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I've never understood the "US extradition" theory. He went to the UK, which is a co-founder of NATO (which Sweden isn't even in), and has a "special relationshi

by rmc 12y ago

I've never understood the "US extradition" theory. He went to the UK, which is a co-founder of NATO (which Sweden isn't even in), and has a "special relationship" with the USA. Why go to a country that's more friendly to the USA if you're actually worried about being sent to the USA?

nailer 12y ago
Wasn't Sweden's position as a 'covert member of Nato' one of the things revealed by wikileaks? http://wlcentral.org/node/1992 http://wlcentral.org/node/1992
ptaipale 12y ago
Exactly. Looking at the whole business from a Nordic perspective, the idea of this process being some kind of a plot to extradite Assange to be tortured by the Americans is just silly. Britain is the poodle in U.S.'s pocket, not Sweden. A more rational perspective to the situation can be seen from the point of view of rape statistics. They are an indication of how seriously countries take accusations of sexual molestation. The rate of police-recorded rape offenses is - US: 27.3 - UK: 28.8 - Sweden: 63.5 Are there really more than twice as many rapes per capita in Sweden than there are in UK or US? Of course not, if you use the same definition for rape. The issue is that Sweden records things differently. I'm quite convinced that if we're looking at what actually happens, Sweden has less rape then UK or US, but Sweden records them with a much lower threshold for what constitutes a "rape" so that the statistics looks different.
- danabramov 12y ago
  ... or maybe it's under-reported in UK or US?
- vidarh 12y ago
  > Britain is the poodle in U.S.'s pocket, not Sweden. Sweden has a history of actively handing asylum seekers to the CIA for illegal rendition without even the knowledge of any courts. The UK doesn't to my knowledge have a history of handing over people without proper extradition proceedings, some that have dragged out in the court system for years.
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    In this case the idea that this could happen without knowledge of any courts is rather absurd because the whole point was to bring Assange to a court.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      The point was that no extradition request was made, or reviewed by any court, and that the renditions were done in flagrant violation of international law, and directly led to the torture of at least two political asylum seekers. Not only that, but the rendition flights with complicity of Swedish staff continued for years after they were initially uncovered and condemned and the government promised they would end.
  - jamespo 12y ago
    You'd have thought he considered that before raping someone there
    - lione 12y ago
      Allegedly
    - balabaster 12y ago
      Not that I'm condoning his behaviour, but unless I'm missing a piece of the puzzle that I'm not understanding: Last I checked, anywhere outside of Sweden, having sex with a partner who appeared to be willing (until after the fact) is not rape. If that's the case, how do people not get charged with rape all the time? Girl gets drunk, wakes up the morning after, looks over and would rather chew her own arm off than wake him up before escaping... This kind of scenario has played out in countless movies and every university dorm since the beginning of time. Usually it's the guy who gets drunk and tries to escape, but the plot is the same. So he woke her up with sex... something many millions of partners the world over have done countless times... and enjoyed. She appeared willing, consensual, into it - at least that's how it allegedly looked at the time, and then she cries foul after the fact... Sounds an awful lot like she had sex with this guy, then she was jealous about him having sex with another girl, they both found out he was double dipping (as it were), were pissed that they weren't the center of his attention and thus decided to have him slapped with a rape charge. Of course, that's just what one can glean from the various hyperbolic media reports. I'm quite sure it's more nuanced than that. But even with the hyperbole, that doesn't sound like rape, that sounds like a revenge tactic for jealousy. The fact that this could also play favour for a U.S. rendition really just compounds how suspicious this whole situation sounds. If you were in the shoes of Assange, with 2 girls throwing themselves at you for sex (which is how it comes across in the media) and then in the midst of you leaking the largest trove of politically embarrassing documents that have ever been leaked, having them come forward with allegations of rape, in a country that until you start digging you had no idea they have a history of conspiracy to perform illegal rendition to the U.S... It seems to me that the worst thing that happened here was poor judgment. If you have sex with two people at the same time and get busted, it's not unusual for them both to be pissed that they're not the only one... and I hate to say it, but people in that situation tend to do irrational things such as you might hear about in songs written by Carrie Underwood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaSy8yy-mr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaSy8yy-mr8 or worse... abuse the legal system for revenge.
- peterfirefly 12y ago
  Given the population change going on in Sweden, that's actually quite likely. A factor of 2 might be too small.
tinfoilman 12y ago
