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I'm just flabbergasted at how much the UK has spent on the operation: Last October, Scotland Yard said it would no longer station officers outside the Ecuador e
by ptha 11y ago
I'm just flabbergasted at how much the UK has spent on the operation: 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 "a number of overt and covert tactics to arrest him" would still be deployed.
- x5n1 11y agoJust shows you how must the State values its secrets. And Assange was right, knowledge is power and with that power you can disrupt the existing power structures. And in the end make the world into a better place.
- jgrahamc 11y agoWhy? He's a high-profile fugitive who is evading arrest for alleged sexual offences against women in a member state in Europe.
- realusername 11y agoThat's the official version indeed.
- x5n1 11y agoOne charge was dropped, and it was for molestation and they ran out of time on that one. The rape charge is from a women who continued to sleep with after the alleged rape, according to Assange for a week. Not particularly serious charges, in my opinion.
- jgrahamc 11y agoSo, if they are not serious charges he should have his day in court and get it over with. And, don't tell me the ridiculous story about how if he went to Sweden he'd be extradited to the US. He was in the UK, you think we aren't buddy-buddy with the US and would have handed him over?
- x5n1 11y agoThe UK or the Swedish government could easily determine his guilt or innocence -- as in questioning him in the embassy and he's said more than once he's willing, if that's really all they wanted to do instead of waste millions of dollars watching him. The burden of proof is never on the accused to prove his innocence. It's after all only an accusation. If they want to bring formal charges in court and send him a summons and try him in abstention they can do that too. It's just funny how they have played the game while claiming b/s like you are claiming. edit because of rate limit to the person below: If he has no guilty mind then why should he be willing to be arrested? In fact if he's afraid they will do to him what they did to Chelsea Manning, then he's perfectly in his right mind to attempt to avoid extradition by whatever means necessary. If a totalitarian government is pursuing you because you stole their secrets and exposed them to the public, and they have already imprisoned one of your partners for life in inhumane conditions. Why should you comply with that request?
- jgrahamc 11y agoYou seem to think Assange gets to make the rules and choose how he gets treated. There's a European arrest warrant, the UK needs to arrest him and he needs to go to Sweden.
- x5n1 11y agoAssange is playing by the rules and that's why he's in the Embassy. He's following the rules to the book and so are the authorities. Why should they, well if they wish to bring justice and save money they should do it. Because if they do not, then the time expires which for the rape warrant is in 4 years. And justice will not be done.
- ascorbic 11y agoSkipping bail when the Supreme Court rules against you is not "playing by the rules" by any definition.
- chippy 11y agoOne would expect that £12.6m would be spent for similar fugitives who are evading arrest for alleged sexual offences against women. Right? Oh, - it's because he is "high-profile" that makes him special. So it's not about the alleged crime at all? It's due to wikileaks after all! There is something illogical here, I think.
- mattmanser 11y agoTo be fair it's high profile because it's known where he is and that he's attempting to avoid capture. Not because he's from wikileaks and he might get extradited, those merely gave him the celebrity clout to pull the stunt in the first place. If they actually gave up and he popped up in Ecuador and he's suddenly like 'haha, the british police, usually bunch of pricks', it would be embarrassing for the whole of the UK. So it's a bit of a catch-22 position. EDIT: Whoops, wrote wikipedia instead of wikileaks
- nullc 11y agoFWIW, that ignorant bit of Wikipedia vs Wikileaks confusion has resulted in causing harm to people affiliated with Wikipedia when US customs officers have suffered from it.
- mattmanser 11y agoHonest typo rather than ignorance.
- chippy 11y agoMy elderly father the other day told me that he thought the work I was doing with Wikimedia was related to "that wikileaks fella". Of course I corrected him, but I'm a little bit more accepting of the mistake!
- gtk40 11y agoWhat association does he have with Wikipedia? You realize that "wiki" refers to a type of CMS software, like a blog or web forum, correct?
- mrweasel 11y agoHe isn't high profile because of his alleged crime though. The amount of money they spend guarding the embassy is ridicules. A similar spending would have been accepted if it was just some random guy. The British public should furious about wasting £12.6 million trying to catch a guy that many not be guilty, or may only be guilty of something that's only rape in the Swedish sense. Don't get me wrong, if guilty then I don't care who he is. In that case he should be punished. It's just that I don't think Sweden should be allowed to hand him over to the US afterwards. Still the amount of money wasted trying to catch him should say something about why the UK police wants him. You simply don't spend that kind of money trying to catch a person, just so you can question him.
- webkike 11y agoUh, what's rape in the Swedish sense?
- freehunter 11y agoEveryone consented to sex, but he said he used a condom and didn't.
- tedks 11y agoMeaning everyone did not consent to sex.
- philliphaydon 11y agoIt only proves that the allegations are false in my opinion. I think he's weird and don't follow him or wiki leaks but the fact the UK is so insistent on arresting him instead of questioning him and deciding to file charges or not only proves his theory that they want to eventually send him to the United States. IMO
- ascorbic 11y agoHe's subject to a European Arrest Warrant. It's not the UK police's job to question him. The procedure in an EAW is that the receiving country checks that the warrant is valid (which is procedural, and doesn't assess the merits of the case). If it is, then they arrest the suspect and hand him over to the requesting country. Julian Assange had every opportunity to argue against this, and was able to take it all the way to the UK Supreme Court. They ruled against him, which is when he skipped bail.
- efdee 11y agoBut isn't the fact that they obsess over catching him when he leaves the embassy, over of a claim of sexual molestation that even the "victim" doesn't really support, to the tune of 12 million pounds, a hint that maybe it's not really about this case alone?
- LordKano 11y agoAnother hint is that Roman Polanski lives openly in France despite being convicted of drugging and raping a child but somehow Assange is much of Europe's priority...
- tptacek 11y agoIt doesn't surprise me that European countries that are all bound by the ECHR (among other things) would take extradition requests from each other more seriously than they would a request from the US. The fact that they won't render Polanski to the US cuts against Assange's argument.
- throwaway_jhfj3 11y agoI'm not, the UK is a country with the rule of law. Assange is probably the most high-profile fugitive in the UK. When those two prisoners escaped from prison in upstate new york,it cost new york 23 million dollars to find them [1] (and they were only fugitives for less than a month). [1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/ny-prison-escape-manhunt-cost-state-million-day/story?id=33087504 http://abcnews.go.com/US/ny-prison-escape-manhunt-cost-state...