UN panel 'rules in Assange's favour'

There seems to be some ridiculously large misconceptions here regarding these two things:<p>1. Assange is not violating any Swedish laws or policies by staying in the embassy and avoiding extradition, he has no obligation to return to Sweden and every right not to.<p>2. Assanges presence in Sweden is not required by Swedish policies or laws, Swedish courts already called out the prosecutor for not accepting his statements from the embassy.<p>The duty of the prosecutor also seems to need clarifying, some people here seem to think that the prosecutor has no obligation to agree to interview Assange in the embassy. This is absolutely not true.<p>Do you not think that the victims(although not entirely applicable here) are OK with the prosecutor indefinitely delaying the case until the crimes expire just because she is too arrogant to pick up the phone and ring up Assange or buy a 30 euro plane ticket to London?<p>Another thing worth noting is that many people seem to think UK is a particularly easy country to extradite people from, this isn&#x27;t exactly true. See Gary McKinnon and Lauri Love.<p>Sweden has a history of just handing people over to the CIA.

I think the key issue is that the Swedish prosecutor (until recently) made no effort to question him in the embassy.<p>Given how badly the US wants Assange, and how we know they treat people like him, it is completely understandable that he wouldn&#x27;t want to leave the embassy. Therefore it is hard to understand why the Swedish prosecutor was content to sit on her backside when it&#x27;s in everyone&#x27;s (not least the alleged victims) interest to move the case forward.

I&#x27;m just flabbergasted at how much the UK has spent on the operation: <i>Last October, Scotland Yard said it would no longer station officers outside the Ecuador embassy following an operation which it said had cost £12.6m. But it said &quot;a number of overt and covert tactics to arrest him&quot; would still be deployed.</i>

For those wondering: the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is a panel currently consisting of one individual each from South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Benin, and Ukraine.<p>Its charter gives it no legal power; it is like a version of Amnesty International housed in the UN.

There is something curious about the conclusion that surrounding a person for the purpose of lawfully detaining them amounts to unlawful detention.<p>Hasn&#x27;t that been a traditional method of catching a suspect? &quot;Come out with your hands up, we have you surrounded!&quot;<p>Perhaps there is something significant in the fact that Assange is in the Ecuadorian Embassy. We&#x27;ll have to wait for the reasons to be published.

Imagine how many people could be educated with the money that governments spend on activities like this, I doubt it will ever happen but until we stop the mostly needless wastage of throwing money at bureaucratic political games we&#x27;ll never get off this rock. You know who&#x27;s being punished when that money is being spent? The public, not Assange, not Wikileaks, not any governments - it&#x27;s the public.<p>Politics aside, there is no human reason why informed, intelligent people could not speak and asses him within the embassy, then give the same treatment to those making claims and present their findings accordingly, it&#x27;s only the totalitarian inhuman systems of political practise that have prevented sound, logical reasoning to take place.<p>If the evidence clearly states that he directly hurt other human beings then he should face punishment for that in the country that he is a citizen of, if it is unclear he should be presumed innocent until proven guilty but still investigated transparently and humanely.<p>With regards to assisting parts of Wikileaks - he was part of a large community of people (remember, we&#x27;re humans and we want to get along for the most part) that exposed corruption and wrongdoing by people and governments in positions of power. If you have to break a law to prove that laws have been broken both parties must be treated with the same scrutiny - end of story.<p>Edit: I&#x27;d like to add that if the sexual assault claims were true he should be treated as a mental patient that committed a crime rather than a criminal with malicious intent of direct wrong doing. You can&#x27;t heal, or change people with punishment - humans are adaptive, complex organisms that need quality education, therapy, social training and reflection and then they need to play a part in the community to help prevent such things from happening again. If you think about the money that&#x27;s been spent with regards to the alleged sexual crimes alone - with those millions of dollars just think about how many people that could help, not just with education but also improving mental health, support networks and so forth that can make a difference not just to 1-3 people but thousands of people. The value of where our money has been spent on this is clearly very poor.

I do feel for Assange. Hi is in a bad situation, but personally so do I not see how his voluntary attempt to evade a legal arrest order is detention. Hi is accused of a serious crime and the Swedish authorities must investigate it.

I thought this comment in the other thread was insightful: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11033115" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11033115</a><p>Why did he go to the UN? Probably because they&#x27;re not a court and have no actual power here.

<i>But it doesn&#x27;t mean that he&#x27;ll walk free. It&#x27;s not legally binding. And British officials have made clear that the European arrest warrant against him remains in place.</i><p><i>The panel&#x27;s ruling will not have any formal influence over the British and Swedish authorities and the UK Foreign Office said it still had an obligation to extradite Mr Assange.</i><p>I don&#x27;t quite understand: Why appeal to the UN in the first place, if their ruling is not legally binding?

The UK police have said they will still arrest him if he leaves, and the UN ruling is not legally binding.

