Wikileaks and Julian Assange (1 Viewer)

[magicbastarder]

so they get him into a car with CD plates, and the police just set up a roadblock. what next?

 

[pete]

so they get him into a car with CD plates, and the police just set up a roadblock. what next?

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[Deadmanposting]

so they get him into a car with CD plates, and the police just set up a roadblock. what next?

He goes to prison.

You'd have to think that this is how it ends for him.

 

[Psycho Punk]

Theres no limit on the size of a diplomatic pouch. Send him out in a giant one?

 

[pete]

What happened the last time a government threatened to violate an embassy to retrieve someone accused of sexual assault in a third country?

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Somebody's going to go in with a jet pack, fly him out and drop in to an inflated air bag thing from which he'll escape and make his way by boat to ecuador. with the people he knows this will be no bother.

 

[Deadmanposting]

What happened the last time a government threatened to violate an embassy to retrieve someone accused of sexual assault in a third country?

I don't think it's the charges themselves, he's in violation of his UK bail conditions.
They take a dim view of that.

He is either living there until he dies or he is going to Sweden. I don't see another option for him.


The last embassy violation I remember was for that Iranian that shot the WPC in London. Way back in the 80s.
They went in hard that time.

 

[Psycho Punk]

Maybe they'll blast the place with AC/DC at full volume to force him out.

Prominent cases of asylum-seeking at embassies
http://news.yahoo.com/prominent-cases-asylum-seeking-embassies-150636565.html
By The Associated Press | Associated Press – Wed, Jun 20, 2012

FILE - In this Thursday, May 31, …

FILE - In this Nov. 8, 1989 file …
LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has entered the Ecuador Embassy in London seeking asylum. Some prominent cases of other asylum seekers taking shelter in embassies over the years:

CHEN GUANGCHENG: 2012
Blind dissident Chen Guangcheng escaped house arrest in his Shandong village and sought refuge at the U.S. embassy in Beijing. He left after six days, and subsequently was allowed to go to New York with his wife and two children.

MANUEL NORIEGA: 1989
Manuel Noriega, military governor of Panama, sought refuge at the Apostolic Nunciature — the Vatican's embassy — after being overthrown by a U.S. invasion. Noriega surrendered 10 days later after being assured he would not face the death penalty in the United States.

FANG LIZHI: 1989
Fang Lizhi, a Chinese astrophysicist and pro-democracy activist, and his wife Li Shuxian entered the U.S. Embassy in Beijing after Chinese authorities cracked down on pro-democracy protests. They lived in the embassy for 13 months before being allowed to go to the United States.

EDWARD LEE HOWARD: 1986
Edward Lee Howard, a former CIA agent, fled to Helsinki where he went to the Soviet Embassy and was granted asylum. Howard had been identified as a KGB agent by Soviet defector Vitaly Yurchenko, who later defected back to the Soviet Union as was awarded a medal.

CUBANS IN HAVANA: 1980
Six Cubans crashed a bus through the Peruvian Embassy gates in Havana on April 1, 1980. After Peru refused to turn the asylum-seekers over to the Cuban government, Fidel Castro ordered all security guards removed from the embassy. More than 10,000 Cubans then jammed the Peruvian embassy grounds demanding asylum. Castro then opened the port of Mariel and 125,000 Cubans left the country in a chaotic exodus by boats.

SVETLANA STALIN: 1966
Svetlana Stalin, daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, went to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi while she was in India returning the ashes of her husband. She returned to the Soviet Union in 1984, saying she wanted to reunite with her family. Her Soviet citizenship was restored but she left a year later to go back to the U.S. following a family feud.

CARDINAL JOZSEF MINDSZENTY: 1956
During Hungary's Communist regime, Roman Catholic Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty lived in the U.S. Embassy in Budapest from 1956 until 1971, when he was allowed to leave for Vienna.

 

[Psycho Punk]

Maybe they'll blast the place with AC/DC at full volume to force him out.

Prominent cases of asylum-seeking at embassies
http://news.yahoo.com/prominent-cases-asylum-seeking-embassies-150636565.html
By The Associated Press | Associated Press – Wed, Jun 20, 2012

FILE - In this Thursday, May 31, …

FILE - In this Nov. 8, 1989 file …
LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has entered the Ecuador Embassy in London seeking asylum. Some prominent cases of other asylum seekers taking shelter in embassies over the years:

CHEN GUANGCHENG: 2012
Blind dissident Chen Guangcheng escaped house arrest in his Shandong village and sought refuge at the U.S. embassy in Beijing. He left after six days, and subsequently was allowed to go to New York with his wife and two children.

