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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

It is actually harder to extradite Assange from Sweden than from the UK, in that such an extradition would require the approval of both the UK and Sweden.

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Exactly this. There is no way it is easier for US to extradite him from Sweden than UK, even ignoring the law about requiring the approval of both UK and Sweden.

I sympathise with Assange and his original Wikileaks goals but I do feel he is just trying to dodge prosecution for a (alleged) crime. Right now he spent a year in, pretty much, prison and for what reason? The possibility for a shorter stay in Swedish prison? US extraditing him (assuming he arrives in Sweden some time) would cause a shitstorm of untold proportions, it would be political suicide IMO.

I doubt there is anything harder than to extradite Assange from an embassy which has granted Assange asylum.

Since that’s the actually reality, if an extradition is made, UK isn't as much in the picture expect that the embassy is technically located inside the UK.

No, that argument moves the goalposts. He's in the embassy because he didn't want to go to Sweden. He claims not to have wanted to go to Sweden because of the ease of extraditing him from Sweden. But it was easier to extradite him while he was walking the streets of the UK.

But the reality of ease of extradition may be very different than what the laws would suggest. The US has been secretly breaking its own most basic laws. Maybe Sweden does, too.

I'm amused by the meme emergent from the Assange debacle that Sweden is some US client state, but the UK is fiercely independent. Like Sweden is Belarus, and nobody really knows anything about them.

I wasn't aware of any such meme. I don't think many Assange supporters have a positive view of the UK. I certainly don't. The lying criminals in one government are willing to work with the lying criminals in other governments.

Instead of answering directly, I just waited for someone else to answer for me; look at my comment's sibling.

I'm confused about how you can be so confident in your assessments of the "ease of extradition" property of these two countries. To me that's like claiming you know which country is going to support the US in it's next war. Sure you can look at the laws and the history, but these things seem very fuzzy to me. I don't understand where your confidence comes from.

Doing a lot of reading. This subject has come up a bunch of times on HN before.

If you paid attention to HN (and other tech news sites) earlier than about 2012 or so, you'd see that the U.K. got in the news practically every year for extraditing someone to the U.S. on charges that even I would agree are too minor to warrant it. I think the last famous case was Gary McKinnon or something like that but there have been many others.

IIRC, he happened to be in England when the extradition request came. He fought that and if the US had requested the UK to arrest and extradite him he presumably would have fought that too. I'm not certain that he was allowed to leave the UK on his own after the extradition request was made. Wasn't he actually on bail?

It's also possible that he didn't think the US would come after him until the extradition request.

That said, I think it definitely sounds better to give the reason that he does than to say he's afraid of being convicted in Sweden even if he wouldn't be explicitly admitting guilt.

He might have gone to the embassy a yea ago for reasons related to the UK, but that doesn't relate to the arguments why he today won't go. The parent comments which I replied to was talking why he won't go to Sweden. If the parent post had said why he didn't go to Sweden, ie in past sense, then you would be right that my argument would be moving the goalpost.

I think he went to the embassy, to avoid being extradited from either the UK or from Sweden, to the US. The point is not to be extradited; avoiding the interrogation for the trumped up rape charges, which would have resulted in a Swedish slap on the wrist even if convicted, was not his fear.

Are you really arguing that since he could have been extradited from the UK at some point before going to the embassy, that going to the embassy wasn't to avoid ultimate US extradition? I don't even get why you might draw that conclusion.

"Trumped up" rape charges? How would you know that?

It's only misogyny when it's football players and other "jocks" raping women. We all know that us techies have a much better moral framework than everyone else, so obviously the Occam's Razor explanation is that those rape charges must be the U.S. oppressing Assange from behind the scenes.

That's just my conclusion - does that really surprise you? I hope it does, because I find your conclusion that the USG and all of its agents and allies are acting totally legally and ethically towards Assange absolutely flabbergasting.

I'm also saddened that you decided to argue the rhetoric instead of the substance, being that Assange going to the embassy is a good way to avoid eventual extradition to the US, which would carry far higher consequences than a Swedish rape charge.

He was walking around the UK in broad daylight exactly up until it looked like he'd be sent to Sweden to face rape charges.

Having borne witness to the consequences of strange and ill-conceived laws in the US concerning sexual misconduct on completely normal people and some basic reading on Swedish laws, I have no trouble believing that the charges against Assange are trumped up. They could indict the proverbial ham sandwich on rape charges in Sweden if they really wanted to. And have the whole public up in arms over dangerous lunchbox fare. Sex is one of those things that humans will consistently act irrationally over.

Repeated talking points ad nauseum.

Wasn't Manning tortured? Isn't Snowden going from one country to another? What makes you think the case of Assange is any different?

Have we all forgotten how 3 years ago when the revelations first appeared we here on HN were discussing in what manner he will be vanished or smeared? Only a few weeks later the news of some dropped charge re-instated appeared.

He has now been in confinement for almost 3 years. One wonders how much longer. Would he have been given a greater punishment even if he was found guilty by the Swedish court? I doubt it.

If it looks like a duck, it is more probable than anything else that it is a duck.

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