Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/13074556
The country’s parliament recently passed a measure - backed by PM Anthony Albanese - calling for the return of Mr Assange to his native Australia.
The US wants to extradite the 52-year-old from the UK on criminal charges over the leaking of military records.
Mr Assange denies the charges, saying the leaks were an act of journalism.
The president was asked about Australia’s request on Wednesday and said: “We’re considering it.”
“Political figure makes non-committal statement, news at 11”
I am still not clear what supposed crime he has committed other then pissing powerful people off. He should get a reward for that.
Espionage Act. Which is basically that. Pissing off the War Pigs, specifically.
He published information that “could aid the enemy” and “damage own personnel”. According to the military, that’s a crime, even if (or moreso if) it’s done by revealing war crimes committed by the military itself.
He also published, and was about to publish more, compromising information about a bunch of other people who have lobbying influence over the US government.
And he has got multiple awards… just not from the people he’s pissed off 🙂
He is not an American citizen and he is not in the US. How does US law apply.
Every country’s law applies to whatever happens on its soil and it’s interests abroad.
Whether it can be enforced, is a matter of extradition treaties… or black ops.
He published STOLEN documents. If you want to participate in Civil Disobedience, you have to accept the consequences. He’s not in it for any cause other than fuck you.
By that same logic, can Russia ask Japan to extradite a US citizen because they advocated for LGBTQ+ rights while they were in South Korea? Because that’s basically what’s happening here, I just swapped the offence and the countries involved.
Dude isn’t a US person, wasn’t in the US when he committed the alleged crime, and said alleged crime isn’t a crime where he allegedly committed it. US law isn’t world law.
EVEN IF the guy might’ve been rapist asshole (allegations were fishy as heck), this extradition proceeding is a gross overreach by the US, and the UK should have laughed it out of court. If a country has any leg to stand on regarding extradition, it’s Sweden (I think that’s where he was when he committed all the alleged crimes, both the sexual ones and the wikileaks ones).
They can ask, but no one is under obligation to comply, just like the US asked and were rejected. If I personally published stolen classified material that would embarrass or materially harm a foreign nation, I would expect retaliation of some sort.
They did something similar with Chelsea Manning, announced they were “thinking about a pardon” to see if there would be pushback.
It’s proving to be rather embarrassing for the UK, it’s clear to many here how he’s been treated and how much of a stitch up the trial has been. I imagine the US could do without the international attention on this - court cases, more Russia speculation in an election year.
And the “authorities” have made their point: don’t try to take the piss out of us, we will ruin your life even if we don’t get you to trial. Julian Assange’s case will certainly be putting off quite a few people from becoming radical journalists.
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Espionage can result in a death penalty but it’s currently the case that the UK (courts) would like a guarantee from the US (lol) that he won’t be executed. Other than that I think it’s over 100 years and they can add more charges when he arrives.
This thread is a garbage fire - a bunch of people who didn’t look anything up (or if they did, they cite no sources, so there’s no evidence they did) spouting a bunch of mutually contradictory shit, all of it upvoted. I will never understand why anyone engages with Lemmy this way.
Here is the list of US charges against Assange, from the actual paperwork charging him.
As you can see here, each of the first 17 charges has a maximum penalty of 10 years (not including fines).
Charge 18 is messier. Under USC 371 the max is 5 years. I believe USC 1030 is also capped at 5 years.
So roughly a 175 year sentence, at cap.
So roughly a 175 year sentence, at cap.
Sentencing guidelines usually have specific rules for whether sentences would be run concurrently or consecutively. Charges are grouped if:
(a) Counts involve the same victim and the same act or transaction.
(b) Counts involve the same victim and two or more acts or transactions connected by a common criminal objective or constituting part of a common scheme or plan. © One of the counts embodies conduct that is treated as a specific offense characteristic in, or Chapter 3 adjustment to, the guideline applicable to another count. (d) Counts use the same guideline and are included for grouping under [subsection §3D1.2].A group’s value is then determined by the most serious count in that group. Then, separate groups are combined in a way that is not as simple as adding the groups together. This United States Sentencing Commission PDF document explains how that combining is done. And this YouTube video explains more about how the severity of each charge is calculated and what that means in terms of time in prison, through the lens of explaining what it would mean if Trump were to be found guilty of all the charges laid on him in relation to the retention of classified documents.
I’m not even going to begin to try to work out how that would be applied here, because I am woefully unqualified. But I doubt it would actually be anywhere near 175 years for Assange even if found guilty on all charges and given the harshest interpretation of the sentencing guidelines.
That’s nice, but it’s only a list of “currently presented” charges, with none of the “potentially other” charges.
Keep in mind that federal felony charges involving the death penalty, like treason (¹), have no statute of limitations. He could easily get extradited, found either not guilty, or that the crimes have prescribed, or pardoned… then charged with treason and executed.
(¹: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason_laws_in_the_United_States )
Treason is a crime you can only commit against your own country. The US can’t accuse a non-US citizen of treason…
They’re a country that’s known to use torture and secret courts. They still have Guantanamo which is one big human rights violation.
That would be my concern.
It doesn’t matter because US prisons are so bad he would probably die in prison. This is why the UK has been hesitant to extradite him.
