WTF?

The analogy is if he was still in Sweden he would rightly have got his collar felt and been escorted ("forcibly"icon_wink.gif to the station for questioning. In this respect, the only material difference is how far it is to the police station, and its him who has put the extra miles between himself and it.

The difference is what he is wanted at that police station for. If it was for parking on a yellow line, he would not be extradited, but as the allegation is rape, he would.

Unless you have concealed some other point in your cryptic question, I trust that answers it?


The whole point of an EU-wide system was based on the fact that the starting point is that EU countries can - or ought to be able to - trust each other's investigative systems to presume that the investigation is done fairly. That is the whole point of the EAW procedures. You are in effect saying that we shouldn't have passed the law, because Sweden can't be trusted, but we did. Write to your MP. I am discussing the situation as it is, although the basic premise seems very sound to me.


Stop saying "forcibly"! When was there ever a voluntary extradition?!


Er, well, no. I must give you that one. It hadn't occurred to me that Sweden would not ask us to extradite someone who wasn't here, but there, but I agree it is unlikely they would.


The trouble with pesky things like EU-wide laws is that they have to spell out a precise legal framework for all people in all EU countries. So we reasonably do not use "in a fair way", which could mean anything or nothing, and instead we use "in accordance with the specific legal requirements agreed by all member states and set out in specific legal documents X, Y and Z". So that any person can know precisely where they stand.

That way, the question is not "is it fair"? but "is it or is it not compliant with the law".

And if it is compliant with the law, but you still think it is unfair, then you can even take that one up with the ECHR - provided the unfairness alleged is within the relevant scope.





What exactly ARE the consequences of extradition for people the British government doesn't extradite? My head hurts.

'I can see clearly now the rain has gone.....' Off for some dinnertime Stella. Keep up the good work.

I would have thought the point quite obvious, that extradition to another country has a bit more of an impact on a person we presume is innocent and is quite a bit more serious, than a trip down the road.

And I have said clearly, a number of times that is what is wrong with this situation.

Yes.
Had you not split the sentence up, you would have understood the point wasnt the nonsense you have put there, but the fact that the UK would have no part in the process and as such no responsibility for it. As we do have a part in it, we have a responsibility for it, " but we thought we could trust the Swedes, with their blonde hair and blue eyes" isnt a valid defence if we are complicit in a miscarriage of justice or the use of the law to harass an individual.

That is true, but we are still responsible for the consequences of us obeying that law. If we obey that law and it leads to a miscarriage of justice or use of the law to harass an individual then we are still responsible even though we have that law.

It isnt, but that doesnt absolve us of responsibility for ensuring someone is dealt with fairly, and that somebody within a British jurisdiction is protected by British legal protections. The EAW doesnt remove our responsibility for our actions.

Try reading an entire sentence and not just part of it. Your head might feel better.

In some circumstances, to varying degrees, hypothetically, perhaps. As however we are discussing the Assange case, no, since it was his choice to leave Sweden and not go back, and his choice to come here. He can't reasonably escape the Swedish process by leaving the country, and claim it makes it somehow unfair to be sent back 'because it's a long way'.


We are not, nor would we be, complicit in anything, and the bizarre quotation may indicate you are running a fever, since of course nobody suggested or even hinted at any such ludicrous thing.

If when Assange got to Sweden there was subsequently a miscarriage of justice, he could and should deal with that in accordance with Swedish and European law. It would be nothing to do with us at all. It is ludicrous to suggest that if we extradite him "there will be a miscarriage of justice". Even you must admit that. Ditto "using the law to harass an individual".

And as neither Assange nor his lawyers have argued any such thing before the Supreme Court, purely a product of some weird thought process that you have just made up.


If you mean his Swedish problem, of course it does. When he gets back there, it is entirely up to the Swedes to ensure he is dealt with fairly. We aren't their monitor, nor, if they don't is it in any way our fault, nor in case of any such unfairness is he short of any remedy in Sweden.


