Julian Assange extradition to US blocked by UK court

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55528241

by layer8 • 6 years ago

419 133 6 years ago

sneak6• 6 years ago

I don't suppose that this opens up the door to challenging other US extradition requests based on the appalling track record of human rights and standards of care in US prisons, in which rape, murder, and torture are not only common but widely culturally accepted as part of the standard punitive aspects of imprisonment?

How do european (or perhaps just the UK's) legal system(s) work in that regard?

I have a lot of hope that this is a first crack appearing in the western cultural monolith; at some point civilized countries will have to somewhat politically break from the US so long as the US continues its domestic institutional torture programs (american prisons and the tradition of extended solitary confinement) and human rights violations (capital punishment). With luck that means that MLAT will eventually start to be unenforceable.

rory_isAdonk• 6 years ago

Pretty much the same reasoning was used in another case.

I wouldn't be surprised if this had gone very differently had Trump won.

sneak6• 6 years ago

I don't understand the second part of your comment.

rsynnott2• 6 years ago

I mean, how much pressure do you think Trump can put on a British judge? Or the British political establishment, for that matter? The British judiciary is quite independent; for evidence see the various cases that the government lost over Brexit.

Normille• 6 years ago

  >How do european (or perhaps just the UK's) legal system(s) work in that regard?

The general rule is that the laws by which other nations have to abide and the standards other nations have to meet don't apply when the USA is involved.

I seriously had to read the headline twice, to make sure I'd got it right, I was so stunned at the UK not kowtowing to the US, as a matter of course.

sneak6• 6 years ago

I, too, am surprised. Perhaps the US has given up on threatening his custodians to get their way, now that so much damage has already been done to Assange, both in the embassy and now in Belmarsh.

I still wonder what the CIA must have done to get those Swedish prosecutors to spin all of that bullshit for the original arrest warrant.

I'd also have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the phone calls were made to those in charge of European airspace when Morales' jet was forcibly grounded over Austria for no reason other than the US incorrectly suspected Snowden being aboard.

ForHackernews• 6 years ago

I suspect it's because Trump is so staggeringly unpopular outside the USA. American soft power has taken a massive hit with this presidency, and there's domestic political upside to being seen to publicly rebuke the Trump administration - and since he's leaving, there's no foreign policy downside.

matthewheath• 6 years ago

It would require a judgment from the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court to be able to use this to challenge any future extradition requests from the US.

This is because binding precedent is only set by the appellate courts and while this judgment is persuasive, other judges sitting in this court can ignore it since they're not bound to follow it.

sneak6• 6 years ago

This is precisely the thing I wanted to know. Thank you!

heraclius• 6 years ago

A High Court judgment would also bind lower courts, including the Magistrates’ Court.

lawtalkinghuman2• 6 years ago

Deciding whether under s91 of the Extradition Act, "the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him", is a very fact-specific issue rather than a legal question though.

The appellate courts are generally there to resolve legal questions not factual ones—I'd question the Assange case, or other similar cases would raise a similar legal rather than factual question.

There has been a trend towards applying s91 cases for defendants with autism spectrum disorders: the courts didn't in Gary McKinnon's case, but the Home Secretary (Theresa May, before she became PM) justified her denial of the extradition order on that basis. In Lauri Love's case, the magistrates' court allowed the extradition order but it was overturned on appeal in the High Court on the basis of Love's not being able to cope in US custody with Asperger's syndrome. In the Assange case, the magistrates' court followed this established and rather persuasive precedent.

mschuster91• 6 years ago

How do european (or perhaps just the UK's) legal system(s) work in that regard?

It's actually European law that's binding here, and extradition / deportation denials based on human rights concerns are nothing new - there have been bans on deportations even to EU members such as Greece (https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/Y-300-Z-BECKR...) or Hungary (https://www.keienborg.de/2018/02/19/die-12-kammer-des-vg-due...).

lawtalkinghuman2• 6 years ago

For clarity: European Convention (and Court) of Human Rights law, not EU.

