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I don't suppose that this opens up the door to challenging other US extradition requests based on the appalling track record of human rights and standards of care in US prisons, in which rape, murder, and torture are not only common but widely culturally accepted as part of the standard punitive aspects of imprisonment?

How do european (or perhaps just the UK's) legal system(s) work in that regard?

I have a lot of hope that this is a first crack appearing in the western cultural monolith; at some point civilized countries will have to somewhat politically break from the US so long as the US continues its domestic institutional torture programs (american prisons and the tradition of extended solitary confinement) and human rights violations (capital punishment). With luck that means that MLAT will eventually start to be unenforceable.

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  >How do european (or perhaps just the UK's) legal system(s) work in that regard?

The general rule is that the laws by which other nations have to abide and the standards other nations have to meet don't apply when the USA is involved.

I seriously had to read the headline twice, to make sure I'd got it right, I was so stunned at the UK not kowtowing to the US, as a matter of course.

I, too, am surprised. Perhaps the US has given up on threatening his custodians to get their way, now that so much damage has already been done to Assange, both in the embassy and now in Belmarsh.

I still wonder what the CIA must have done to get those Swedish prosecutors to spin all of that bullshit for the original arrest warrant.

I'd also have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the phone calls were made to those in charge of European airspace when Morales' jet was forcibly grounded over Austria for no reason other than the US incorrectly suspected Snowden being aboard.

> I still wonder what the CIA must have done to get those Swedish prosecutors to spin all of that bullshit for the original arrest warrant.

What would it take to convince you this didn't actually happen? It still doesn't make legal sense - Obama's DOJ publicly declined to charge him given the evidence, and extradition from Sweden would still have required extradition from the UK since he would've been serving time in both countries.

Assange never got charged by the US administration he actually embarassed, successfully jumped bail, waited out the clock on the rape charges, and finally got his extradition denied. It seems to me he got everything he wanted out of this - he just wasn't careful what he wished for.

> Obama's DOJ publicly declined to charge him given the evidence

Which means very little - the fact that the US has now tried to extradite him proves that.

> extradition from Sweden would still have required extradition from the UK since he would've been serving time in both countries.

How so? AIUI Sweden would have notionally promised not to extradite him, but there was little mechanism to enforce this.

The charges the US attempted to extradite him for were based primarily on things he did or allegedly did or which came to light after the rape charges.

Ockham's razor also applies. If you want Assange charged in the US on 'espionage' or similar and you have a choice of notifying the Swedish authorities that he is wanted for serious crimes in the US or instead relying upon separate local allegations that are so vague the Swedish legal system has to work its way through an appeals process to even decide to whether to pursue the case or not whilst leaving him at liberty to leave the country, you're unlikely to choose the latter.

> which came to light after the rape charges

There were never any rape charges. Please get your facts correct before asserting falsehoods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Arrest_Warrant#Specia...

> A state wishing to prosecute a surrendered person for offences committed before his or her surrender, or extradite a surrendered person to a third state, must, subject to certain exception, obtain the permission of the executing judicial authority. Such a request is made in the same form as a European Arrest Warrant, and granted or refused using the same rules which determine whether surrender would be granted or refused.

> the fact that the US has now tried to extradite him proves that.

It proves they care now, under a wildly different (and totally clownshoes) DOJ, which if anything lends more credence to the theory they did not care back then or we would have seen them try back then.

> What would it take to convince you this didn't actually happen?

What it would take to convince me would be for Assange to not be literally fighting a US extradition order, right now.

What was always going to happen, is what is happening now.

If a person was one of the people who said things for years like "Well, actually, the US is not trying to extradite Assange", then they were completely and totally wrong, and should be embarrassed as to how they could have possible thought that.

What makes it impossible to believe the DOJ under one outgoing president declined to prosecute a case, and then a new DOJ under a new infamously press-hostile president took it up?

Extradition requests are not platonic and timeless, they are issued by specific people for specific reasons at specific times.

No, people don't get to retroactively make up new excuses as for why this doesn't count.

This is was what always was going to happen. The motivation for the US to extradite him was always clear. And exactly what people predicted was going to happen, did indeed happen.

And the people who predicted otherwise were wrong, and should be made fun of for how wrong that they were, and how misinformed they were to think anything else could have happened.

The Obama administration prosecuted Manning, and would have had an equal amount of reason to prosecute Assange, and the extradition request is exactly what happened at the end of the day.

The only possible situation for me to believe that they were not prospecting Assange would have been if Obama simply pardoned Assange, which did not happen.

> how misinformed they were to think anything else could have happened.

How exactly am I misinformed? What facts am I wrong on? What inconsistency is there if I believe that Obama's DOJ genuinely never intended to charge Assange with anything?

> The Obama administration prosecuted Manning, and would have had an equal amount of reason to prosecute Assange

No, because Manning and Assange did different things. A key claim in Assange's defense in this case is that Manning did all the illegal things!

> The only possible situation for me to believe that they were not prospecting Assange would have been if Obama simply pardoned Assange, which did not happen.

Obama repeatedly stated he would not pardon anyone not convicted of a crime (e.g. in the context of Snowden) and as far as I know held true to this for all 1927 of his pardons.[0] So why would he pardon Assange, who was not even accused of a crime?

[0] https://www.justice.gov/pardon/obama-pardons

> So why would he pardon Assange, who was not even accused of a crime?

What do you mean why? To prevent literally what is happening right now, and to make it impossible for any US government agency to ever prosecute either Assange or Snowden.

Thats why! Because he is subject to an extradition request. All of that could have been prevented, with a pardon.

This is Kafkaesque levels of reasoning here. Literally what was predicted was going to happen, did indeed happen.

