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from the how-much-has-he-paid-for-room&board? dept.
Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno traveled to London on Friday for the ostensible purpose of speaking at the 2018 Global Disabilities Summit (Moreno has been using a wheelchair since being shot in a 1998 robbery attempt). The concealed, actual purpose of the President's trip is to meet with British officials to finalize an agreement under which Ecuador will withdraw its asylum protection of Julian Assange, in place since 2012, eject him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and then hand over the WikiLeaks founder to British authorities.
Moreno's itinerary also notably includes a trip to Madrid, where he will meet with Spanish officials still seething over Assange's denunciation of human rights abuses perpetrated by Spain's central government against protesters marching for Catalonia independence. Almost three months ago, Ecuador blocked Assange from accessing the internet, and Assange has not been able to communicate with the outside world ever since. The primary factor in Ecuador's decision to silence him was Spanish anger over Assange's tweets about Catalonia. A source close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the President's office, unauthorized to speak publicly, has confirmed to the Intercept that Moreno is close to finalizing, if he has not already finalized, an agreement to hand over Assange to the UK within the next several weeks. The withdrawal of asylum and physical ejection of Assange could come as early as this week. On Friday, RT reported that Ecuador was preparing to enter into such an agreement.
[...] The central oddity of Assange's case – that he has been effectively imprisoned for eight years despite never having been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime – is virtually certain to be prolonged once Ecuador hands him over to the U.K. Even under the best-case scenario, it appears highly likely that Assange will continue to be imprisoned by British authorities. The only known criminal proceeding Assange currently faces is a pending 2012 arrest warrant for "failure to surrender" – basically a minor bail violation that arose when he obtained asylum from Ecuador rather than complying with bail conditions by returning to court for a hearing on his attempt to resist extradition to Sweden. That offense carries a prison term of three months and a fine, though it is possible that the time Assange has already spent in prison in the UK could be counted against that sentence. In 2010, Assange was imprisoned in Wandsworth Prison, kept in isolation, for 10 days until he was released on bail; he was then under house arrest for 550 days at the home of a supporter.
Assange's lawyer, Jen Robinson, told the Intercept that he would argue that all of that prison time already served should count toward (and thus completely fulfill) any prison term imposed on the "failure to surrender" charge, though British prosecutors would almost certainly contest that claim. Assange would also argue that he had a reasonable, valid basis for seeking asylum rather than submitting to UK authorities: namely, well-grounded fear that he would be extradited to the U.S. for prosecution for the act of publishing documents.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 23 2018, @11:33AM (10 children)
I doubt that your dream scenario would happen. If there's one thing that's consistent about Trump, Trump cares most about helping Trump, and pardoning Assange doesn't do that.
There are two possibilities:
1. Assange is indeed completely innocent in the whole Trump-Russia stuff. That's possible. If so, Trump has no reason whatsoever to help Assange, so he'll let the "deep state" claim his scalp to make them feel better.
2. Assange is, as the DNC has been claiming all along, part of a criminal conspiracy to aid the Trump campaign. If so, Trump has every reason to shut him up as quickly as possible, which means killing him. And the "deep state" will surely support that effort.
Assange's problem amounts to the fact that the very nature of what he does means he pisses off powerful people. During the George W Bush administration, he pissed off the Republican establishment and the US military. During the 2016 campaign, he pissed off the Democratic establishment. So that means there's nobody with political power to defend his treatment, no matter how unjust. As in, I wouldn't be all that surprised if the moment he leaves the Ecuador embassy, he's shot and killed by somebody who is never caught.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @01:46PM (1 child)
He could become "The man in the iron mask" of Gitmo.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 23 2018, @02:48PM
That's what you do to somebody that you want to say what a torturer wants them to say. It's not what you do to someone you want to never talk.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday July 23 2018, @02:50PM (3 children)
You sound scarily detached, like it won't matter to you, or most people, how this goes down.
Whistleblowers need lots and lots of protection. It's possible Assange slipped with the women in Sweden, and his enemies merely seized upon the mistake as a means to arrest and silence him. But it seems more likely that they are part of a dirty plot, twisted or even planted to discredit him, same way that cops plant guns on dead victims of excessive police force. If you think that doesn't happen in this day and age, consider what happened to Greg Palast: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1108/S00143/how-morgans-fabricated-story-almost-ruined-this-reporter.htm [scoop.co.nz]
We the people are their last line of defense. People need to step up. Let the powerful know that we won't stand for it when they try to harass, intimidate, discredit, and silence whistleblowers. Remind them, over and over, that Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange are heroes, and we won't swallow their slime that paints them as criminals and traitors.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 23 2018, @04:16PM (2 children)
Not detached. More like I can already see where this is going, know full well that there are people with power who want Assange either killed or tortured as an example to others who might dare to do what he did, and will not play by any rules other than their own. What those folks want to do is completely illegal under the EU Conventions on Human Rights, the US Constitution, and UK law, but that doesn't matter in this situation.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday July 23 2018, @11:50PM (1 child)
Cat is out of the bag though. Wikileaks is not the only game in town, and journalists everywhere are extremely interested in those whistleblowing platforms.
Taking out Assange is meaningless. It won't stop Wikileaks from continuing on, and it doesn't stop any other whistleblower platform from operating.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 25 2018, @07:52PM
> Taking out Assange is meaningless
I disagree. It would certainly scare and chill other potential whistleblowers and journalists, if he was murdered by a nation state and the people at the levers of power who made that decision get away with it, maybe framing some deranged loner to take the fall. So long as it's a safe bet that if any such agency tries it, the perps will be identified, removed from power, tried, convicted and imprisoned, Assange should be fairly safe from that, or so we hope. And also, we hope they have some morals and a conscience, as well as the sense to realize it's a bad idea.
Think how rare it is for the leaders of a nation to attempt to assassinate the leaders of another nation, or any other public figure. They know if they try that, they put huge targets on their own backs. Might be the target of dozens of plots by a coalition of leaders feeling their own necks, wanting the wild and uncivilized murderers stopped before they can knock off anyone else.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday July 23 2018, @03:06PM (2 children)
The people he's pissed off most likely recognize that shooting him would make a martyr of him and thus give over power that cannot be taken away. As would an extraordinary rendition. They'll be quite happy if he is put in gaol or tied up civilly for something entirely unrelated to the issue at hand, I'm sure.
And there's a big difference between being a willing pawn knowing one is part of a conspiracy, being manipulated by others but not being a willfully cooperating agent in a conspiracy, and a dupe who's being used without being aware of it. Not in the product, but in the end result. I'm easily wrong but I believe Assange fits into the second category. He might be part of a pattern of conspiracy but he's not having sit downs with Trump's people plotting the DNC's Doom. Thus he doesn't know enough to be worth taking out (other than as above).
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday July 24 2018, @02:42AM (1 child)
Perhaps, he could be conveniently poisoned by the President Putin himself using some new scary substance?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:56PM
He could, if he knocks over Russia's dolly or the Trump-Putin bromance is consummated that way. (I wonder, does Russia have the same "problem(s)" with Wikileaks? Never thought about that one before.)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Monday July 23 2018, @05:34PM
Mueller has been going hard after Roger Stone lately. He recently has called in a lot of his friends and associates to give testimony. The connection that he's trying to make is that Stone colluded with Russians to hack the DNC, then handed the emails to Assange to publish.
So I see this happening:
Get your popcorn ready.
Will Trump issue a pardon at that point? Maybe, but Assange is so hated by the establishment politicians on both sides such a move would almost guarantee a successful impeachment.
I am a crackpot