There's post-Brexit significance since the UK continues to be a signatory to the ECHR even though they've now left the EU. Being an ECHR signatory is a requirement of being in the EU, not vice versa. (Countries like Turkey and Russia are also ECHR signatories.)

rsynnott2• 6 years ago

It's somewhat common for extradition to the US to be denied on these sorts of grounds; this is by no means the first time it has happened.

praptak• 6 years ago

Discussion on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25629801

nailer• 6 years ago

Also from the Telepgraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/04/julian-assange-c...

aritmo• 6 years ago

...only because his treatment in the US would be inhumane.

And nothing else.

WhyNotHugo• 6 years ago

The timing is amusing.

There's currently a lot of criticism towards China for arresting journalists investigating controversial topics.

At the same time, the US is doing literally the same thing, little to no backlash.

ketamine__5• 6 years ago

It's hardly comparable unless you believe that anything a journalist discovers through illegal means is publishable.

pizza234• 6 years ago

Journalists are arrested in China on legal grounds as well. Such laws are arguable/unjust from a typically western perspective, but are formally legal nonetheless.

The question is therefore not legality in itself, but whether the (US) laws themselves are sensible and/or egalitarian. It's implied by the OP that they aren't (and I personally agree).

mLuby3• 6 years ago

If it's illegal to know a thing ("it's classified") then you're kind of stuck, right?

Governments hold a monopoly on Force, not a monopoly on Truth.

boibombeiro• 6 years ago

I think this changes from country to country. For instance, Gleen Greenwald published illegally obtained conversation in Brazil and had any investigation on how he obtained the data suspended by supreme court. Later was found out that his source was a politician that had interest in the leak, and she also claimed was doing "jornalism work" to avoid legal repercussions. As long you claim to be journalist you have carte blanche.

Not sure if this would play the same in America.

dougmwne5• 6 years ago

Nothing ever happens in the USA without internal criticism. It is a cacophony of political discourse. Comparing us to China, "literally", is so off base that it makes your post look in bad faith.

pulse7• 6 years ago

We know there is "freedom of speech" in the US and that there is no such thing in China. But with Assange, the US "freedom of speech" is diverging to the China's "no freedom of speech". Maybe the "internal criticism" you mentioned will follow soon...

lhorie3• 6 years ago

Not trying to argue in bad faith, but why is it all that different if the outcome of legal avenues is effectively the same? It's not like joe schmoe tweeting about their outrage will change how the law is interpreted or what constitutes legal precedent.

One could argue that a cacophony of opinions spanning the entire spectrum of possibilities isn't necessarily much better than having no freedom of press, if the end result is people literally believing deceptive propaganda, as opposed to merely being afraid of voicing informed, dissenting opinions.

IMHO, patriotism should be about defending the values of a country and calling out BS when it's appropriate, instead of merely defending the country's name without concern for the substance of the criticism.

kobalsky• 6 years ago

There's a southpark episode about this specific scenario. The USA does a ton of awful shit, but as long as there is an outraged group, it's fine in the eyes of the world. They keep doing it though.

curation4• 6 years ago

Fully accepting this, can you give me one example in the past 20 years that this cacophony of political discourse led to changes in political economy in the Western World for those who have no inherited wealth?

nafizh• 6 years ago

Coming from a third world country, whenever I see someone contrasting human rights abuses of US and China, I instantly realize the person was born and bred in the west, and does not have a meaningful realization of the level of depravity that can exist. Not saying US doesn't have his problems, it has plenty. But comparing to China is, at risk of being flippant, laughable.

lhorie3• 6 years ago

I read it as a commentary on where the US could hypothetically end up if one just lets morals to erode slowly without bounds.