MANUEL NORIEGA: 1989
Manuel Noriega, military governor of Panama, sought refuge at the Apostolic Nunciature — the Vatican's embassy — after being overthrown by a U.S. invasion. Noriega surrendered 10 days later after being assured he would not face the death penalty in the United States.

FANG LIZHI: 1989
Fang Lizhi, a Chinese astrophysicist and pro-democracy activist, and his wife Li Shuxian entered the U.S. Embassy in Beijing after Chinese authorities cracked down on pro-democracy protests. They lived in the embassy for 13 months before being allowed to go to the United States.

EDWARD LEE HOWARD: 1986
Edward Lee Howard, a former CIA agent, fled to Helsinki where he went to the Soviet Embassy and was granted asylum. Howard had been identified as a KGB agent by Soviet defector Vitaly Yurchenko, who later defected back to the Soviet Union as was awarded a medal.

CUBANS IN HAVANA: 1980
Six Cubans crashed a bus through the Peruvian Embassy gates in Havana on April 1, 1980. After Peru refused to turn the asylum-seekers over to the Cuban government, Fidel Castro ordered all security guards removed from the embassy. More than 10,000 Cubans then jammed the Peruvian embassy grounds demanding asylum. Castro then opened the port of Mariel and 125,000 Cubans left the country in a chaotic exodus by boats.

SVETLANA STALIN: 1966
Svetlana Stalin, daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, went to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi while she was in India returning the ashes of her husband. She returned to the Soviet Union in 1984, saying she wanted to reunite with her family. Her Soviet citizenship was restored but she left a year later to go back to the U.S. following a family feud.

CARDINAL JOZSEF MINDSZENTY: 1956
During Hungary's Communist regime, Roman Catholic Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty lived in the U.S. Embassy in Budapest from 1956 until 1971, when he was allowed to leave for Vienna.

 

[Psycho Punk]

Full text at link.

‘Beware Greeks bearing gifts’, goes the old saying. People would do well to bear it in mind when taking positions on the increasingly labyrinthine case of Julian Assange. The Wikileaks founder has taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy, seeking political asylum from what he claims to be trumped-up allegations of rape, for which he would otherwise have been deported to Sweden.

And so, suddenly, the British state - which, as the headline statistics will tell us, cannot muster up the enthusiasm to convict any rapists at all under normal circumstances, and indeed only outlawed marital rape two decades ago - has reinvented itself as a crusading force against sexual violence. All options have been considered to get Assange out of this country, to be questioned (he has not yet been charged) by Swedish prosecutors - up to and including storming the embassy.

William Hague, and his superiors in the cabinet, have not undergone an overnight conversion to Dworkinism - because Assange is no ordinary suspected rapist. He is most famous as the de facto leader and public face of Wikileaks, whose periodic revelation of dodgy goings-on at the highest echelons of the US state (including the release of diplomatic cables which, most embarrassingly for the USA, revealed what they actually thought about various regimes around the world) has led Assange to the position of public enemy number one in the States. Obama and his minions want to try him not for rape, but for espionage. The maximum penalty is death.

The situation, on one level, is perfectly simple. Assange is the target of what amounts to a rather demented revenge quest by the US state department, and its pliant little poodle of a government in Westminster. While speculation abounds as to exactly what game these Machiavellian forces are playing, it defies credibility to consider insignificant the fact that they are hell-bent on seeing Assange in a Stockholm slammer (not that some gentle souls have not blinded themselves even to this, as we shall see). Under these circumstances, the ‘facts of the case’ are simply irrelevant - the notion that Assange can expect a fair trial in such a situation is transparently bunk, and any resultant conviction will lack the smallest particle of moral authority.

Yet leftwing and progressive-minded people all over the place - especially in the bourgeois commentariat - have been utterly blinded by the most dubious sort of moral authority in existence. This is, in short, the fetishisation of certain crimes in modern society - the suffusion of certain words with such an enormous weight of sheer horror that to utter them in vain is as irresponsible as it is for Harry Potter to name Voldemort aloud. In this case, that word is ‘rape’.