So, a route up through the English judicial system, including being represented by a QC, and having your case considered by 6 law lords in the Supreme Court (and if you want it, a route to the ECHR too) is deficient as to legal protection exactly how?


I re-read it. It still makes no sense to me. If you don't want to explain whatever point you intended, fair enough.

George Galloway's comments were hardly a surprise to be honest. Making excuses for a possible rapist if it suits your own agenda is fairly typical behaviour for a leftie

Because fortunately, no right-winger or plain, old-fashioned Tory would ever do or say anything remotely shifty, oh no sirree.

I can't stand Galloway personally, but why not try to add something to the discussion, eh, instead of displaying "fairly typical behaviour for a" rightie.

There was no legal obligation for Assange to stay in Sweden. It is unfair to for the state to demand an innocent person travel to a different country. It is certainly unfair for the state to demand an innocent person travel to a different country without first checking that there is good evidence behing
Yes we would. Only cowards hide behind the law.

That is the reason for the EAW. That we dont have to bother checking that what the Swedes are doing is right, just and lawful. Just that they did their admin right.

We are the ones extraditing him. We are the ones who havent protected someone who is in our country from a miscarriage of justice or use of the law to harrass an individual. We would do that. Not Sweden, Not the EU. The UK. It would be administered by the UK judiciary, it would be physically done by the UK police. We would be responsible for our actions and the consequences of themIt has been the argument of Assange and his lawyers in public for sometime. As you should know, it wasnt argued at the high court because it wasnt relevant to the case in the high court.


The UK government would be the ones to extradite him. They are responsible for the consequences of the extradition.

That it doesnt examine the merits of the evidence. That there is provision in the law for us to extradite someone with no thought as to whether there is the evidence justify it. That we have no protection, in this country, to stop certain other countries, using their laws to harrass people who are in our country.

That if there is no evidence which the Swedish prosecutors have, if this is a political tool used by the Swedes, that if this is an effort to shut someone up or discredit someone because of political expediancy we have done nothing to stop that clear injustice. That is a deficiency in our law. The fact that whether the evidence stacks up or not is irrelevant to whether he is extradited or not, is a failure.


Then i feel for you. Its quite clear.

WTF?

Poor little St Julian is being "harassed", is he?

And I know that we havea tradition in the UK that you're innocent until proven guilty, but clearly you've already decided that even if a court were to find him guilty, he'd be innocent anyway, as it would be a "miscarriage of justice".

Care to share the films you must have seen of what went on then?

Disingenuous tosh, he did a runner rather than face questions, he didn't even tell his lawyer he was going. At the first hearing, his lawyer, presumably hoping nobody would find out, made a false statement that the prosecutor had made no effort to interview Assange, when in fact he had even arranged a provisional date for interview. The judge said the statement was "a deliberate attempt to mislead the court." It came over loud and clear that Assange knew he was wanted for interview, and that he knew if he prevaricated much longer, then he would be arrested, and so he fled.


More tosh. How can it be unfair for the Swedish state to ask a person accused of sexual offences inclusing rape to come in for questioning? Are you serious?

Your "argument" here is mainly based on your inability to accept that there should be an EAW. As Parliament however passed it into UK law, you will have to live with it, and if you want, campaign against it.
Having said which, we do have to be satisified that what the Swedes are doing is right and lawful, as they and we must comply both with European law and the EAW, and we must also comply with English law in dealing with the case. If we do, then [iipso facto[/i there is no question of the result being "unjust".

Anyway, before you make too big a fool of yourself, this aspect was, in fact, exhaustively gone through by the QBD at the penultimate appeal stage. The Court considered the argument about the fairness and accuracy of the description of the conduct alleged, and perhaps you ought to actually read the judgment instead of making spurious claims. The link to that particular report is:-
[urlhttp://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html&query=assange&method=boolean[/url
..and the relevant section starts at para.55, and goes on to para 127. (Yes, over SEVENTY PARAGRAPHS of detailed consideration of the evidential aspects).


