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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 14 2019, @11:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the now-you-don't-see-it,-now-you-do? dept.

Swedish prosecutor reopens Assange rape investigation, will seek extradition

Sweden's state prosecutor said on Monday she would reopen an investigation into a rape allegation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and seek his extradition from Britain.

Prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson told a news conference she would continue and conclude a preliminary investigation that was dropped in 2017 without charges being brought as Assange had taken refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

[...] The Swedish prosecutor's office said it would shortly request Assange be detained in his absence on probable cause for an allegation of rape and that it would issue a European arrest warrant - the process under which his extradition would be sought.

Please extradite me to Sweden and not the U.S.?

Also at BBC:

Wikileaks said the reopening of the rape case would give Assange "a chance to clear his name". "There has been considerable political pressure on Sweden to reopen their investigation, but there has always been political pressure surrounding this case," its editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said in a statement.

A lawyer for Assange told Swedish broadcaster SVT that the decision was "embarrassing for Sweden", adding that his client wanted to resolve the case but feared being extradited to the US.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by mrchew1982 on Tuesday May 14 2019, @11:56AM (5 children)

    by mrchew1982 (3565) on Tuesday May 14 2019, @11:56AM (#843365)

    More likely that the UK is going to stand by their principles and won't extradite him to the US directly, so they have to go with plan B and send him to Sweden first.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday May 14 2019, @12:09PM

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 14 2019, @12:09PM (#843369) Journal

    I figure he'll arrive in Stockholm and go straight from the plane head first into a sack and across the tarmac to another plane standing by with the engines running.

    The Swedes have had this case open three times now over, what, nine years already. Neither woman was interested in pressing charges, the whole investigation is made up by the second prosecutor. So the main goal of this case may just be ongoing harrassment and fodder to keep Wikileaks and its successes out of the day's press and thus out of collective memory. You see a lot of tools around on social control media using those inaccurate articles to further smear him and build up quite a narrative of falsehoods.

    Assuming on the other hand that he does not go into a sack, it might be possible to put the whole Swedish mess behind him [craigmurray.org.uk] and the press can move on.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 14 2019, @01:41PM (3 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 14 2019, @01:41PM (#843403) Journal

    Extradition treaties are important. It's possible that if the UK agrees to extradition straight to the US, there will be conditions attached, that the US doesn't want to accept. And, probably Sweden won't attach those conditions. And, yes, your idea as well - it allows the UK to claim the moral high ground. "But, WE didn't give Assange to the Americans! WE are concerned about every person's human rights - even those we don't consider human!"

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by ledow on Tuesday May 14 2019, @03:01PM (2 children)

      by ledow (5567) on Tuesday May 14 2019, @03:01PM (#843430) Homepage

      Sweden has to ask UK permission to further extradite him, and they are bound by substantially the same laws as the UK are.

      It's almost like the whole "EU is one big place" laws actually benefit in this instance (and 99.99% of all other instances, but who's counting).

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday May 14 2019, @07:22PM

        by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Tuesday May 14 2019, @07:22PM (#843545) Journal

        It may be something as simple as the prosecutor legitimately wants to take him back and complete the rape charge investigation. That's possible.

        Anything past that, though, is something neither you nor I are likely to fully understand the machinations of unless you have specialist knowledge in international politics and jurisprudence.

        Perhaps because of EU policy it might be easier to get him over to Sweden where he might be detained longer and/or it gives a card to play if the US attempt stalls - it only has so long before Assange's sentence expires on the bail jumping. Perhaps Sweden's laws on conspiracy are more favorable to proving what Assange is alleged to have done is a crime there (an essential element of extradition - proof that the alleged law broken is a crime in the extraditing country as well).

        Maybe the US wants him extradited to Sweden so they can pull an extraterritorial interception and just take him - the US has tried that before [wikipedia.org], and has become more expert at it [wikipedia.org] since the botched first attempt. Things get ever so much dicier once a vessel (air or sea) is in international territory.

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      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 14 2019, @09:30PM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday May 14 2019, @09:30PM (#843598) Journal

        So what you are saying is that Brexit has to happen before the UK can join the US in violating international human rights laws?