Were Assange being sought for almost anything else short of murder (a bar-room punch-up, for example) the world’s vision would be clear on the matter - but a rape accusation presents the good liberal (or the good social democrat) with a problem. It is important, to be sure, to stand up to the powers that be - but it is also important to stand with women against sexual violence. What line does one take?

It is in the structure of this kind of bourgeois political ideology - which sees the political as, if you will, a grab-bag of issues, more or less homogenous in substance, on each of which it is necessary to be with the oppressed against the oppressor - to meet conflicts of this kind with political paralysis.

There is no rational way out from within this problematic, and so it becomes a matter for the irrational. People are being asked to choose between the possibility that Assange may never tweak the nose of Uncle Sam again (if he is dispatched to Scandinavia), and the possibility that he may get away with rape (if he is left at liberty). The decision must be made by way of personal prejudice one way or the other. Assange claims he is the victim of a ‘honeytrap’ sting, but the real ‘honeytrap’ here is the lure of moral certainty provided by the absolute anathematisation of rape to the confused leftwinger.

Thus, Owen Jones - the rising star of left Labourism - argues that “people who do otherwise commendable work” may commit heinous crimes such as rape: “If presented with rape allegations, they must face them like anybody else, however otherwise worthy their past contributions. Now, these statements should be so self-evidently obvious, it is ludicrous that they need to be said. But the furore over Wikileaks founder Julian Assange sadly makes it necessary.”1

He lambasts Assange supporters for suggesting that the accusations he faces are of sins short of rape, and quotes no less an authority than one of those well-known friends of women’s liberation, a British high court judge, to this effect. He dismisses the objection that Assange has not been charged, because that is “not how the Swedish legal system works”, and also waves away concerns that Assange would be extradited onwards to the United States, on the absolutely beautiful grounds that in order to do so, in the opinion of Jones’s learned friends, “Sweden would have to gain the consent of the British home secretary first”. So that’s all right then.

In truth, Jones’s opening sentences need to be inverted. People may be accused - or even guilty - of the most horrendous crimes; but until they are convicted, they should be presumed innocent, and should be given a reasonable guarantee of a fair trial. This is so self-evidently obvious that it should not need to be said - but the idiotic moralisms of the Owen Joneses of this world make it sadly necessary.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Dude needs to go and face charges for rape and sexual assault.

End of.

Chickenshit bastard.

 

[Psycho Punk]

Dude needs to go and face charges for rape and sexual assault.

End of.

Chickenshit bastard.

Wow you really demolished that article you chicken brain.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Wow you really demolished that article you chicken brain.

Jesus, man.

Quite the retort yourself. Always with the name-calling from you.

And I didn't fucking quote the article so who the fuck says I was responding to it?

It's a thread on Assange, a man accused of rape. Not a discussion on lefty shit from the crusty arsehole of the internet that you post.

The guy has rape charges to answer and he's hiding in a safe house.

That makes him a scumbag in my book.

I'm not going to read what every lefty, tinfoil hat gobshite has to say on the matter. I've read and listened to plenty of coverage to have made my mind up.

The situation is not that difficult. The Swedes have enough evidence to charge him and he should face those charges if he is so innocent of them.

He's a self-serving scumbag.

 

[Psycho Punk]

The Swedes don't have enough evidence to charge him. If they had they would have done so. They want to question him. Hes prepared to answer questions in the Ecuadorian Embassy, the Swedes have turned this down.

Always with the name calling with me?

You call Assange a chickenshit bastard and a scumbag and hes not even charged with anything.

Yeah you've read enough to make up your mind but you didn't know that he hasn't been charged. Don't apply for MENSA membership just yet.

If hes extradited to Sweden then he'll likely be handed over to the US, the Swedes have past form on this.

Reported by Andrew Fowler, the program recounts that when Assange arrived in Sweden on August 11, he was offered accommodation at the apartment of Anna Ardin. She was meant to be away, but returned on the evening of August 13. That night she had consensual sex with Assange, who continued to stay in the apartment until August 18—five days after the occasion on which the Swedish authorities later alleged Assange had used force against her.

In fact, Ardin several times insisted that Assange stay, rejecting offers from others to have the WikiLeaks’ chief stay with them. On the two nights following the supposed assault, Ardin arranged a crayfish barbecue for Assange and attended a dinner party by his side. During the crayfish party, she had tweeted: “Sitting outdoors at 02:00 and hardly freezing with the world’s coolest, smartest people! It’s amazing!” Later she told a friend she had a “wild weekend” with him.