Obviously comparing in terms of absolute metrics is not going to be very similar since US and China are very different countries, but at the same time, if the hypothetical came to pass, it wouldn't be the first time in history that a "modern", "powerful" country fell into ruin.

dkdk82833• 6 years ago

As someone who is from the west every time I mention the potential depravity of China it’s met with denial or question - even sometimes here.

samirillian• 6 years ago

coming from a third world country

Is it possible you also view the US with a certain rosey bias? Check out any of a bunch of major metrics, like murder, infant mortality, homelessness, healthcare, police brutality, and it must be said Covid mortality. Visit the south side of Chicago. If all you can say is "at least it is better than China, a third world country," then you aren't saying much, and in plenty of cases it actually isn't true.

AnthonyMouse2• 6 years ago

Coming from a third world country, whenever I see someone contrasting human rights abuses of US and China, I instantly realize the person was born and bred in the west, and does not have a meaningful realization of the level of depravity that can exist.

The purpose of these comparisons is to identify the similarity to the behavior of a country known to be worse. "China is worse." Yes, that's the point. We don't want to be like them, so we have to stop being like them.

publicola1990• 6 years ago

Coming from the 3rd world, I don't find GPs thought that laughable.

US constantly meddles in other countries affairs, and has scant regard for international organizations.

Abu Gharib is not so far behind us. Nor is indiscriminate drone attacks which may have caused massive amounts of collateral damage.

Despite the sentiment here, US simply does not have a good image in most of the 3rd world.

Even walking out of Paris Climate Deal does not give much credence to the view that US is willing to coexist and cooperate with other nations.

warninglights2• 6 years ago

Whenever I see someone blindly assume everything is worse in China which just reached its goal of eliminated poverty for its massive population, I realize that person is a Trumpster

screye• 6 years ago

Yep. Response to protests in the US is greeted with rubber bullets, lost eyesight, and maybe broken bones.

Response to protests in China leads to people being crushed into literal chutney, and deaths in the 10s of thousands. That was the nature of deaths in tiananmen square, the photos of which often do not get shown in western media.[1]

[1] https://www.aboluowang.com/2008/0529/89034.html (Warning: NSFL/Gore/Human remains )

____

The US has a lot to work on, but comparing it to China is a false equivalency.

edit: if this comment comes off as too emotionally charged/ visual, the mods can feel free to delete it.

ggggtez• 6 years ago

Actually I think the posters who make that false equivalence are often of Chinese sympathy. Whether they know they are doing false equivalence is a matter of debate.

I've heard people compare the imprisonment, re-education, forced labor, and organ harvesting of Uigher minorities in China today to the US internment of japanese in the 1940s.

Needless to say, both are bad, but if you need to reach back 75+ years in US history to find a comparable example, then the difference between the level of civil rights abuse in the two countries should be crystal clear.

It's obvious on the surface that the US still has many problems, but government sanctioned organ harvesting isn't one of them.

erdos4d• 6 years ago

Coming from the US, it astounds me how uninformed people from third world countries are about the US and its staggering record of human rights abuses. I do understand that Hollywood and such are one hell of a marketing dept, but you are aware that the US has more Black people in cages than China has Uighurs, yes? I mean, when we're talking about how many lives each is destroying on a daily basis, I think they look pretty comparable.

ekianjo• 6 years ago

the US is doing literally the same thing

The same thing, really? Like picking organs on political opponents in prisons? I didn't know the US was doing that.

dimitrios1• 6 years ago

Assange is responsible for compromising US Diplomatic relations, placing diplomats and, along with Snowden, informants in actual real life danger, and breaking countless US and international laws. To compare the two is laughable. (aside: This single side of this issue is overrepresented here and in tech circles in general. Talk to an FBI agent or a diplomat sometime that was working on key issues to hear their takes to at least balance the perspective.)

hutzlibu• 6 years ago

How and where did Snowden put informants at danger?

