wikileaks stuff

been surfing around trying to find the latest on Assange’s second day in court and came across a live twitter feed here:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/WikiLeaks-Julian-Assange-Hits-Out-At-Critics-Ahead-Of-Appeal-For-Bail/Article/200901215853688?lpos=World_News_Top_Stories_Header_0&lid=ARTICLE_15853688_WikiLeaks%3A_Julian_Assange_Hits_Out_At_Critics_Ahead_Of_Appeal_For_Bail_

and then it struck me I thought it was illegal to post live info from court and found this:

http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/12/14/assange-trial-hacks-allowed-tweet-court/

he judge at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s court hearing today has taken the extraordinary step of allowing journalists to ‘tweet’ proceedings from the court on micro-blogging site Twitter, according to a reporter at the hearing.

The claim was made in a post by Times correspondent Alexi Mostrous, sent from inside Westminster Magistrates Court itself:

“judge just gave me explicit permission to tweet proceedings ‘if it’s quiet and doesn’t disturb anything'”.

Under established rules, the use of mobile phones and other devices is strictly prohibited in UK courtrooms, where photography is not permitted and even court artists are obliged to draw proceedings from memory. Offenders face fines of up to £2,500 or up to three months in jail.

quite novel, and I think the Judge is to be congratulated.

What if he’s actually committed rape/sexual assault though? Shouldn’t he stand trial? Surely the media attention on this case will help ensure that it is an open and fair one. No?

Just because people see him as a heroic figure fighting the good fight, doesn’t exempt him from being put on trial.

Just been given bail for £200k, I’m surprised TBH.

Well that would be different. As it is he’s accused of offences that don’t even exist in UK law, with no evidence being put to the hearing here to determine if he should be extradited. He hasn’t even been charged.

Why surprised? Hoo blimin’ ray.

ridiculous that he was not given bail in the first instance. he had plenty of opportunity to flee should he have been minded to

What if he’s actually committed rape/sexual assault though?

Does anyone know the details of his charge. I heard it described (by a dodgy American “news” show) as “Sex By Surprise” which is apparently consensual sex but the condom bursts?!? 😕

As it is he’s accused of offences that don’t even exist in UK law

What does that matter, if the alleged offences took place on Swedish soil?

Graham – there is loads of stuff about the dodgy nature of these charges on the net.

Links on this thread as well

http://rixstep.com/1/20101001,01.shtml
http://rixstep.com/1/20101202,01.shtml

Yup, thats about the jist of it.

The 2nd charge was coercion to have sex IIRC, in which the victim apparently only had sex with him because he was famous. That would be consent then, or are famous people not allowed to bump uglies with the proles?

Anyone else think that the Sweeds might be trying to protect him, get him extradited then drop charges then allow him to continue unhindered as they did before?

graham, unfortunately it seems the “crime” doesnt have to be exactly like a UK one…

The Court must be satisfied about 2 requirements:
? The offence specified in the warrant has to correspond with an
offence under the law of England and Wales. The Court is not required
to look for an English offence which is identical with the offence
specified in the warrant, nor one whose legal elements are the same.
The Court look at the particulars in the warrant to see if there is an
offence with which the offence in the warrant would correspond if it
had occurred in England and Wales.
? Under the laws of the Republic of Ireland the offence has to be an
indictable offence or an offence punishable on summary conviction with
imprisonment for 6 months.” (1)
In other words, if the offence does “not “correspond” with offences
under English law, which are indictable offences or are punishable on
summary conviction with imprisonment for six month,”(2) it is possible
? theoretically ? that there would be no extradition. However, as
Ellis and Gilligan (2) show, this is not a common argument.

See, the opinion and conjecture is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that he is accused of something which apparently is a crime in Sweden. Therefore, why the opposition to him standing trial there?

If you smoke a spliff in the UK you are breaking the law, right? Then, if you go to Holland, a country where it’s not illegal, you can’t turn round and say “I don’t want to stand trial because it’s not a crime where I am now’, can you? You’ve still comitted the offence in the place where it’s illegal.

The issue of rape and sexual assault is far more serious than having a crafty toke on a doobie, and I don’t mean to trivialise things.

To me, this whole affair seems dodgy. But that’s my opinion. I’m not involved in the case in any way. I’m just trying to remain objective.

The real issue at stake is his alleged guilt. All other things should be irrelevant. But it’s not that simple, obviously.

