Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Ecuador revokes Julian Assange's citizenship

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 18:54:17 GMT

What a long, strange trip it's been.

Let's see. Through Wikileaks, Julian publishes a video that pisses off the American government. Goes to Sweden, two women accuse him of rape after having sex with them and they withdraw their consent. He flees to England, seeks refuge at the Ecuadoran embassy who let him in. I think Ecuador doesn't have an extradition treaty with the USA. Ecuador grants him citizenship, apparently considering granting him diplomatic status which would give him immunity from prosecution which would cause so much fun and laughter.

Sweden drops the investigation after not being able to get anywhere in the investigation - including interviewing Assange in the embassy, but I've heard they have the ability to refile the charges. He's a lousy guest to the Ecuadorans: doesn't keep his space clean, continues to publish Wikileaks when he's specifically asked not to, I seem to recall rumors of him attempting to hack Ecuadoran Embassy systems and uses massive amounts of WiFi bandwidth.

Then a big thing happens. Ecuador has a change in government: the one that was friendly towards Assange is out of power, the new one - doing something very familiar to Americans - sets about reversing many of the policies of the previous administration. And they call the London police and ask them if they'd be interested in making a pickup, and kick him out.

Assange is arrested, convicted of evading "Bail Evasion", whatever that is, and is now trying to avoid extradition to the USA. Apparently a scheme is in the works where he could come here, face trial, and if convicted, serve the sentence in an Australian prison.

Frankly, I don't really care. I find him rather bothersome.

To a degree, I like the concept of Wikileaks. I think some of the exposures are good for people. The video that got him into trouble was akin to the Pentagon Papers in that it showed the government was lying to the people about innocents being killed in Iraq. We knew it was happening, the government was lying about it. But Assange does not sanitize information, he just dumps it, regardless of the consequences to people. And that can include private information about people, information, or processes that shouldn't be made public and can endanger lives.

When Edward Snowden released information to reporters, they didn't just dump it out there, they carefully reviewed it so that private information didn't risk lives, while it still showed that the government was spying on the United States and the rest of the world. That's the responsible way to do it.

Assange wants to claim to be a journalist and hide behind First Amendment Freedom of the Press protections, but he doesn't follow Press Practices.

I don't think I would go quite so far as calling him an anarchist, but he is pretty close to being a bomb thrower. Does he deserve prison time? I'm not sure on that call. Those Swedish rape charges sound a little weird to me - the women absolutely have the right to withdraw consent. But he's a public political target, and it wouldn't surprise me if some money exchanged some hands to encourage them to withdraw their consent. I think it deserves investigating.

We shall see how this all plays out. I don't think that this loss of Ecuadoran citizenship will really mean a thing in the short or long term personally.

https://gizmodo.com/ecuador-tells-julian-assange-his-citizenship-has-been-r-1847379150

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More fun for Assange: Ecuador hands his possessions over to the USA, Sweden reopens investigation

Tue, 21 May 2019 15:10:47 GMT

From the article: "The country's foreign minister José Valencia authorised the seizure of equipment earlier this month.

Wikileaks says the material includes manuscripts, legal papers, medical records and electronic equipment.

Mr Assange's lawyer has called the move "completely unprecedented in the history of asylum".

"Ecuador is committing a flagrant violation of the most basic norms of the institution of asylum by handing over all the asylee's personal belongings indiscriminately to the country that he was being protected from," added lawyer Aitor Martinez.

Mr Valencia said last week that the decision to share items with US authorities should be taken by the Ecuadorian prosecutor's office.

Wikileaks' Editor-in-Chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said in a statement that there was "no doubt" that Ecuador had "tampered" with the belongings it had sent to the US."

It's an interesting point about the asylee's personal belongings. The biggest problems is that he was an ass, causing problems with his hosts. He was a guest in the embassy and he abused his position, hogging WiFi bandwidth that was needed by the embassy, embarrassing the embassy, it was alleged that he hacked into embassy computers! Eventually there was a change in government and they kicked him out by inviting the police in to arrest him.

Personally I'm a little surprised that they didn't give his possessions to the UK police, I guess they strategized that they could score some political brownie points with the United States by giving said possessions to them.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48335692

I don't have a link to the latter item in the subject line, but Sweden has re-opened its investigation into the rape investigation against Assange. He had overnight sex with two women in Sweden, afterwards they withdrew their consent, prompting his flight to England to avoid prosecution. Part of their withdrawal of consent involved, IIRC, set without a condom or a broken condom. When Sweden suspended their investigation into Assange due to their inability to access him at the embassy, they always had the ability to relaunch it should he become available again, and that time has arrived.

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Julian Assange gets 50 weeks in UK prison for skipping bail when he fled to the embassy

Wed, 01 May 2019 17:05:02 GMT

In his attempt to flee Swedish police questioning, he broke bail, and yesterday he was thrown in the pokey for almost a year for those antics. Yet to be faced is potential extradition to the USA.

So now he will get a taste for what prison is really like.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/01/uk/julian-assange-court-gbr-intl/index.html

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