AP: &quot;Sweden&#x27;s foreign ministry says U.N. panel concluded that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange&#x27;s detention is &#x27;arbitrary&#x27;&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;AP&#x2F;status&#x2F;695260597533962241" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;AP&#x2F;status&#x2F;695260597533962241</a><p><i>A U.N. official says Sweden was informed last month of a U.N. panel&#x27;s decision on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.<p>While the panel hasn&#x27;t officially released its decision, Sweden&#x27;s foreign ministry said Thursday that the advisory group had concluded that Assange has been a victim of &quot;arbitrary&quot; detention at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where he sought refuge in 2012.</i><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bigstory.ap.org&#x2F;7bb5647f6042478ab3d56d4bbe73b90b" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bigstory.ap.org&#x2F;7bb5647f6042478ab3d56d4bbe73b90b</a>

As mentioned by some people in the comments, Assange may still be arrested due to the lack of jurisdiction of UN panel&#x27;s such as this.<p>If that is the case, what is there that we (as supporters of Assange&#x27;s plight) can do to add pressure to the UK government and forward the effort towards securing his freedom?

Considering what a brief and skewed description of the Julian Assange story is reported by the article, this is probably a good time to repost John Pilger&#x27;s more thorough reporting on the events, for anyone who wasn&#x27;t following it or doesn&#x27;t remember clearly:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnpilger.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;the-siege-of-julian-assange-is-a-farce-a-special-investigation" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnpilger.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;the-siege-of-julian-assange-i...</a>

For some frequently asked questions, from Assange&#x27;s side of things, as it seems as if a few people here haven&#x27;t heard about Assange before on Hacker News, take a look at the FAQ section halfway down this page (you can skip the top bit if you are somewhat familiar)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;justice4assange.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;justice4assange.com&#x2F;</a><p>It&#x27;s also worth a look at some of the arguments here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;justice4assange.com&#x2F;extraditing-assange.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;justice4assange.com&#x2F;extraditing-assange.html</a><p>(edits: made the above clearer that the FAQs were from Assange&#x27;s side)

If USA didn&#x27;t do anything illegal&#x2F;scandalous&#x2F;unethical&#x2F;violate_their_own_constitution, then there wouldn&#x27;t be incentive for anyone to leak anything if at least there was proper channels to go through to point errors and correct the system.<p>Instead of correcting the system, those in power are trying to going after whistle blowers. The system is no longer a democracy.

Note that the article says the panel will rule on Friday, not that he has already won.<p>If there is an updated article showing more recent developments, then a link to that would be awesome

Shame on the UK. Shame on Sweden. Shame on the US.<p>We&#x27;re with you Julian.

This title is misleading... he has not won anything yet... he is still waiting for their ruling... The ruling I believe from the article suppose to come out tomorrow. So please make sure you read the article. He has also said that if he looses which might still he will freely give himself up for arrest tomorrow at noon.

If somebody wants to try to guess what the arguments of the UN Working Group can be, the starting point should be:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ohchr.org&#x2F;Documents&#x2F;Publications&#x2F;FactSheet26en.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ohchr.org&#x2F;Documents&#x2F;Publications&#x2F;FactSheet26en.pd...</a><p>&quot;according to the Group, deprivation of liberty is arbitrary if a case falls into one of the following three categories:<p>A) When it is clearly impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty (as when a person is kept in detention after the completion of his sentence or despite an amnesty law applicable to him)(Category I);<p>B) When the deprivation of liberty results from the exercise of the rights or freedoms guaranteed by articles 7, 13, 14, 18, 19, 10 and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, insofar as States parties are concerned, by articles 12, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26 and 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Category II);<p>C) When the total or partial non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial, spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the relevant international instruments accepted by the States concerned, is of such gravity as to give the deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character (Category III).&quot;<p>It&#x27;s about the &quot;arbitrary deprivation of liberty&quot; against his human rights.

Could the title be changed to the original? (&quot;WikiLeaks&#x27; Assange &#x27;unlawfully detained&#x27; in Ecuador embassy, U.N. panel to rule, BBC says&quot;)<p>As the article correctly points out, this is currently a rumor, the panel has not yet ruled.

It may be worth pointing out that this is not a court. It&#x27;s some working group.

It&#x27;s extremely hard to understand how this could be the case. He has evaded prosecution for rape for years and still has people defending him. It was entirely his own choice to seek refuge inside the embassy and he did so to avoid prosecution. This makes him a gigantic hypocrite in addition to the sexual offences.<p>Reading the complaint against him, it&#x27;s very hard to see how anyone could justify his actions. I&#x27;m sure there&#x27;ll be much posted in this thread shortly though calling him a hero.

