Yeah, moments before the arrest, many people in this thread were accusing him of paranoia/manipulative intents:
>He claimed that his reason to do so was to avoid extradition to the US, but Sweden wasn't allowed to extradite him without UK's permission first [0]. He could've gone to Sweden and face the charges, and avoided this whole thing. But he had to make himself look like a victim of a conspiracy instead, and his followers eats it up.
>If this truly was some sort of grand conspiracy to get him extradited to the US, I'd imagine the CIA has more reliable and straightforward methods of arresting/disappearing someone.
>He was before he ran to the embassy, skipping bail, on the pretext that if the UK extradited him to Sweden, Sweden would extradite him to the U.S. That's an invalid pretext.
>The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US, charges in Sweden have been dropped – and for the embassy, he’s lost his value as an icon
>Assange does not want to be trapped in Ecuador’s embassy, and his hosts do not want him there. Their problem is that what’s keeping him trapped there is not so much the iniquitous actions of world powers, but pride. Perhaps it’s not Ecuador and the UK that need a mediator, but rather Ecuador and Assange.
The one about the CIA arresting or disappearing a man living in an Ecuadorian embassy in the center of London is interesting. Seems to imply the US can basically do anything anywhere and will if they want to, and really ignores the huge international fiasco from incredibly recently in the Khashoggi case.
I like the think the people manning our intelligence agencies are a fair bit better than that personally.
Although having read “Legacy of Ashes”, there certainly are some very interesting moments in CIA history.
My comment was referring to the 1.5 years Assange lived openly in London, while Sweden was trying to get him extradited. I don't believe they'd storm an embassy to get him, but a couple of men grabbing him from off the street wouldn't be too out of character.
> a couple of men grabbing him from off the street wouldn't be too out of character.
It probably would be out of character for them to do that in one of their 5-eyes partner's countries. Keeping that relationship is high priority for the US because they get tons of intelligence in return.
Plus kidnapping a 'terrorist' and kidnapping a 'journalist' (air-quotes for both) are two different things in how the world will respond. The outcry over the Italian terrorist kidnapping was pretty small but taking Assange off the streets of London would be huge.
Hmm? This just goes to show that the USA didn't need to manufacture rape allegations in Sweden just in order to get Assange extradited, since their best chance of doing so was to extradite him from the UK.
"Need" and "helps improve the PR image of the action" are not synonymous.
I am not saying it was the case or that the argument has merits. I am saying that the argument I've heard concerning this incident is not being fairly represented by the claim that the USA needed to manufacture crimes allegations in Sweden.
How does having Assange accused of rape in Sweden help the US to extradite him?
Assange was traveling between lots of countries at the time. It's not as if he was permanently based in Sweden. And Assange being accused of a crime in Sweden does not in any way make it easier for the US to extradite him from Sweden on other charges.
edit: Also, the usual conspiracy story was that the CIA/the Illuminati/whoever had directed Sweden to reopen the rape case after Assange had arrived in the UK. (The case was dropped before he left Sweden, then reopened shortly after he arrived in the UK.)
Jailing him undermines him directly by restricting his freedom. A charge of sexual misconduct will discredit him particular in the mostly-left-at-the-time circles that supported him. Having him in jail in a "friendly" nation also gives you time to prepare your proper, "iron-clad" extradition warrant... because if he is free who knows where he will be once you get your stuff ready.
Note that Assange was in the UK, in full reach of the authorities, for over a year before he claimed asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. The story you're cooking up simply makes no sense in that context.
>There are far simpler ways of assassinating someone's character than manufacturing rape allegations in a foreign country.
Actually, I don't think there are. Rape is met with near universal disapproval, and unless the accused can prove where they are at every single moment of their life, it is difficult for them disprove the claims.
Code that would modify the browser history to do such a thing was posted on hackernews a couple years ago. I just thought you would find that interesting. I'm undecided on what to think when it comes to julian.
Well if it's just creating disapproval you want then you only need to plant the story in the press.
[Fake] "Wikileaks computer IPs associated with child porn ring: was Assange using Wikileaks as cover for child porn, CIA revealed they found evidence of several Wikileaks computers uploading to child porn sites"
It is a cynical and paranoid viewpoint admittedly but not all that irrational when it is in the playbook of spies willing to commit very dirty tricks. Their secrecy and known misconduct creates a void where speculation becomes disturbingly "reasonable". Note rational and right are two different things - Stalin's father was convinced near the end of his life that his son was evil and going to murder countless people - he was right in the end.
Even if not true it is rational to consider in the same way asking "Why would a mob boss choose to have an enemy killed?" is kind of a dumb question - the question is why not at this point.
Granted it is important to keep the speculations well ordered as there are crucial differences between levels like "proven to have done it", "proven to have done somthing like this before", and "are responsible for everything bad in the world".
Venezuela is a good example for a baseline. The regieme has proven themselves complete incompetents that have had to replace sections of civilian industry with untrained military and the CIA has toppled many South American governments. Thus while it is technically possible the CIA sabotage created a power outage maladministration is a more likely culprit especially since blaming foreign powers for internal problems to hold power is a time "honored" tradition.
For a counterfactual if the outage was followed by an invasion it would be hard to believe the CIA didn't cause if their plan was just "wait until it collapses for a peacekeeping causus beli".