And every justification for "Well, why would you pardon someone who is not being arrested", is literally proven wrong, because this is what ended up happening! The current state of Assange is the proof and the reason why everyone who was arguing against a pardon were wrong.

> Obama repeatedly stated he would not pardon anyone not convicted of a crime

Yes, because he wanted those people to be sent to jail. Because of the efforts that he was doing to get them sent to jail. Thats why. Obama could have stopped all this stuff from happening, but he didn't. Thats the evidence.

> waited out the clock on the rape charges

There were never any charges in Sweden.

I suspect it's because Trump is so staggeringly unpopular outside the USA. American soft power has taken a massive hit with this presidency, and there's domestic political upside to being seen to publicly rebuke the Trump administration - and since he's leaving, there's no foreign policy downside.

Why would there be no foreign policy downside? The mutual relationship does not "reset" after Trump leaves office. Most of the time, diplomats stay the same and even if they change, surely the new ones will remember such occurrences.

Some ambassadors are career diplomats. The current ambassador to the UK is not one, and he's not going to stay in his job.

Let's just say that his ownership of the NY Jets is one of the less embarrassing points on his resume: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Johnson

> The mutual relationship does not "reset" after Trump leaves office.

Well, it does and it doesn't.

After all, why should today's politicians feel they owe you a favour just because you helped their predecessors? George W Bush may have warm feelings about the UK after Blair helped him with the war in Iraq, but would you expect to cash that favour in with Obama, Trump or Biden?

Of course not - A new president comes in, they decide to impose new tariffs on imports from the UK, of course something that happened 17 years and two presidents ago doesn't give him much pause.

Obviously there are longstanding structures of cooperation like NATO and suchlike, which don't get reset. But an awful lot does.

Besides, Assange is old news now. America's message to other would-be whistleblowers has been delivered. If the UK releases him, no American politicians will have to face scrutiny or look weak over the decision. And British politicians won't face any domestic blowback, post Harry Dunn.

While Trump definitely impaired US soft power, I doubt that's the reason a judge decided to rule this way.

You are essentially implying that "District Judge Vanessa Baraitser" is making a political calculation -- under pressure from who? At her own discretion?

Do you have ANY evidence to suggest the judge is corrupt? Because isn't that is exactly what you're implying, isn't it?

Given that this is the UK, with a fairly reputable court system, let's assume the judge made a ruling on the basis of the reasoning she gave, quote: "Faced with the conditions of near total isolation without the protective factors which limited his risk at HMP Belmarsh, I am satisfied the procedures described by the US will not prevent Mr Assange from finding a way to commit suicide and for this reason I have decided extradition would be oppressive by reason of mental harm and I order his discharge."

I would say that anyone who followed the story can easily deduce that the judge is indeed corrupt.

Perhaps you could summarize your reasoning?

Given that US prosecutors are part of the administration, I'm inclined to think that they may have political motivation here.

But why would british politicians get involved. Regardless of how they got involved it would be political suicide if they were caught doing so.

British politicians have very little to win by getting their hands dirty here. For them it would be preferable to tell the Americans that they can't interfere.

Seriously, UK politicians have a perfect excuse for not having to make a choice and take a political risk -- they are not allowed to!

Give a politician the option of passing a hot potato to someone else, and you can be sure they'll pass the potato :)

British politicians would want to secure the support of the USA, whether for themselves or for their country. Especially so after brexit.

It would require a judgment from the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court to be able to use this to challenge any future extradition requests from the US.

This is because binding precedent is only set by the appellate courts and while this judgment is persuasive, other judges sitting in this court can ignore it since they're not bound to follow it.

This is precisely the thing I wanted to know. Thank you!

FYI this isn't the first time a similar extradition to the US has been denied by the UK. Lauri Love (allegedly affiliated with Anonymous) successfully fought against extradition in 2016.

Court originally ruled that extradition can happen, but the appeals court ruled differently, citing that extradition would be "oppressive by reason of his physical and mental condition".

As far as I'm aware the case never made it to the Supreme Court.

A High Court judgment would also bind lower courts, including the Magistrates’ Court.

Deciding whether under s91 of the Extradition Act, "the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him", is a very fact-specific issue rather than a legal question though.

The appellate courts are generally there to resolve legal questions not factual ones—I'd question the Assange case, or other similar cases would raise a similar legal rather than factual question.

There has been a trend towards applying s91 cases for defendants with autism spectrum disorders: the courts didn't in Gary McKinnon's case, but the Home Secretary (Theresa May, before she became PM) justified her denial of the extradition order on that basis. In Lauri Love's case, the magistrates' court allowed the extradition order but it was overturned on appeal in the High Court on the basis of Love's not being able to cope in US custody with Asperger's syndrome. In the Assange case, the magistrates' court followed this established and rather persuasive precedent.

> How do european (or perhaps just the UK's) legal system(s) work in that regard?

It's actually European law that's binding here, and extradition / deportation denials based on human rights concerns are nothing new - there have been bans on deportations even to EU members such as Greece (https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/Y-300-Z-BECKR...) or Hungary (https://www.keienborg.de/2018/02/19/die-12-kammer-des-vg-due...).

For clarity: European Convention (and Court) of Human Rights law, not EU.

There's post-Brexit significance since the UK continues to be a signatory to the ECHR even though they've now left the EU. Being an ECHR signatory is a requirement of being in the EU, not vice versa. (Countries like Turkey and Russia are also ECHR signatories.)

It's somewhat common for extradition to the US to be denied on these sorts of grounds; this is by no means the first time it has happened.

Pretty much the same reasoning was used in another case.

I wouldn't be surprised if this had gone very differently had Trump won.

I don't understand the second part of your comment.

I mean, how much pressure do you think Trump can put on a British judge? Or the British political establishment, for that matter? The British judiciary is quite independent; for evidence see the various cases that the government lost over Brexit.

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