I&#x27;m still appalled by the fact that Sweden, which seems to be one of the best countries to live in, cannot handle this situation better.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theintercept.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;24&#x2F;jtrig-manipulation&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theintercept.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;24&#x2F;jtrig-manipulation&#x2F;</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;21stcenturywire.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;25&#x2F;snowden-training-guide-for-gchq-nsa-agents-infiltrating-and-disrupting-alternative-media-online&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;21stcenturywire.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;25&#x2F;snowden-training-guide...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theintercept.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;02&#x2F;gchq-argentina-falklands&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theintercept.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;02&#x2F;gchq-argentina-falklands...</a><p>Remember: JTRIG (NSA+GCHQ) is very interested in online propaganda and controlling public opinion through shills.<p>Note: Both serve their governments, which have decided to treat Assange as an enemy rather than a journalist.<p>I don&#x27;t think this is okay. I encourage everyone to be on guard for this sort of behavior on news stories related to Assange.

Truly courageous of Assange to to write that &quot;Should the U.N. announce tomorrow that I have lost my case against the United Kingdom and Sweden, I shall exit the embassy at noon on Friday to accept arrest by British police as there is no meaningful prospect of further appeal,&quot; at the same time as the BBC is reporting that they ruled for him.

Is it still costing UK taxpayers a million per month?<p>Vaguely remember something like that.<p>Think of what good all that money could have done instead.<p>Why don&#x27;t UK folks do a petition for THAT so your parliment has to argue it, instead of something useless (but impressive) like banning Trump from the UK

For better or worse I suspect the UN panel ruling would be the same if, instead of being a noted whistleblowing journalist hiding from equivalent allegations in the Ecuadorean embassy it was, say, a former senior diplomat for Gadaffi&#x27;s Libya, or a prominent US cult leader, or another non-&quot;hero&quot; type that could claim the same fears of extradition and arbitrary detention with the same degree of plausibility.<p>On the other hand, I suspect that if he had that sort of background there wouldn&#x27;t be many people here willing to advance the argument that the original prosecution must be politically motivated, or it wasn&#x27;t a real crime...<p>Justice is supposed to be blind.

Not an expert on EU or UK law, but it seems odd to me that a ruling by a UN panel would have any effect on Assange&#x27;s legal status. Perhaps it is just cover for him to live in a non-EU country and fight extradition?

Who exactly is he detained by?

If &quot;UN ruling&quot; were binding then it would turn the notion of political asylum irrelevant. Political asylum only makes sense if laws have some sort of limit. And I am not looking into Assange&#x27;s case specifics, but in a more abstract way, in which a bad &quot;UN ruling&quot; should be considered.

Can this be merged into the other post? This article is just quoting the BBC one.

The article that Reuters refers to:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-35490910" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-35490910</a><p>The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ohchr.org&#x2F;EN&#x2F;Issues&#x2F;Detention&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;WGADIndex.aspx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ohchr.org&#x2F;EN&#x2F;Issues&#x2F;Detention&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;WGADIndex.asp...</a><p>Apparently their report is to be published tomorrow.<p>I personally don&#x27;t see how is he &quot;detained&quot; when he himself decided to sit in the Embassy. Maybe because the UK by waiting on him to exit the embassy doesn&#x27;t recognize his status of having political asylum granted by Ecuador? I&#x27;d like to read the (as the article says, legally directly <i>non-binding</i> for the UK) report of the UN Working Group myself to adjust my opinion.<p>Up to then it&#x27;s just media making noise, still no new information, except that the report is expected to be published.<p>I believe he&#x27;s with reasonable probability in danger of being extradited to the US and there having the fate similar to Manning&#x27;s. As far as I understand there is also some kind of &quot;working group&quot; formed in the US that specially works on his case, and the US really successfully does such things as demanding the extradition of people they want to prosecute and then getting them.<p>Edit:<p>If somebody wants to try to guess what the arguments of the Working Group can be, the starting point should be:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ohchr.org&#x2F;Documents&#x2F;Publications&#x2F;FactSheet26en.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ohchr.org&#x2F;Documents&#x2F;Publications&#x2F;FactSheet26en.pd...</a><p>&quot;according to the Group, deprivation of liberty is arbitrary if a case falls into one of the following three categories:<p>A) When it is clearly impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty (as when a person is kept in detention after the completion of his sentence or despite an amnesty law applicable to him)(Category I);<p>B) When the deprivation of liberty results from the exercise of the rights or freedoms guaranteed by articles 7, 13, 14, 18, 19, 10 and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, insofar as States parties are concerned, by articles 12, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26 and 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Category II);<p>C) When the total or partial non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial, spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the relevant international instruments accepted by the States concerned, is of such gravity as to give the deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character (Category III).&quot;<p>It&#x27;s not about the &quot;detention&quot; but about the &quot;deprivation of liberty.&quot; That has more sense.

AP confirms: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;AP&#x2F;status&#x2F;695258621454741505" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;AP&#x2F;status&#x2F;695258621454741505</a>

i cannot figure out for the life of me why so many support him given what the women went through.