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> to decide whether or not to subject themselves to the jurisdiction of the United States based on the scope and nature of charges they may face, which is not a
by stale2002 8y ago
> to decide whether or not to subject themselves to the jurisdiction of the United States based on the scope and nature of charges they may face, which is not a legal right.
Nobody said it was a legal right. Whether something is a "legal right" or not is pretty irrelevant when you are defending against a nation state political attack. The nation state can probably just do whatever it wants anyway.
> The allegedly indicted party (who is not a defendant until and unless prosecuted) has no legal or moral right to do so
The best way to defend yourself against nation state attacks is rarely "Put yourself in a cage, controlled by said nation state.".
> Once there is such an accusation, it will be public.
Not if they do the same thing that they done with the other accusations, which is to seal the indictment. Secret courts, secret judges, secret crimes. There is zero way to hold the government accountable for this kind of stuff, unless you count "Just put yourself in the cage, controlled by said nation state" as some sort of solution that achieves justice.
> well, not assisting flight from prosecution is one of the key reasons indictments are often ordered sealed until the accused is in custody.
And it is a key reason to support making it public, if you believe that the process is corrupt to begin with. There isn't any way to hold the government accountable otherwise.
Would you support Sadia Arabia if they started extraditing gay US citizens, from the United Kingdom, and then executing them for being gay?
I wouldn't. The situation with Assange isn't much different then supporting Sadia Arabia if they engaged in that kind of behavior.
IE, I am sure that exposing government crimes is "illegal" in many countries that don't want to be exposed. That doesn't make it right. And the moral thing to do in that situation, is to undermined any and all efforts to prosecute whistleblowers, and undermine them through whatever means necessary, regardless of what the legal opinion of the nation state is on the matter.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Not if they do the same thing that they done with the other accusations, which is to seal the indictment. No, what is alleged now is that there is a sealed indictment (which is fairly routine before an accused party is in custody.) To actually prosecute based on such an indictment, it will be unsealed. > Secret courts, secret judges, secret crimes. There are no secret criminal courts and no secret judges in the US. There are secret proceedings, including all grand jury proceedings, but I have yet to hear an argument for why that is a bad thing rather than an important protection of all of the rights of the (potentially) accused, the rights of third parties on whom grand jury evidence may touch, and the interests of integrity of law enforcement process. And simply yelling “secret court” repeatedly is, as well as being factually inaccurate, not an argument. There are, naturally, secret crimes, but that's because criminals often (but not always!) prefer to do their crimes that way. > Would you support Sadia Arabia if they started extraditing gay US citizens, from the United Kingdom, and then executing them for being gay I wouldn't support any country for prosecuting people for being gay, what the punishment, process, or whether they attempted to use extradition is irrelevant. But since there's no even remotely plausible reason to suspect that any US offenses for which Assange may have been indicted, or which a federal grand jury might now be in the process of considering indicting him, are for anything remotely like sexual orientation, that's hardly relevant.