Shivetya• 6 years ago

well compared to the previous Administration this one did not arrest any journalist nor set the IRS upon them. Now this dog did bark a lot.

curation4• 6 years ago

Agreed. I would add to this, after reading through the comments, that there is a naive idea of how a civilization or order works. The question is not whether or not we are worse in the west than China, but why we need the supplement of China to maintain the coherence of our order. If we are in fact reacting to timing and criticism to China, how come, as superpower, the US even compares itself in any way? In what ways do we create China/Russia/X as enemy to crisis manage the collapse in the belief of the goodness in the West? The current line of thought across all platforms about China ask questions that guarantee no answers save for reactions and war.

code4tee• 6 years ago

This comes up every time Assange comes up. He’s not being prosecuted for being a journalist. The US has very strong protections for journalism that stand up to just about anywhere—-and honestly look great compared to things that have happened in the UK. Assange is charged with actively working to steal classified information.

There’s a huge difference between A) someone gets classified information through nefarious means and shares that with a journalist, and B) “journalist” actively works to steal said classified documents. This case is about “B” not “A” but yet we keep seeing people trying to make the argument that this is some sort of attack on journalism. That’s a gross misrepresentation of the basic facts in this case.

stonogo• 6 years ago

Ask Jack Ma about this false equivalence.

The US is attempting to extradite someone for trial, not trying to harvest his organs.

seanmcdirmid• 6 years ago

I think this is different. China just sends their people to other countries to abduct people whose speech they don't agree with (e.g. how they got that Swedish citizen in Thailand). The USA actually has to go through a legal process.

bythckr2• 6 years ago

Of late there has been lot of chatter regarding ppl like Edward Snowden trying to get Trump to pardon Assange. Considering the pardon spree that Trump is on, I was hoping Assange would get pardoned.

I see this as UK stalling till Biden comes in power. They fear Trump might just pardon him.

ed25519FUUU2• 6 years ago

That was my initial thought as well. Placate everyone until the threat of a Trump pardon is in the rear-view mirror.

Fjolsvith• 6 years ago

The crazy thing is that Trump hasn't even come close to previous administrations in number of pardons or clemency, nor even the types of offenders who were granted leniency.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/24/so-far-trum...

However, I would like to see Assange pardoned. I'm sure he has some interesting information he hasn't yet released.

klyrs• 6 years ago

That article was written almost a month before Trump's recent pardons, and only tallies through FY2020, ending Sept 30. In the meantime, trump has pardoned war criminals and several people who have done crimes on his behalf. In pretty much everything I've read on the subject, that is not the average sort of offender who is granted leniency.

A lack of a large number of pardons is no surprise, really. By all appearances, he's pardoning his partners in crime and war criminals. Traditionally, pardons are granted to folks who haven't gotten a fair shake, or whose sentences are disproportionate to their crimes. Contrast the number of pardons with the recent spree of executions -- this is all in line with the "tough on crime" narrative. Forget about justice, the goal is brutality and death to the enemy.

c0nducktr• 6 years ago

Why would Trump consider Edward Snowden's opinion on pardoning Assange, and where is this chatter? Trump has never been supportive of Snowden in the past, as far as I have read.

chrisco2553• 6 years ago

He's never been vocally against either one. He has been asked about it and has suggested that he is considering it and recognizes that a lot of people think he should, but has never said one way or another.

bythckr2• 6 years ago

There was tweet from Snowden - https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1334608745192677380.

Chatter has been at couple of discord servers I am on. It has been going on for long. But since Biden's win, it has picked up steam.

Trump has always avoided the whole Snowden Assange wikileaks saga - for a guy with too much to say, it's interesting to note.