I dont get why people keep thinking the UK has a special relationship with the US anymore “There’s nothing special about Britain,” the US state department official said. “You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment.” Obama "We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people." England and the US nothing special anymore.
- gadders 12y ago
  I get the impression it's more important to Republicans than Democrats.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
    It's more important to the UK than to the US.
    - gadders 12y ago
      Natch.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  > Obama "We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people." That is the kind of thing presidents say in speeches. It just means "I want to be polite to you". It's diplomacy, don't take it literally.
  - balabaster 12y ago
    and equally... every other "friend" and "ally" are as strong as France. It's meaningless filler, it doesn't mean that the French are their strongest friends and allies... just that nobody is more of a friend and ally. It's like a hat tip to one of your friends, but nothing more. Even if you do take this statement literally, it's meaningless.
    - 12y ago
misterS 12y ago
He went to the UK, but strictly speaking isn't in the country - he's in the Equadorian embassy, and doesn't leave it.
- notahacker 12y ago
  He went to the UK and for a substantial period of time was both aware there was a Swedish prosecutor wishing to interview him back in Sweden, and at liberty to do what he liked in the UK (including leave for another third party country with no extradition treaty arrangements with Sweden or the US) unless and until Sweden arranged for a European Arrest Warrant. If he truly feared the impending prosecution was driven by attempts to get him extradited to the US, he would have had ample warning and the opportunity to find a much better refuge from the legal systems of the US and her allies than the Ecuadorian embassy. Edit: if you're inclined to disagree, please point out any factual inaccuracies or weaknesses in my reasoning rather than reflexively reaching for the down vote button. Assange entered the UK in late September 2010 and the arrest warrant became valid in the UK in December. That's a lot of time to book a flight elsewhere. The Ecuadorean embassy was a last-ditch move when his appeals failed.
  - trevelyan 12y ago
    Assange obviously stayed in the UK because he had excellent legal support, the linguistic ability to understand what was going on, the ability to continue his professional work, and access to a legal system that should not have granted extradition. How is this baffling? More generally, the "weakness in [your] reasoning" is partly the arrogance to imagine that you understand Assange's legal options better than his lawyers did. But it is also partly the logical fallacy of ad hominem rhetoric, since you accuse him of hypocrisy and then use that accusation to try to discredit concerns of his that very clearly have nothing to do with questions of personal character. As other commenters on this thread have mentioned, and as minimal research will confirm, Sweden has a long history of illegal rendition. Its handling of this case is extremely unorthodox, politically motivated, and shows a fairly clear attempt to maneuver Assange into indefinite detention through a legal process that even the UK High Court commented on as being unreasonable.
vidarh 12y ago
Because UK judges have a history of demonstrating some degree of independence, whereas Sweden has a history of the police illegally handing political asylum seekers to the CIA, knowing they'd be handed over to the very regimes they were fleeing in order to be tortured. Not only did they do this (and Sweden was forced to pay restitution), but part of the Wikileaks documents revealed how Sweden objected after Swedish military intelligence years after these renditions had supposedly stopped, caught Swedish airport staff assisting CIA rendition flights. While one might hope this has now finally stopped, Sweden is pretty high on the list of countries I would not like to be in if I was wanted by the US, given recent history. Swedens official neutrality has been a joke in Scandinavia for decades. "Everyone" knows that there is a lot of close cooperation with the US behind the scenes.
- wcummings 12y ago
  >Not only did they do this (and Sweden was forced to pay restitution) Source?
  - vidarh 12y ago
    Here's an article covering the most well known incident: http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-ban-cia-rendition http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-b... They did obtain assurances from Egyptian authorities that the asylum seekers would not be tortured, but didn't do anything to ensure this could be enforced, and of course they ended up getting tortured. (EDIT: But even if one were to believe that Swedish authorities actually believed those assurances, a parliamentary investigator also determined that the treatment in Sweden violated Swedish law - they were arrested and violated and handed over without any required legal procedures, and even if they had been legally extradited, the treatment itself still would be illegal - see below) Here's an article about Swedish military intelligence interfering after the CIA continued the rendition flights via Sweden for years after they had supposedly stopped: http://www.swedishwire.com/politics/7497-cia-rendition-flights-stopped-by-swedish-military http://www.swedishwire.com/politics/7497-cia-rendition-fligh... This article also has more