Well, your example is not very good – because smoking dope is illegal in Holland, but tolerated. Setting that aside, the mechanism cited above says that it must carry a 6 month sentence. The allegations against Assange might be termed rape and sexual assault, but they aren’t what we would term rape in this country. The charges were dropped earlier this year and have been picked up by a right wing politician in Sweden – who claims that the motivation is not political. Yea right – he digs up old discarded charges all the time I suppose!

If I was accused of rape I’d want to clear my name in court. If I was accused of rape and to defend myself I risk immediate deportation from Sweden to the USA to face trumped up charges, and wallow in a US prison for god knows how long until my unfair trial, I might be slightly less keen….

glenp – does not matter whether the same crime exists here, no burden of proof required either under Single European Arrest Warrant, providing the warrant conforms to the directive and a similar offence exists, which it does, then nothing can stop extradition. The US/UK extradition treaty is not miles away from this either.

There is loads of Eurosceptic writing on SEAW and on this one, I tend to agree with them.

Here is a text of Daily Telegraph article when introduced

Britain Signs up to Fast-Track EU Arrests
by Anton LaGuardia
The Daily Telegraph
2nd January 2004, p. 8.

The new European arrest warrant came into force yesterday, allowing British citizens to be extradited under a fast track process even if their actions do not constitute an offence in Britain.

The scheme initially applies to only seven countries but will later expand to include all EU members.

There has been widespread concern that British citizens’ right to a fair trial will be endangered by the removal of many of the previous extradition safeguards.

These fears will be magnified after May, when the European Union admits 10 new members — mostly former communist countries in central and eastern Europe.

“We are very worried about some of the accession countries,” said Stephen Jakobi, director of the lobby group Fair Trials Abroad. “Poland and Hungary have good standards, but the impression we are getting is that there are a lot of problems with corruption in the judicial systems of some of the incoming states.”

Many of the new members have come under attack from the European Commission
for the desperately slow pace of justice.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, told The Daily Telegraph, “It is ludicrous that people can be extradited for an action that may not be an offence in this country. The more countries that become involved, some having only a short acquaintance with democracy, the more serious the problem becomes.”

The new warrant — rushed through as an anti-terrorist response to September 11 attacks on America — is seen by the Home Office as an important step in preventing criminals escaping justice by going to another country.

But it has had a faltering start. Only eight countries of the current 15 EU states have so far adopted it in time for the launch yesterday: Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. The Government hopes the rest will join by Easter.

The Government argues that the warrant will speed up the cumbersome extradition process while ensuring that a suspect’s basic rights — including a limited right of appeal to the House of Lords — are protected by British judges.

In particular, it says that the European warrant will deny fugitives from British justice a safe haven in states that previously refused to extradite their own citizens — including Denmark, France, Germany, Greece and Luxembourg.

But critics argue that the central assumption of the new warrant – that the justice systems in all European countries are equally fair — is deeply flawed.

Mr Jakobi describes a “two-tier” system of justice in Europe, based on the experience of more than 1,000 cases taken up by Fair Trials Abroad. He places Britain, Scandinavian countries, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Ireland in the “top group” of states where a European arrest warrant could work well.

But he maintains that in other countries — including France, Belgium, Spain and Greece — a foreigner is almost always convicted regardless of the evidence.

The European arrest warrant extends well beyond terrorist-related cases to all offences that carry a sentence of a year or more in the country seeking an extradition. Many of the offences, such as murder, grievous bodily injury, rape arson, armed robbery, kidnapping, racketeering and trafficking in drugs or weapons are uncontroversial.

But there are also ambiguous crimes such as racism and xenophobia, that are interpreted differently in different countries.

The most significant change is the abolition in most cases of “dual criminality” — the requirement that a person can only be extradited for an action to be considered an offence in both the country seeking extradition and the country being asked to surrender a suspect.

Some serious cut and paste action going on here.

Legally should have been granted conditional bail in the first instance (and now has).(Clearly other non-related issues are muddying the waters)

The reason the Guardian suggested for why the releases are being drip fed through a few news outlets is that the journalists they have working on it are experts in their field and are able extract the interesting/useful/relevant bits and explain them in context – rather than just dumping everything at once and letting everyone go crazy on it.

I have to agree with someone on the first page, basically these cables just confirm that the world is pretty much as we all suspected it to be don’t they?