Obama was quite tough on Snowden and Biden will continue. Trump will just do it out of spite against Obama & Dems and also hoping to get more followers with good hacking skills. Trump will do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.

willis936• 6 years ago

The federal crimes have already been committed. Trump has authority to pardon him prior to charges being made.

kotxig• 6 years ago

Pretty sure the UK reduced cooperation with the US after it refused to extradite Anne Sacoolas to face fair trial in the UK after accidentally killing Harry Dunn.

cletus• 6 years ago

So I have a few thoughts on Assange:

1. I think the US has pretty much succeeded in their goal of essentially canceling Julian Assange. Being holed up for years in the Ecuadorian Embassy had to have taken a toll mentally. As much as some might say it's not prison, it effectively is.

2. There's an interesting question of where the line is between journalist and not journalist. As much as some might argue otherwise, being a "journalist" doesn't mean you can break the law. And yes there's a difference between publishing classified material that comes to you vs actively engaging in, supporting and enabling the behaviour that led to obtaining that material. Assange clearly had prior knowledge of Manning's actions and was more of an accomplice. Being a "journalist" isn't a defense here, at least not a legal one;

3. Here's my other issue with treating Assange as a journalist: he was clearly playing politics. You saw this in the Democratic email hacking and publication. This undermines the whole theory that Wikileaks was somehow different, impartial or open. It is and always was another tool to further a political end. At some point you aren't a journalist anymore;

4. The UK court upheld all the prosecution's points of law so it really was simply a matter of health grounds. I honestly don't know how an appeals court will treat that. I guess we'll see.

5. Interestingly I think Brexit works against Assange here. I don't believe this case can be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (or Justice?). Obviously the UK isn't in the EU anymore but I don't know the law well enough here. Like it might be that the case was brought while the UK was an EU member so it's possible the ECHR/ECJ has jurisdiction? Probably not but it's not impossible.

6. It's unlikely the incoming Biden administration is going to be sympathetic towards Assange. There's probably no will to spend political capital on that and the Democrats are probably still made about Assange's (active) role in the email hacking and the 2016 election.

ed25519FUUU2• 6 years ago

Here's my other issue with treating Assange as a journalist: he was clearly playing politics. You saw this in the Democratic email hacking and publication. This undermines the whole theory that Wikileaks was somehow different, impartial or open. It is and always was another tool to further a political end. At some point you aren't a journalist anymore;

How should 2016 Bernie supporters feel seeing the leaked emails showing the establishment conspiring against him? “Political” in the pejorative really depends on which side you’re one.

Wikileaks is/was a threat to the establishment. That’s why he’s currently locked up.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/damaging-emails-dnc-wikileak...

unilynx• 6 years ago

ECHR is not an EU institution but a Council of Europe institution (not to be confused with the European Council, of course)

The ECHR still has jurisdiction over the UK, at least until the UK cancels the relevant treaties which it now can do outside the EU

mariusor• 6 years ago

Addressing point 2 from your post: during the extradition hearing, a couple of witnesses declared that sometimes journalists are actively helping sources to avoid detection. See on Craig's Murray blog[1], I remember Daniel Ellsberg also had a similar comment but I can't find it at the moment:

Lewis You have as a journalist merely been the passive recipient of official information. Presumably you have never done anything criminal to obtain government information?
Hager You said “passive”. That is not the way we work. Journalists not only actively work our sources. We go out and find our sources. The information might come in documents. It might come on a memory stick. In most cases our sources are breaking the law. Our duty is to help protect them from being caught. We actively help them cover their backs sometimes.

In point 3 you're convinced that the timing for releasing the Democratic papers was related to undermining the presidential bid intentionally. However I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that an impartial journalist would release sooner rather than later documents that pertain to a current developing event. Withholding them would have been "actively" getting involved in the presidential election. I think the blame for the leak lays solely with the people that leaked them, not with Wikileaks or Assange.

(Also, I see that someone else already clarified the situation about the European Court of Human Rights.)

[1] https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-...

ffhhj• 6 years ago

This is so similar:

Mr McKinnon is accused of serious crimes. But there is also no doubt that he is seriously ill [...] He has Asperger's syndrome, and suffers from depressive illness. Mr McKinnon's extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr McKinnon's human rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon#British_governme...