details about the Egyptian incident, including: > Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, two Egyptians who had been seeking asylum in Sweden, were arrested by Swedish police in December 2001. They were taken to Bromma airport in Stockholm, had their clothes cut from their bodies, suppositories inserted in their anuses and in diapers, overall, handcuffs and chains put on an executive jet with American registration N379P with a crew of masked men. > They were flown to Egypt, where they were imprisoned, beaten, and tortured according to reports by Swedish investigative pogramme "Kalla fakta". The Swedish ambassador visited them only six weeks later. We can hope that was the end of it, given that Swedish military intelligence did act, but the fact of the matter is someone high up authorised it initially, given that it required the cooperation of police, security services and the CIA, and to this date it is not clear who did. Either someone did it under the nose of top levels of government, or the very same people who claimed to have put a stop to it authorised it in the first place. What we do know is that there's been no proper investigation apart from a finding by a parliamentary investigator that the rendition flights were in violation of Swedish law. In other words there are no guarantees that the arrangement haven't simply been changed.
dazc 12y ago
Because the UK has a policy of refusing extradition where there is a possibility of a death penalty. http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/fact_sheets/extradition/ http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/fact_sheets/extradition/
- spiralpolitik 12y ago
  This also applies to other European union states. I believe its against European law to extradite if the death penalty is in play.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    And it's against international law and Swedish law to hand people over to be tortured, yet Sweden did so.
- rmc 12y ago
  The death penalty is illegal under the European Convention of Human Rights. All EU (etc) countries won't extradite if the death penalty is possible. Even Russia (who is in the CoE) doesn't extradite for death penalty.
belorn 12y ago
If you got a international arrest warrant sent after you for something which every lawyer you talk to (and lawyers media talk to) describe as a "he said, she said situation that has zero chance to ever reach a court", and this days after you made international news, what would your theory be? My conclusion would be that the Swedish investigators are trying to gain some diplomatic points. A "US extradition" might or might not be on that road map, but equally likely (or unlikely) is justice. When a suspected witch hunt is launched, you don't stay and see what kind of punishment the mob is going to do. You think of the worst possible thing they might do, and then hide.
- balabaster 12y ago
  Or you use the U.S. tactics of smearing the accusors and prosecutors with ad hominem attacks to the point that there's no way a fair trial can be achieved... unfortunately, the U.S. has far greater experience in this arena than Assange does so is it any wonder he's in hiding, there's no way he'll ever beat them at their own game. The last man that tried to take a one man stand against the U.S. was shot in his bedroom, the one before that was found in a rat hole... If Assange wasn't holed up somewhere as politically sensitive as a foreign Embassy on foreign soil, he'd have either ended up in the same boat or would have "disappeared" to a U.S. black site somewhere never to be heard from again until it was politically advantageous for the U.S. to "find" him.
CPLX 12y ago
He is not in the UK. He is currently residing in a quasi-sovereign area of the country of Ecuador, which happens to be in London.
- matt4077 12y ago
  "Contrary to popular belief, diplomatic missions do not enjoy full extraterritorial status and are not sovereign territory of the represented state" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_mission#Extraterritoriality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_mission#Extraterrito...
  - CPLX 12y ago
    Yes, there is some subtlety here. But the point stands, which is all the discussion of "why he picked the UK" as a place to avoid extradition seems to be missing the point. If he were comfortable with the government of the UK he'd be relaxing in a pub or reading in the park rather than holed up inside an embassy somewhat out of the reach of UK law for two years.
  - godgod 12y ago
    Imagine the diplomatic row if UK jackboots stormed the Ecuadorian embassy. The embassy is as safe as any other place right now.
- dghf 12y ago
  This page [0] says otherwise (about embassies in general, not specifically the Ecuadorean embassy in London): > U.S. embassies and consulates abroad, as well as foreign embassies and consulates in the United States, have a special status. While diplomatic spaces remain the territory of the host state, an embassy or consulate represents a sovereign state. [0] http://diplomacy.state.gov/discoverdiplomacy/diplomacy101/places/170537.htm http://diplomacy.state.gov/discoverdiplomacy/diplomacy101/pl...
foobarqux 12y ago
The UK has a more mature legal system, more public support for Assange and, because of its size, is less subject to influence, particularly economic influence. We also have evidence that the UK courts resist US extradition requests via the McKinnon proceedings. Finally, the US obviously wants to prosecute Assange and the publicly acknowledge existence of a grand jury investigation proves it.