On August 16, with Ardin’s knowledge, Assange travelled out of town to spend a night with a second young woman, Sofia Wilen. The following day, the two women began exchanging emails. Ultimately, four days later, on August 20, Ardin and Wilen went to a Stockholm police station to see if they could compel Assange to take a sexual health test.

Instead, the police declared that Assange was to be arrested and questioned about possible rape and molestation. Wilen became so distraught at this that she refused to give any more testimony or sign what had been taken down.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jul2012/assa-j28.shtml

Heres a report at ABC, non-crustie.

Sex, Lies and Julian Assange
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2012/07/19/3549280.htm
By Andrew Fowler and Wayne Harley

 

[Psycho Punk]

Why you shouldn't trust the Swedes.

Sweden Violated Torture Ban in CIA Rendition
Diplomatic Assurances Against Torture Offer No Protection From Abuse
http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-ban-cia-rendition

NOVEMBER 10, 2006

RELATED MATERIALS:
Sweden Implicated in Egypt’s Abuse of Suspected Militant
Sweden Violated Torture Ban with U.S. Help
Western governments need to wake up to the fact that they can’t trust promises of humane treatment from countries that routinely practice torture
Holly Cartner Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch
The United Nations’ ruling that Sweden violated the global torture ban in its involvement in the CIA transfer of an asylum seeker to Egypt is an important step toward establishing accountability for European governments complicit in illegal US renditions, Human Rights Watch said today.

In a decision made public today, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled that diplomatic assurances against torture did not provide an effective safeguard against ill-treatment in the case of an asylum seeker transferred from Sweden to Egypt by CIA operatives in December 2001. The committee decided that Sweden’s involvement in the US transfer of Mohammed al-Zari to Egypt breached the absolute ban on torture, despite assurances of humane treatment provided by Egyptian authorities prior to the rendition.

Human Rights Watch today released a detailed briefing paper answering questions about such “diplomatic assurances.”

“This UN ruling shows that we are slowly but surely getting to the truth about European complicity in illegal US renditions,” said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “European parliaments and prosecutors must continue their inquiries into these matters.”

Swedish officials handed over al-Zari and another Egyptian, Ahmed Agiza, to CIA operatives on December 18, 2001 for transfer from Stockholm to Cairo. Both men were asylum seekers in Sweden, and suspected of terrorist activities in Egypt, where torture of such suspects is commonplace. Returns to risk of torture are illegal under international law.

To cover itself, the Swedish government obtained promises from the Egyptian authorities that the men would not be tortured or subjected to the death penalty, and would be given fair trials. Despite post-return monitoring by Swedish diplomats, both men were tortured in Egypt. In April 2004, Agiza was convicted on terrorism charges following a flagrantly unfair trial monitored by Human Rights Watch. Al-Zari was released in October 2003 without charge or trial, and remains under police surveillance in Egypt.

The Human Rights Committee decision stated that Sweden “has not shown that the diplomatic assurances procured were in fact sufficient in the present case to eliminate the risk of ill-treatment to a level consistent” with the ban on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

“The committee found that diplomatic promises did nothing to protect al-Zari from torture,” said Cartner. “Western governments need to wake up to the fact that they can’t trust promises of humane treatment from countries that routinely practice torture.”

In a separate May 2005 ruling on Agiza’s case, the UN Committee Against Torture concluded that Sweden violated the Convention against Torture by illegally expelling him to Egypt, and stated that “procurement of diplomatic assurances [from Egypt], which, moreover, provided no mechanism for their enforcement, did not suffice to protect against this manifest risk.”

The al-Zari and Agiza cases illustrate why diplomatic assurances against torture from governments with a well-documented record of such abuse are worthless. The fact that such governments routinely violate their legal obligations to treat all people in their custody humanely makes it highly unlikely they would safeguard an isolated individual from abuse. Moreover, governments that employ torture regularly deny that they practice this abuse and refuse to investigate claims of it.

The cases also demonstrate that the monitoring of detainees after they are sent back does not add a measure of protection. Torture is a criminal activity of the most serious kind, practiced in secret using techniques that often defy detection – for example, mock drowning, sexual assault, and electricity applied to bodies internally. In many countries, medical personnel in detention facilities monitor the abuse to ensure that the torture is not easily detected.

