Julian Assange turned himself into the British police this morning.
The key point to remember is that Assange has not been charged with any crime. He has the equivalent of a jay-walking misdemeanor pending in Sweden, according to one commentator and that doesn't amount to a criminal charge. What is it? Rape? No. Consensual sex without the use of a condom. No kidding. That's a misdemeanor in Sweden. One "witness" says he used a condom but the condom broke... You can see pretty clearly the level of "criminality" involved here and wonder whether someone or some nation isn't using extradition more illegally than Assange used (or didn't use) a rubber.
No wonder Julian Assange's lawyer is scratching his head.
In an interview with Sky News in London, Mark Stephens, a British lawyer representing Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, pointed to one of the more curious aspects of the warrant for his arrest issued by Swedish authorities: they have not charged him with any crime. Mr. Stephens clarified that Mr. Assange is still only wanted for questioning in Sweden. "There is a question at law, " he said, as to whether the Swedish prosecutor "is entitled to extradite him for the purpose of questioning."
Asked what he thought was behind the legal action against his client, Mr. Stephens said:
Well, to begin with, like everybody else, I thought that this was just a straight-forward allegation and I was treating as such, but it has taken so many bizarre twists and turns and I have seen a prosecutor in Sweden who has not complied with her obligations under Swedish law... and I haven't seen her behave in any way which is rational, and in those circumstances, you've got to think that there is more to this. And of course when you get a situation where the original charges were dropped by the seniormost prosecutor in Sweden, on the grounds that there was not one shred of evidence to even warrant an investigation, and then a politician intervenes a few weeks later and goes to another city and another prosecutor on the same facts and she begins this kind of witch-hunt, then I think you really have got to worry about the impartiality of the system and the process." ...NYT
For more twists and turns and big questions related to Assange's dubious extradition hearings, check out the report at NPR.
