Julian Assange's legal team are currently contesting the extradition order made in Belmarsh last week which would see Assange returned to Sweden to face charges of sexual assault. Look kids, it's easy. No reference to conspiracy theories, Wikileaks, traitors, trumped up charges or the national misandry of Sweden, just a sentence containing a single fact.
This issue appears to have become a signpost issue for ideological positioning, with various hysterical oversimplifications of the facts highlighting from whence on the political spectrum a person hails from.
Variously, the extreme left holds that the charges themselves are a conspiracy by the US Government to silence Wikileaks, that the women were a honeytrap, that Assange can be more easily extradited from Sweden to the Guantanamo Bay and that Assange is a political prisoner. From somewhere in the deep undergrowth of the centrist left comes support for Wikileaks coupled with suspicion of Assange as an anarchist who wants to overthrow all governments using the weapon of truth, and the claim that anyone who dares suggest anything dodgy about the sexual assault charges is secretly a misogynist and apologist for sexual assault. The vocal far-right variously appears to hold that Assange is a traitor to America, a kind of criminal terrorist mastermind who deserves to be locked up, tortured or executed, and they don't really care by what process this occurs.
Thus simplified, this entire debate seems reminiscent of climate change, with various groups who don't understand the science at all deciding that whether or not climate change is happening is a left-right issue and positioning themselves accordingly. Whether climate change is happening, however, is not a space for ideological argument in the same way that gravity is not. Whether or not the global mean temperature is rising, and why, is part of a series of discoverable facts about the universe, and politics really should only be coming into it as a matter of public policy - determining what action needs to be taken, given the best possible understanding of the facts.
The problem with positional adoptions of factual situations is that, even in our cutesy post-modernist intellectual world, science, the law, and David Duchovny's character in the X-files all want to hold that there is a truth out there, somewhere. The bulk of commentators, coming largely from non-specialist media, appear to be content, once they realise the extent to which they must wade through the arcane system of law or complexities of science, to settle somewhere near the bottom and draw conclusions according to the most convenient selection of facts.
Julian Assange's extradition was heard by a Magistrate at Belmarsh. Under the 2003 Extradition Act, which brought British law in line with EU extradition agreements, the Court needed to ascertain that Assange was wanted for a prosecution of an extraditable offence, and also that none of a specified list of exceptions which would make extradition unjust, applied. The court ruled that, although Assange was not arraigned for the alleged charges, certain oddities of the Swedish judicial system meant that we could understand that Assange was in fact wanted not merely for questioning, but for answering the charges before a Swedish Court. The threshold here is low, and the British court would have had to impugn the Swedish process for handling sexual assault charges and indeed the Swedish legal system as being susceptible to coercion, were the judgement made that Assange's extradition to face these charges was improper. In shiny new EU happy family land, that was always going to be extraordinarily unlikely.
That being said, Assange's legal team is correct to appeal this decision to a higher court. The central evidence in favour of Assange's extradition was provided in affidavit (written) form, and the prosecutor did not make herself available for cross-examination, meaning that evidence was never tested. The alleged events took place between 13 and 19 August 2010. On 20 August 2010 the Swedish prosecution (improperly) made a media announcement that Assange was the subject of a rape investigation. At some point over the next month, the charges are dropped by the Swedish prosecution and Assange is advised he will not be held to answer them. Enter the new prosecutor, Ms. Ny, who decides to prosecute after all.
This raises some questions about why the prosecution was revived. In the case of sexual assault, it is manifestly unlikely that new evidence arose, as the nature of the offence is such that evidence is eroded over time. It is also unlikely that, over time, a witness' statement becomes more credible. This makes the decision to re-open the prosecution appear to be a politically motivated one.
I do not wish to comment on the likelihood or otherwise that Assange has committed the offences that are alleged. I know that some commentators have, but to my mind as someone who was not present at the time, my opinion is entirely invalid and would be based on speculation. I do note that the process by which Swedish courts handle sexual assault charges is considerably more private than in our common law tradition. The media in Australian trials is allowed to be present but restricted in what they can report. In Sweden, they are not entitled to be present. A single judge and panel of three political appointees hear evidence and interrogate the accused and witnesses. A judgement issues at the end, but to my mind, if I were hoping to tar and feather someone without giving them an opportunity to publicly defend what have been extraordinarily public accusations, there could be no better venue selection. This is especially the case given the media play the prosecution case has already had in Sweden, with there being little left in terms of protecting the identities of the victims to necessitate a private trial.
Honey trap or no, Assange's extradition is beginning to look very likely, and there are real concerns about impropriety in the way in which the prosecution has handled the investigation. Focus on the idea that it's easier to extradite Assange from Sweden to the US misses a critical point, however, which is that it is not tremendously difficult to extradite from the UK to the US, provided that Assange has a case to answer under US law. Unfortunately for the US, no one can yet point to a US law which he has breached. As is made clear in the judgement issued last week, further extradition from Sweden would likely require the consent of the UK Secretary of State.
I don't think this is a PR move, either, because there is almost no way in which the extraditon of Assange from Sweden to the US doesn't generate a media shit-storm approximately a hundred times bigger than Charlie Sheen's narcissistic meltdown. If the US were prepared to do that, and accordingly undermine the sovereignty of both the UK and Sweden by pressuring their judicial system for a particular outcome, then there's almost no sense in which the US is restrained at all by the restrictions of diplomacy, in which case it would probably have been easier to simply arrange for Assange to be killed and face the possible diplomatic ramifications later.
The real loser in all this is Bradley Manning, the American defence employee who allegedly leaked the cables to Wikileaks in the first place. He's suffering torture, solitary confinement, and the real chance of execution. As a US citizen and someone who leaked confidential information, there are few legal remedies to his current plight. The law, weakened and sullied in a post-911 world to bring us Guantanamo Bay, military trials, and the absence of common law protections for those merely accused of terror offences, in fact protects those who wish to confine, torture and execute Manning. Whether you consider his actions to be a serious crime or not, it remains to be said that his treatment post-arrest has been far beyond what we would hope for from a civilised nation led by the rule of law.
If a tiny bit of the attention on Assange reminds people about Manning, then it can only be a good thing. Underpinning Wikileaks is the notion that exercises of power which occur silently and in the darkest corners where the powerful play, confidentially sequestered from the public gaze, should be feared. Manning's actions, from which we can assume a belief in transparency, shining a light into dark places, has plunged him into the sort of nightmare that makes 1984 look tame, and it is not the time to turn our faces and attention from that dark little military cell in favour of the glittery show-trial of Julian Assange.
Seriously, how can that childlike face not prompt some sympathy, even at the very least 'aw, maybe let's not attach electrodes to its testicles'?
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