I don't know the truth of what happened either, but only 2 days after he applied for a residency two girls he slept with went to the police to try to "contact him to get him to get tested for STDs" and this turned into "rape and molestation" charges claiming his condom fell off and he didn't stop having sex with them. I can not tell if a condom falls off either unless I look, and I generally don't have sex with the light on. I'm not sure if I'm weird or not, but the investigation was closed.
Then a couple months later, based on no additional information, they reopened the investigation. He ended up going into the Ecuadorian Embassy soon after the release of "Global Intelligence Files" because the USA and private intelligence agencies were after him.
None of this has anything to do with the rape charges though. He is being sent to the USA over the 2010 Manning releases because he was communicating with Manning while she was stealing the docs. If she wasn't such an attention whore, she wouldn't have even been arrested. She bragged about it on IRC...
> claiming his condom fell off and he didn't stop having sex with them.
One woman claims he intentionally tore a condom. That was a lesser charge whose statute of limitations expired a while ago.
The other claims that, after insisting reportedly they use a condom, he waited for her to fall asleep and then started having unprotected see with her -- something he knew she would not consent to. That's the rape charge.
> Then a couple months later, based on no additional information, they reopened the investigation.
The alleged rape victim was initially overwhelmed (not uncommon for a rape victim) and didn't want to press charges. A few days (not months) later, she hired an attorney to represent her who got the case reopened.
Almost all the information the public knows about the case has come directly from Assange (and thus supports his conspiracy theory explanation), since the Swedish protecting authority doesn't comment on pending cases.
How do you reconcile your "only to tell him to get tested for STDs" with today's announcement by one victim's layer that she wants the rape case re-opened?
The rape charges helped to chip away at his character, isolate him and erode popular support. It's not hard to believe that intelligence services could do something like that. That's their MO.
Or maybe he actually did it and deserves to go to prison for it. Hiding in a cupboard for seven years rather than going in and facing the charges is a good way to look guilty. Blaming "foreign spies" in an attempt to hide what you did so that you don't look as bad is the kind of thing an narcissistic toolbag might do.
It is possible for Assange to be a bad guy and also for the U.S. going after him after all this time to also be unjust and bad. Not everything is a conspiracy and you don't necessarily have any "good" people when you start messing with international espionage and related areas.
They tried the more complicated route before they tried the simple route? Assange was in the UK for approximately two years before he went into the embassy.
Months? Years! He left Sweden in September 2010; he surrendered himself to the police in December 2010 and was bailed; in May 2012 the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal; in June 2012 he entered the embassy.
Perhaps at the time that was the simpler route. It's been reported that the US intelligence agencies have been working on the extradition process in 2018, so the fact that this was easily done today doesn't mean it could've been done as easily then.
Why would extraditing him from Sweden be simpler? Under international law, the US would still have needed the UK's (as well as Sweden's) permission to extradite him from Sweden if he'd first been extradited from the UK to Sweden to face rape charges.
Not simpler to extradite him then and there, but simpler to extradite him at some point in the future, assuming the investigation would've been successful
Edit: HN doesn't let me reply so deep in a thread unless I wait like 20 minutes. It'd have been simpler if he were detained as they'd have had a guarantee of his jurisdiction and plan accordingly. I imagine having him arrested in a country that had allowed CIA extraordinary rendition would've been better for them than having him protected in Ecuadorian embassy.
He was in Britain for over a year before he entered the embassy. As you can see now, the UK authorities would have arrested him in response to an extradition request.
Given the politicized nature of the crimes he's charged with in the US, neither country was likely to extradite him unless they had a politically safe reason to arrest him in the first place.
It's for an alleged "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion" with Chelsea Manning where the US claims he helped Manning get access to a passphrase so they could get some more documents[1]. We found out -- though it was criminally under-reported -- in 2018 that a case had been filed by the DOJ[2], but it's now public.
Without the rape allegations, what crime would have led to the UK arresting Assange, enabling him to be extradited? Even with the allegations, the process of extraditing him to Sweden took ages.
He can be arrested directly as a result of an extradition request. (If this weren't possible, it would rarely be possible to extradite anyone.) I think you're perhaps unaware that an extradition request is required to present evidence that the person in question has done something that is a crime under both US and UK law. It is not merely a request to move someone from one country to another.
>He claimed that his reason to do so was to avoid extradition to the US, but Sweden wasn't allowed to extradite him without UK's permission first [0]. He could've gone to Sweden and face the charges, and avoided this whole thing. But he had to make himself look like a victim of a conspiracy instead, and his followers eats it up.
>If this truly was some sort of grand conspiracy to get him extradited to the US, I'd imagine the CIA has more reliable and straightforward methods of arresting/disappearing someone.
>He was before he ran to the embassy, skipping bail, on the pretext that if the UK extradited him to Sweden, Sweden would extradite him to the U.S. That's an invalid pretext.
And beyond HN, journalists have some interesting articles too. The Guardian's James Ball in 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/10/julian...
>The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US, charges in Sweden have been dropped – and for the embassy, he’s lost his value as an icon
>Assange does not want to be trapped in Ecuador’s embassy, and his hosts do not want him there. Their problem is that what’s keeping him trapped there is not so much the iniquitous actions of world powers, but pride. Perhaps it’s not Ecuador and the UK that need a mediator, but rather Ecuador and Assange.