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posted by martyb on Monday July 23 2018, @08:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-much-has-he-paid-for-room&board? dept.

Ecuador Will Imminently Withdraw Asylum for Julian Assange and Hand Him Over to the UK. What Comes Next?

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 23 2018, @04:16PM (2 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday July 23 2018, @04:16PM (#711288)

    You sound scarily detached, like it won't matter to you, or most people, how this goes down.

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Monday July 23 2018, @11:50PM (1 child)

    by edIII (791) on Monday July 23 2018, @11:50PM (#711488)

    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.

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    • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 25 2018, @07:52PM

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday July 25 2018, @07:52PM (#712618) Journal

      > 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.