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No — but how often are such promises made? Hypothetically, if there came up an allegation that he had murdered someone in, say, Spain, and it was obvious he was
by gsnedders 14y ago
No — but how often are such promises made? Hypothetically, if there came up an allegation that he had murdered someone in, say, Spain, and it was obvious he was guilty, would it be just that he could not be taken to Spain to be tried as a result of such an agreement?
- toyg 14y agoAgreements between foreign countries are all about trust. You'll find that there's very little law covering this sort of thing (Vienna Convention being probably the strongest of them), and governments are pretty much free to do as they please. China promised not to touch Cheng Guangcheng once he left the US embassy in Beijing, and they kept their word, because doing otherwise would have been bad business. If Swedish public opinion were horrified to discover Assange was a serial killer in Montana, they could ship him over pronto, agreement or no agreement, and Ecuador would understand why their agreement had to be broken. No loss of trust, no loss of face. The fact that the Swedish government won't accept this sort of agreement has nothing to do with what they can or cannot do, and all about what they plan to do. Accepting such an agreement and then turning around to extradite him to the US on espionage charges would be taken as bad faith by the international community, so Swedish diplomats cannot do it. Is this why they refused? I guess we won't know until they get hold of him.