This story got me scratching my head:
For a while, having Julian Assange crash at the Ecuadorian embassy in London wasn’t that big of a nuisance. Sure, Assange was always there. But it wasn’t his fault — he would be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault if he ever left. And yeah, there wasn’t really space for him there, so he “sleeps on an air mattress in a small office that has been converted to a bedroom,” according to the New York Times.
We talked about all the luxuries of the modern prisons here, is Assange’s political asylum any better?
I have mixed feelings about Mr. Assange, on one hand he’s a bit of an anarchist who doesn’t seem to care if his wiki-leaks page gets good people killed, on the other hand he is doing good work keeping governments accountable. I haven’t done the math so I’ll just reserve judgement.
Still to avoid going to prison he’s essentially locked himself in a small office to sleep on an air mattress, and NEVER go outside. I guess there are better chances of “Escape” for him, but really would he be worse off if he was convicted of sexual assault in Sweden?
On the gripping hand, he’s accused of rape and should stand trial.
First off, I think he is guilty of sexual assault given the circumstances.
That said, the reason for this whole mess has little to do with the crime of which he is accused and more to do with political wrangling by various governments that have an interest in seeing him punished.
For instance his current arrest warrant is for questioning, something that can be done over the phone and often is, and even though there is some provision for arrest for questioning warrants in the EU, his was issued irregularly.
The man was hardly a freedom of information hero, he was responsible for multiple incomplete and editorialized releases of information that caused infighting within the wikileaks group.
The only good thing about him is he presented a face for the governments to go after while important and real freedom of information work was going on.
So while I’d like to see him stand trial, I don’t think it’s possible at this point for him to travel to Sweden and receive a fair trial or get out of Sweden without some additional hold for extradition to somewhere else.