Increasingly concentrated tosh:
(a) there has been no miscarriage of justice from the consequences of which we need to protect him. If you are saying that we shouldn't extradite him because there might somehow in the future be some unspecified miscarriage of justice in Sweden, then you must be high on something.
(b) "use of the law to harass an individual"?? Look, there is only one issue - he is wanted for questioning for sexual offences including rape. Unless you can make some sort of coherent case for that being "use of the law to harass an individual" then you have to concede this is rubbish.

No, and no. We would not extradite a suspect to certain regimes, as we would have reasonable grounds to suspect that they may (for example) be tortured or otherwise abused. That is sound and right. However, in general terms, we do not have any such concerns about Sweden; and in the particular case, no grounds have been advanced as to why we should believe, or even suspect, that any such would befall him there.
It is completely befuddled thinking to say "well yes, there is no specific reason or ground to suspect this, but . . . well, you never know, they still just might".
If they did, it would be in no way our responsibility, as we have absolutely no reason to believe they will.

Of course it would have been relevant!! Remove your blinkers! The EAW is valid if it was issued for prosecution in Sweden. If he could show that it was NOT issued for prosecution in Sweden, but for some other reason, then obviously he would get it thrown out!. It WAS ARGUED IN THE COURTS - AS PER THE LINK I HAVE GIVEN YOU ABOVE. The fact is that THERE IS NO EVIDENCE of any such scenario, so the reason it was "not argued" any further in the Supreme Court is because it is a non-argument! Unlike you, Assange and his lawyers know when the horse they are flogging has died.


There IS no injustice though. In abstract theory, in the unlikely event that all these hypothetical things came to pass, but surely even you can see that no law will work if it can be defeated just by writing down a list of random things that "might" happen, without having any evidence, at all, to back up [iwhy[/i anyone should think they actually might happen?

Not in the least. As stated in our courts, a domestic warrant for Assange's arrest was upheld on 24th November 2010 by the Court of Appeal, Sweden. An arrest warrant was issued on the basis that Julian Assange is accused with probable cause of the offences outlined on the EAW. Therefore the question of "whether the evidence stacks up" i.e. whether he will be charged is one which will be decided once the Swedish authorities complete their investigation. Not now. It is therefore absurd to suggest that they should prove their case to us, when they have not yet decided whether he is going to be charged, and I think you surely know this.

The bottom line here is that there is no material whatsoever upon which any court could rule, or even suspect, that extraditing Assange will lead to oppression or injustice, and your obvious mistrust of the EAW system does not alter the fact that no such thing has ever happened. I cite :-

(1) The accused, Mr. Assange: In the February 2012 appeal in the QBD, it was recorded that Assange did not pursue the allegation made before the Senior District Judge that there had been abuse in issuing the EAW for a collateral purpose or that there had otherwise been an abuse of process. Do you note that these issues WERE relevant in the English courts? And that if he HAD maintained these issues, they would have been considered? So can you please stop your persistent false claims that even if some such chicanery was afoot, we wouldn't look at it. Of course we would!


(2) the 30 September 2011 report to the Home Secretary by a Committee chaired by the Rt Hon Sir Scott Baker which actually reviewed the United Kingdom's extradition arrangements, and said that it was not aware of any cases in which EAWs issued by designated prosecuting authorities has led to oppression or injustice.

Mind you, they were probably not told that, based on absolutely nothing at all, some keyboard warrior named SmokeyTA nevertheless knows better, and feared that one day it might. Such a compelling argument would surely have persuaded them to recommend scrapping the whole thing.

Oh look - those nasty, scary [url=http://www.swedishwire.com/politics/7497-cia-rendition-flights-stopped-by-swedish-militarySwedes stood up the US over rendition[/url.

Mind, who knows if you can believe it? The story came from Wikileaks, after all.

Yeah but they're only doing that to sucker Assange into going back to Sweden to face a kangaroo court followed by immediate extradition to Guantanamo Bay, waterboarding and execution.

Smokey's bonkers - most of his arguments are factually wrong and continually ignoring the possibility of serious sexual offences as having a bearing on what should happen to Assange is morally repugnant.