by rmc 12y ago

nailer 12y ago

Wasn't Sweden's position as a 'covert member of Nato' one of the things revealed by wikileaks? http://wlcentral.org/node/1992 http://wlcentral.org/node/1992

ptaipale 12y ago

Exactly. Looking at the whole business from a Nordic perspective, the idea of this process being some kind of a plot to extradite Assange to be tortured by the Americans is just silly. Britain is the poodle in U.S.'s pocket, not Sweden. A more rational perspective to the situation can be seen from the point of view of rape statistics. They are an indication of how seriously countries take accusations of sexual molestation. The rate of police-recorded rape offenses is - US: 27.3 - UK: 28.8 - Sweden: 63.5 Are there really more than twice as many rapes per capita in Sweden than there are in UK or US? Of course not, if you use the same definition for rape. The issue is that Sweden records things differently. I'm quite convinced that if we're looking at what actually happens, Sweden has less rape then UK or US, but Sweden records them with a much lower threshold for what constitutes a "rape" so that the statistics looks different.

danabramov 12y ago
... or maybe it's under-reported in UK or US?
vidarh 12y ago
> Britain is the poodle in U.S.'s pocket, not Sweden. Sweden has a history of actively handing asylum seekers to the CIA for illegal rendition without even the knowledge of any courts. The UK doesn't to my knowledge have a history of handing over people without proper extradition proceedings, some that have dragged out in the court system for years.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  In this case the idea that this could happen without knowledge of any courts is rather absurd because the whole point was to bring Assange to a court.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    The point was that no extradition request was made, or reviewed by any court, and that the renditions were done in flagrant violation of international law, and directly led to the torture of at least two political asylum seekers. Not only that, but the rendition flights with complicity of Swedish staff continued for years after they were initially uncovered and condemned and the government promised they would end.
- jamespo 12y ago
  You'd have thought he considered that before raping someone there
  - lione 12y ago
    Allegedly
  - balabaster 12y ago
    Not that I'm condoning his behaviour, but unless I'm missing a piece of the puzzle that I'm not understanding: Last I checked, anywhere outside of Sweden, having sex with a partner who appeared to be willing (until after the fact) is not rape. If that's the case, how do people not get charged with rape all the time? Girl gets drunk, wakes up the morning after, looks over and would rather chew her own arm off than wake him up before escaping... This kind of scenario has played out in countless movies and every university dorm since the beginning of time. Usually it's the guy who gets drunk and tries to escape, but the plot is the same. So he woke her up with sex... something many millions of partners the world over have done countless times... and enjoyed. She appeared willing, consensual, into it - at least that's how it allegedly looked at the time, and then she cries foul after the fact... Sounds an awful lot like she had sex with this guy, then she was jealous about him having sex with another girl, they both found out he was double dipping (as it were), were pissed that they weren't the center of his attention and thus decided to have him slapped with a rape charge. Of course, that's just what one can glean from the various hyperbolic media reports. I'm quite sure it's more nuanced than that. But even with the hyperbole, that doesn't sound like rape, that sounds like a revenge tactic for jealousy. The fact that this could also play favour for a U.S. rendition really just compounds how suspicious this whole situation sounds. If you were in the shoes of Assange, with 2 girls throwing themselves at you for sex (which is how it comes across in the media) and then in the midst of you leaking the largest trove of politically embarrassing documents that have ever been leaked, having them come forward with allegations of rape, in a country that until you start digging you had no idea they have a history of conspiracy to perform illegal rendition to the U.S... It seems to me that the worst thing that happened here was poor judgment. If you have sex with two people at the same time and get busted, it's not unusual for them both to be pissed that they're not the only one... and I hate to say it, but people in that situation tend to do irrational things such as you might hear about in songs written by Carrie Underwood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaSy8yy-mr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaSy8yy-mr8 or worse... abuse the legal system for revenge.
peterfirefly 12y ago
Given the population change going on in Sweden, that's actually quite likely. A factor of 2 might be too small.