Detainees subjected to torture are often afraid to complain to anyone about the abuse for fear of reprisals against them or their family members. Even in the unlikely event that torture is confirmed, neither the sending nor receiving government has any incentive to investigate or acknowledge a breach of the assurances as that would amount to admitting involvement in torture.

Sweden has recently been singled out by two significant European bodies investigating illegal CIA rendition and detention activities. In June, Dick Marty, a Swiss senator tasked by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe with investigating European states’ involvement in “extraordinary renditions” and possible secret detention sites, highlighted the al-Zari and Agiza cases in his report. Marty concluded that: “Relying on the principle of trust and on diplomatic assurances given by undemocratic states known not to respect human rights is simply cowardly and hypocritical.”

A special European Parliament committee established to investigate European complicity in extraordinary rendition and the unlawful detention of terrorism suspects by the US government also targeted Sweden as directly complicit in the men’s transfers to torture. In June, this committee called on “Member States [of the EU] to reject altogether reliance on diplomatic assurances against torture.”

The Swedish government must now comply with the Human Rights Committee’s decision in the al-Zari case. The committee has indicated that monetary compensation for the petitioner is one appropriate remedy. Following the Agiza decision, Human Rights Watch communicated to the authorities in Sweden a detailed list of measures that would indicate compliance with that decision, including: granting monetary compensation; permitting a new application for asylum in Sweden; and legislative changes prohibiting the use of diplomatic assurances. To date, Sweden has failed to implement any of these recommendations.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Are you the board clown or something?

How come I haven't noticed you til a few weeks ago?


The facts of the case make Assange a scumbag in my book. Same reason the women went to the cops.

Your method of primary school arguing makes you seem like a bit of a clown. Same reason I won't be responding to you again.

But you are very good at quoting long passages of shit from the internet that most posters here never read or respond to. Fair play on that score. Good luck with it.

 

[Psycho Punk]

So anything you disagree with is shit?

You don't even know the facts of the case. You thought Assange had been charged.

Its primary school arguing to point out your mistakes?

The ABC piece shows that the Swedish police hassled the women.

The HRW piece shows that the Swedes have handed over suspects to the CIA in the past.

You haven;t cited anything that convinced you of Assanges guilt.

As for my postings, they get a certain amount of views, I think that speaks for itself.
eg -Protest at Leinster House against Youth Defence 854

Communist University 2012 1,055

Wikileaks and Julian Assange 654

Some people are interested.

Have a nice day.

 

[Psycho Punk]

No DNA link to Assange in condom central to sex assault case
http://rt.com/news/assange-condom-no-dna-277/

A ripped condom given to Swedish police by one of Julian Assange’s accusers does not contain the WikiLeaks founder’s DNA, forensic scientists have reportedly found. In a 100-page document shown to Assange’s lawyers, it was revealed that the torn prophylactic, having been examined by staff at two forensic laboratories, did not bear conclusive evidence that Assange had ever worn it, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.

Assange’s lawyers said the lack of DNA evidence on the condom, which was allegedly used during a supposed August 2010 sexual assault, indicates that a fake one could have been submitted.

The woman in question, now aged 33, claims to have been molested by Assange at her flat in Stockholm. She says that at one point he deliberately broke a condom in order to have unprotected sex with her. Assange claims he had consensual sex with the woman, but denies intentionally tearing the condom. He had previously told police that he continued to stay at her residence for the week following the alleged incident, saying his accuser never made any mention of the ripped condom.

But DNA purportedly belonging to Assange was present on a condom submitted by a second woman, who has accused him of rape, prompting Swedish authorities to push ahead with their bid to have him extradited from the UK.

However, his second accuser, now 29, who claimed to have been raped in her sleep by Assange, apparently told police she had not been opposed to having unprotected sex with him despite previous statements to the contrary, the daily reported.

Assange denies the allegation of rape, maintaining he had consensual sex with the second woman as well. The Swedish prosecutor’s office refused to comment on the report, saying that the investigation was ongoing.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

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I think you have to search for wikileaks yourself to see it

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

What's the point in interviewing this guy if he's not going to leave anyway?

Julian Assange prosecutor to request interview at Ecuadorian embassy