Posted on 02/05/2011 8:51:51 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The extradition hearing for WikiLeak's founder Julian Assange is set to begin Monday in London, with his lawyers prepared to make arguments he could eventually end up in Guantanamo Bay if first extradited to Sweden.
Assange, of Australia, is wanted for questioning by Swedish prosecutors for incidents with two women in August and faces possible charges of rape, unlawful coercion and sexual molestation. He maintains the encounters were consensual.
After Swedish authorities requested that a European Arrest Warrant be issued, Assange turned himself in to U.K. police on Dec. 7. After a week in custody, he was granted bail on the condition he turn in his passport, wear an electronic monitoring device and check in regularly with police.
His lawyers, who include high-profile attorney Mark Stephens, plan to argue that the arrest warrant was issued "for the purposes of prosecuting or punishing him for his political opinions," according to a 35-page document outlining their expected legal arguments.
Assange's legal problems intensified as WikiLeaks began releasing in late November some of 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables leaked to the website. The release caused a furor among U.S. politicians, with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee calling for the death penalty for those who released the cables and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin saying Assange should be hunted down with the same urgency as al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders....
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
Putting him on trial may very well backfire. If you can’t convict Muslim terrorists what makes you think you can convict a whistleblower?
Wishful thinking.
I’d much rather sit him on top of a sprouting bamboo shoot in some tropical jungle, and just let it grow...
Palin on the drdge headline spot with great Picture.
caption “We’re on the Road to Ruin”
links to this story:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/05/usa-palin-idUSN0510429720110205
first time I have seen Palin take top billing on Drudge in a long long time.
I think that this guy is slicker than snot and he will beat all the charges.
Lucky Bastard. I wish they sent me there.
They did once, but I was having so much fun they made me leave.
Assange should just go camp out at the top of Ayer’s Rock for a couple of years.
Fine by me.
Obama and Assange should both go to Gitmo.
He’s not an illegal combatant and no one says he is- so he’s not going to sunny gitmo. Period.
Of course his lawyer is right to raise irrelevent issues for public consumption to put him in as good a light as can be done. If the judge doesn’r summarily dismiss this nonsense though it will be very demeaning to the british legal system.
GTMO is sunny, I’ll give you that, but it is not sunny in the enjoyable sense.
Well, Dec through Mar is pretty nice, but the rest of the time it is oppressive. It’s not bad if you can get a lot of beach time, but when I was there, the detainees didn’t get any beach time.
They got a lot of fillet of fish sandwiches’ from McDonald’s, but that’s another story
My image of it is formed from my navy father’s accounts many, many... many years ago.
He owes no loyalty to the USA.
I agree. But good luck getting a conviction in a military court in Gitmo. I really don’t think it’s possible now.
Let’s send Assange and his lawyers to GITMO. The sharks in Gitmo Bay are hungry.
Trial: We don’t need no stinkin’ trial.
Assange didn’t steal the documents, he is a member of the press and as such is as free as the paper that leaked the Pentagon papers to do what he did. I didn’t see anyone from the NYTimes going to jail.
Assange, well enough, but what about the ones that produced the leaked info, and those responsible for securing the leaked info? Stupid statements and acts only become stupid after we learn of them.
Probably right and he is a scumbag.
At first, I wanted him strung up. Now, I'm conflicted - he has been a conduit for a lot of damage, but we allowed the situation that leaked the data by not treating the young doofus that put it out there the way we should have - out on his ass instead of in uniform and in a position to access the data.
Then, the leaks have shown what a shitter our current prez actually is and shown why we need to replace him and the whole leftists party ASAP. In a way, Assange has provided more transparency about our government than Obama and Pelosi ever intended when they said they would be open to scrutiny. He also demonstrated why they won't be transparent - when a poltroon shows his true colors, people react in disgust and want the person gone.
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