So the UK now has 2 trading cards and the US has none to exchange them with. Also they previously disposed this card, most probably a win-win situation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jul/16/david-kelly...

Melting_Harps3• 6 years ago

Amazing! I hope he gets access to the Bitcoin funds Wikileaks got to help him cover the bail and set him on a path to recovery where he can be with all of his family and children after this horrible ordeal.

Julian has a very rating personality, that goes without saying, but I cannot see a single erson who is still alive that has done so much to help disclose these atrocious crimes to the Public and has risked his life to help other whistler blowers than him.

Our false narrative of heroes don't actually exist, and the resolve and conviction to some of the most impactful things in regards to Freedom of Information and disclosing classified information isn't going to be from some polished Captain America figure. it only makes sense it was from someone like Assange who has pretty much lived his entire life from a young age in some form of activism as a result of his Mother.

I'm going to bypass the CCP v US thing as my stance is clear and u/dang has already told me that I take things too far with little to no benefit. But suffice it to say the two are similar but not compatible systems, the US still has the ability to re-direct it's course as it slips further into abject authoritarianism where as the CCP cannot exist without it.

morelisp6• 6 years ago

I cannot see a single erson who is still alive that has done so much to help disclose these atrocious crimes to the Public and has risked his life to help other whistler blowers than him.

Well, Chelsea Manning was the actual whistleblower in this situation. She also went back to jail for refusing to testify against Assange. (Conversely Assange said he would turn himself in if Manning was given clemency, then obviously did not when her first sentence was commuted.)

Reality Winner is also still in prison, due to The Intercept's egregious mishandling of her leaks.

Melting_Harps3• 6 years ago

Well, Chelsea Manning was the actual whistleblower in this situation

Granted, Manning was the one who provided Wikileaks the files. But, lets not omit that Sara Harrison and Julian were critical in getting Edward out of Hong Kong and his gravitas made the Bitcoin community to go against Satoshi and donated to keep Wikileaks alive and made all of this possible.

Cypherpunks are not going to live up to people's ideal image but they sure as hell get a lot done. And Julian is yet another reminder of that fact.

Reality Winner is also still in prison, due to The Intercept's egregious mishandling of her leaks.

To be fair it was shared amounts of mishandling [0], which for someone who worked as an NSA contractor in cryptology related fields should have some understanding of OPSEC; but maybe she rished it and hoped they would do it on their end?

I'm not victim blaming, and the Intercept clearly dropped the ball and should have sat on it and taken care of this before running it. But this is why I think Defcon and the CCC should be mandatory watching for people in and especially in tech before anyone decides to do involved in 'hacktivism' or anything like it.

In fact, in the early days of Bitcoin they wanted to create an anonymous drop for journalists and leaders that would pay bounties to gray/white hats to do go over these kind of things, but this opened the door to so much foul play that it was dropped all together. Still, I hope Reality takes solace in knowing that Trump will be out of office when she gets out, but that her Obama bias was probably not everything she thought it was when you look at the amount of Whistleblower cases that were prosecuted.

Either way, I hope she is well and that the Intercept do the honourable thing make amends and give her a well paid role there.

0: https://xorl.wordpress.com/2017/11/21/opsec-fail-reality-win...

irrational• 6 years ago

I was wondering how old he is, thinking that he might be spending the remaining years of his life dealing with this. So I looked it up and found out he is only a year older than me. I’m honestly surprised. Just looking at him I would have guessed he was in his 70s. Maybe it’s the result of all the stress?

StavrosK• 6 years ago

I love how this comment provides no info, for all we know you're 124!

EDIT: Assange is 49, which makes the GP 48, and the mystery of his age is now solved.

nullc• 6 years ago

Maybe it’s the result of all the stress?

"Should Assange die in a UK prison, as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has warned, he will effectively have been tortured to death."

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Julian Assange extradition to US blocked by UK court

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