Mintball's also right - as far as I can tell the right wing is home to far more people likely to belittle the importance of sexual offences, especially where the rights of women come into conflict with their peculiar, religously-driven views.

Maybe, maybe not. it would be easy to find out by producing some evidence.
No i havent. Dont lie.

There is nothing disingenuous about it, it is fact. It is disingenuous to present your conclusions as fact.
There is nothing wrong with them asking. There is plenty wrong with them demanding if they havent
again yes.
no it doesnt. Had it had to comply with British standards of evidence there would be no question of it being unjust.

That isnt an examination of the evidence. It is a consideration of whether the allegations constitute an offence in this country.

Yet that is a test applied to the extradition of people to most other countries.
We should have those concerns about every country, including our own.
for the same reasons as you accept we shouldnt extradite some people, to some other nations.

Except it isnt abstract, it is a real, and valid concern that even you have about some countries.
If they want us to extradite him they should.

Not on the basis of a simple allegation we wouldnt. There would need to be a standard of corroborating evidence. The word of one man would not be enough. And this is correct, it would be nonsense for us to NOT extradite Mr Assange simply because he accused the Swedish government of nefarious intention. I have no problem with us extraditing Mr Assange in spite of any accusation he may levy but be unable to back up with evidence. I would just apply the same principle to us extraditing Mr Assange.



What kind of naive thinking leads someone to think our laws shouldnt build in protections against possibilities 'which might be' an abuse of process?

What kind of nonsense are you arguing here? That because something hasnt happened, it can never happen and we should forget about it as a possibility? That because it hasnt been used to lead to provable cases of oppression or injustice it never ever could be?

Our good mate the President of Ecuador has spoken up in support of Jules by telling the world that [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/9500226/Julian-Assange-case-President-of-Ecuador-says-sexual-allegations-would-not-be-a-crime-in-other-countries.html what Assange did "would not be a crime on 90% of the planet"[/url

Asked how allegedly using force to begin intercourse could not be a crime, he reportedly answered:

"A woman he was staying with? Sleeping together in the same bed? "

There you are, ladies. Once in bed, like it or lump it

Actually, I was rather surprised to see that, in one or two countries, I'd be classed as a rapist myself on the basis of 'ask before each episode of actual shagging'. It is remarkably easy to get a man 'interested' even when he is asleep. Thankfully, in the UK, apparently a woman cannot be convicted of rape.

However, this entire discussion is ridiculous since, even if one disagrees with such a definition of rape, it is not the only thing that Assange stands accused of.

Presumably, whoever's tweeting for Wikileaks is a bit bored, as they've tweeted a link to a two-year-old story, about something that happened, err, two years ago, but without mentioning it's a two-year-old story.

[urlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11049316[/url

Yes.

Date of story? 2010.

Meanwhile in other news, Mafeking has been relieved.

Lucky him

You obviously didn't notice that I was referring not directly to my own argument, but to the 30 September 2011 report to the Home Secretary by a Committee chaired by the Rt Hon Sir Scott Baker which reviewed the United Kingdom's extradition arrangements, and made those findings.

To me, they seem rational and compelling. But if you want to know what kind of nonsense is being argued, why don't you drop a line to Sir Scott Baker? I'm sure he'd be bowled over by your insight.

Curiously Call me Dave seems to have perhaps become exasperated by the EAW, as he indicated during a trade visit to Brazil last week (the perfect forum, obviously) that the government intends to exercise its opt-out powers to opt out of all of the police and criminal justice measures adopted under the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht - including therefore the EAW - "before the end of the year".

The government has until the end of May 2014 to notify the European Commission of any decision to opt out.

But what a mess! For starters, any opt-out can relate only to measures established before the Treaty of Lisbon came into force in 2009, so there's a splendid recipe for confusion.

Did I miss the Consultation which will obviously have been assiduously carried out on such fundamental measures?

If we opt out of EAW, how would we get future naughty teachers back from France? Or is it one of these "one way" opt outs?

I'm assuming we'd be back to old-style extraditions, like we have with many non-EU countries now.