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posted by janrinok on Tuesday March 26 2024, @02:52PM   Printer-friendly

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68662881

The US must provide assurances that Julian Assange will not receive the death penalty if convicted, before a UK court rules on whether he can appeal against his extradition.

The court has adjourned its decision by three weeks to give the US government time to comply.

US authorities say the Wikileaks founder endangered lives by publishing thousands of classified documents.

His lawyers have argued that the case is form of "state retaliation".

In a High Court judgment on Tuesday, Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Johnson said that Mr Assange would be able to bring an appeal on three grounds, unless assurances were given by the United States.

These assurances are that the 52-year-old would be protected by and allowed to rely on the First Amendment - which protects freedom of speech in the US; that he would not be "prejudiced at trial" due to his nationality; and that he would not face the death penalty if he is convicted.

Judges have given the US authorities three weeks to make those assurances, with a final hearing potentially taking place on 20 May.

"If assurances are not given then we will grant leave to appeal without a further hearing," said Dame Victoria in the court's ruling.

"If assurances are given then we will give the parties an opportunity to make further submissions before we make a final decision on the application for leave to appeal."

See also: Julian Assange faces further wait over extradition ruling

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday March 26 2024, @05:55PM (3 children)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Tuesday March 26 2024, @05:55PM (#1350460)

    Wikileaks is kind of toothless

    Revealing the truth only has an effect if people are outraged by the truth and demand justice and change.

    But nobody is outraged anymore: there has been such an onslaught of injustive and dystopia in the past 2 decades that most people have just given up. All you get when you reveal to people the staggeringly amoral and anticonstitutional things their government, the TLAs and the military do with their tax money is apathy.

    Nobody cares anymore. Or rather, they would care if they didn't feel crushed by the sheer about of it. People rightfully feel steamrolled and they just don't fight anymore.

    Case in point: remember Watergate? Nixon lost his seat over this. It was a huge scandal. Watergate wouldn't even be a minor news item on page 3 of your local newspaper in 2024: nowadays, a former president who's being sued for tax evasion, sex scandal and attempting a coup is running for a second term and nobody bats an eyelid. Can you imagine this in 1974? I was there back then, and I can tell you, the streets would have erupted in demonstrations across the country for months.

    So yeah, Wikileaks is toothless because whatever is has to reveal is pretty much ignored by everybody.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2024, @08:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2024, @08:00PM (#1350481)

    Nixon lost his seat over this.

    Ultimately replaced by Reagan, an administration full of scandals, nothing but feigned outrage there. So here we are, going from bad to worse, ever since Kennedy died. Nothing really has changed except we don't try to hide it anymore, kinda difficult with this internet thingy.

    Oh, and nobody was outraged during Chile's 9/11, done by the CIA, widely known even at the time. What became of the Church Committee in '75? Nothing, some name changes. Iran/Contra? Meh...

    There's more to Watergate than just a silly break-in, could have been a cover for his treason back in '68 [historynewsnetwork.org]

    Wikileaks is toothless, so were the Pentagon Papers, neither upset the apple cart, just a lot of noise

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Tuesday March 26 2024, @09:04PM (1 child)

    by quietus (6328) on Tuesday March 26 2024, @09:04PM (#1350488) Journal

    Disagree. Wikileaks is toothless because it is pointless.

    It is pointless, because the real problems are out there in the open, instead of hidden away in "secrets".

    Take that high-watermark of Wikileaks-reveal: an Apache helicopter "lighting up" some people in a street in Bagdad, because they felt like it. A few dudes in killer machines, high on Hollywood war hero propaganda, wasn't the problem with the whole Iraq invasion.

    The problem with the Iraq invasion was that their was no valid reason for the invasion in the first place, and secondly, even if the Iraqis would have welcomed the US military with flowers and sweets, that their wasn't a damn plan at all about what to do once the glorious camera-victory was won: nothing about how they were going to deal with the infrastructure rebuild, the food supply, public services and the officials who had manned these. Nothing at all.

    You wouldn't know that when you read the quality newspapers, ofcourse: they were too busy whipping themselves into outrage about the Wikileaks "revelations". In the meantime, US Congressman Henry S. Waxman was bringing these issues to the fore through the House Budget and Oversight Committee, but he couldn't get more than a few alinea's in the New York Times, 3 or 4 days after the Hearing -- and only in reaction to the colleagues of the UK's Financial Times reporting about it.

    Wikileaks was nothing more than a convenient and entertaining distraction, which quite possibly made life even more miserable for Iraqis, and the rest of the world.

    • (Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Tuesday March 26 2024, @11:37PM

      by loonycyborg (6905) on Tuesday March 26 2024, @11:37PM (#1350505)

      It wasn't pointless. All US war exist to give it some sort of advantage be it in global trade or just to remind everyone they still could kick ass despite Vietnam. Many people in US itself wouldn't agree with this but it isn't most important issue on elections.