the basis of his publicly known record I developed the opinion that this man is perfidious, untrustworthy, does not understand normal social rule following and legal rule following conventions and is prone to making judgements that leave him, quite literally, cornered. Julie locked himself away, and Julie has only himself to blame for this.
He should not have been bailed when in the UK, if only because of his record of flying from one country to another and of absconding from Sweden. Now that he has offended there they are probably unlikely to offer him citizenship, and I hope that he is deported to Australia and immediately forwarded to the US.
[1] The cell phone company's records would clearly indicate this to the court and thus the satisfaction of his professional association, and I imagine he had his career in mind when on the stand in said UK court.
I find this fascinating. What if someone (a member of the public) gained entrance and forcibly removed him? Presumably Assange could then be arrested - or would that be considered invalid? And what about the "kidnapper"? Since he's back outside the embassy, would Ecauador have to charge him and request extradition from the UK? Would he be liable for any charge in the UK?
Nope, it's a myth.
It's a UK building on UK soil where UK laws apply. The reason we don't just walk in is there is an understanding around the world that they are pseudo territories of the nation they represent and therefore exempt from local law enforcement.
The simple reason we don't go in, we would then have no moral high ground to complain when another country did the same and snatched our embassy staff for local law violations.
Think of it as a gentleman's agreement rather than law.
In the first instance 'twould be trespass. In the second instance it would be a violation of the embassy's status, private individual or no, otherwise private contractors in the form of bailiffs might fit the bill. For breaking an international convention it would seem wise for the UK to formally charge her/him, but the question of what to do with the package once it is out of the embassy is indeed tempting! However, I believe that the police probably have a duty here, and the government are bound by convention.
Yep, he could be arrested one step outside of the embassy as he's be on British soil.
Technically, the people "kidnapping" him would be in violation of Ecaudorian law however they can't enforce that outside of the embassy and if the embassy staff attempted to intervene one step outside of the embassy then they would be committing a criminal offense under British law, though chances are that their diplomatic staff would be covered under diplomatic immunity. If they did then they'd probably end up being arrested and then later released when it was proved that they did have diplomatic immunity, though having been arrested they'd probably be declared "persona non grata" (Latin for "An Unwelcome Person") which basically means that we would refuse to accept their diplomatic immunity after a period long enough to pack and take a flight out of the country. At this point we might either press criminal charges or forcibly kick them out of the country if they didn't leave of their own accord. Being PNG'd is embarassing and career damaging enough for a diplomat without further indignaties so they generally leave quietly.
Once outside the embassy then Ecauador couldn't request Assange be extradited. Extradition is a process that is simply used when somebody commits a crime in one jurisdiction and then flees beyond the short arm of the law. The long arm of law then comes into effect and the police in the jurisdiction the criminal has flad to arrest the suspect, check to see if there is reasonable cause to assume that the criminal is in fact a criminal and then extradite them to face justice in the country they committed the offense in.
If somebody did "kidnap" Assange and drag him outside the door to be arrested then personally were I them then i'd avoid going on holiday to Ecaudor, however I doubt they'd face charges in the UK as there are precedents going back half a millenia when people have (while abroad) dragged a wanted criminal aboard a ship and sailed back to the UK and handed them over to the police and ultimately the courts. In no case that I can think of has anybody ever faced charges in the UK for delivering a wanted fugitive evading justice to a British court. I think British courts have declined to extradite people who have dragged somebody onto a British ship in the past, but frankly I can't think of any cases of embassies being invaded to drag somebody out and there is no real way of predicting what the judge would decide if an extradition request was put before him.
Personally, I doubt they'd be extradited though. The justice seceratery has a veto IIRC which he'd probably use if it came down to it given the government efforts put into persuading the ecuadorians to hand him over in the first place.
If it was entirely UK law then they certainly wouldn't face any charges whatsoever, since making a citizens arrest in a situation where a police constable cannot is perfectly legal.
There are international treaties that basically restrict how a hosting nation can treat an overseas embassy.
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fucking quid we (the tax payer who really doesn't give a shit about the silver haired little fuck-twat) have had to shell out. How many nurses, doctors, houses, other noble causes could we have funded with that amount of money?? Beggars belief. We should just break in, extract the little shit, pay for the damage (how much does a door cost!) and let the Swedes take him...
Makes my shit itch so see such a waste of good money....
Furthermore (whilst my shit is itching) how can I survive, rent a house, drive a decent car and have a nice toy box for 20k a year and that twat is costing 3.3 mill a year!!!!
Furthermore (whilst my shit is itching) how can I survive, rent a house, drive a decent car and have a nice toy box for 20k a year and that twat is costing 3.3 mill a year!!!!
Simple... you don't have 24/7 police protection around your house. If you did, than add the 3.3 mill a year to the cost. However, by not having that 3.3 mill expense, you're free to come and go whenever you want and to anyplace you want. The twit is stuck on his couch.
1) He gives interviews on a regular basis to visitors to the embassy.
2) To assist his escape would be ... pretty much illegal I think.
3) I'm sure the plods outside would notice, given that's all they are there to do
4) Where's he going to go? Good luck getting out of the country without anyone noticing.
5) Definitely, supremely, absolutely resisting arrest - even if hiding in the embassy wasn't enough.
One night, pump in knockout gas while they are all asleep.
Pick the lock (or maybe keys could be accessed from the buildings owners - is it leasehold?).
Drag out Mr Assange, still in his pyjamas, deposit him somewhere nearby.
When he comes to and tries to get back, capture him and announce he was caught while sleepwalking.
All the others who were asleep and knocked out, will have the affects wear off and wake up normally?
Might have to sort out some security camera footage too - maybe a power cut as an easy option? Arrange a few in the days running up to the event, just to get people used to the idea.
Could do all that for less than a week's worth of police cover.
Or is this too evil?
"Assange is a hero who is fighting for your right to post your ridiculous, media-influenced comments in this forum. You should all be on his side."
total bollocks. He's a media obsessed paranoid narcistic dilletante obsessed with self-promotion who has created a severe security risk to the free world.
He should be locked away in a small room with bad food and bad ventilation and never allowed out to see the light of day again
Assange has shown that he only stands for Assange. Assange enter the embassy while out on bail after losing his extradition hearings, about two weeks before he was to be sent to Sweden. The authorities in the UK expected him to uphold his bail condition, or at least his sureties force them to. Those sureties had to admit that they could not do that resulting in all of them losing money. Refusing to present himself to the court when requested will also result in Assange losing money, but also spending time in jail. He has created a situation where during his hearing on the punish he should get that he might not get bail (as he does not deserve that privilege).
These people cheer-leading Assange have done him no service.