tinfoilman 12y ago

I dont get why people keep thinking the UK has a special relationship with the US anymore “There’s nothing special about Britain,” the US state department official said. “You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment.” Obama "We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people." England and the US nothing special anymore.

gadders 12y ago
I get the impression it's more important to Republicans than Democrats.
- SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
  It's more important to the UK than to the US.
  - gadders 12y ago
    Natch.
ptaipale 12y ago
> Obama "We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people." That is the kind of thing presidents say in speeches. It just means "I want to be polite to you". It's diplomacy, don't take it literally.
- balabaster 12y ago
  and equally... every other "friend" and "ally" are as strong as France. It's meaningless filler, it doesn't mean that the French are their strongest friends and allies... just that nobody is more of a friend and ally. It's like a hat tip to one of your friends, but nothing more. Even if you do take this statement literally, it's meaningless.
  - 12y ago

misterS 12y ago

He went to the UK, but strictly speaking isn't in the country - he's in the Equadorian embassy, and doesn't leave it.

notahacker 12y ago
He went to the UK and for a substantial period of time was both aware there was a Swedish prosecutor wishing to interview him back in Sweden, and at liberty to do what he liked in the UK (including leave for another third party country with no extradition treaty arrangements with Sweden or the US) unless and until Sweden arranged for a European Arrest Warrant. If he truly feared the impending prosecution was driven by attempts to get him extradited to the US, he would have had ample warning and the opportunity to find a much better refuge from the legal systems of the US and her allies than the Ecuadorian embassy. Edit: if you're inclined to disagree, please point out any factual inaccuracies or weaknesses in my reasoning rather than reflexively reaching for the down vote button. Assange entered the UK in late September 2010 and the arrest warrant became valid in the UK in December. That's a lot of time to book a flight elsewhere. The Ecuadorean embassy was a last-ditch move when his appeals failed.
- trevelyan 12y ago
  Assange obviously stayed in the UK because he had excellent legal support, the linguistic ability to understand what was going on, the ability to continue his professional work, and access to a legal system that should not have granted extradition. How is this baffling? More generally, the "weakness in [your] reasoning" is partly the arrogance to imagine that you understand Assange's legal options better than his lawyers did. But it is also partly the logical fallacy of ad hominem rhetoric, since you accuse him of hypocrisy and then use that accusation to try to discredit concerns of his that very clearly have nothing to do with questions of personal character. As other commenters on this thread have mentioned, and as minimal research will confirm, Sweden has a long history of illegal rendition. Its handling of this case is extremely unorthodox, politically motivated, and shows a fairly clear attempt to maneuver Assange into indefinite detention through a legal process that even the UK High Court commented on as being unreasonable.

vidarh 12y ago

Because UK judges have a history of demonstrating some degree of independence, whereas Sweden has a history of the police illegally handing political asylum seekers to the CIA, knowing they'd be handed over to the very regimes they were fleeing in order to be tortured. Not only did they do this (and Sweden was forced to pay restitution), but part of the Wikileaks documents revealed how Sweden objected after Swedish military intelligence years after these renditions had supposedly stopped, caught Swedish airport staff assisting CIA rendition flights. While one might hope this has now finally stopped, Sweden is pretty high on the list of countries I would not like to be in if I was wanted by the US, given recent history. Swedens official neutrality has been a joke in Scandinavia for decades. "Everyone" knows that there is a lot of close cooperation with the US behind the scenes.

wcummings 12y ago
>Not only did they do this (and Sweden was forced to pay restitution) Source?
- vidarh 12y ago
  Here's an article covering the most well known incident: http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-ban-cia-rendition http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-b... They did obtain assurances from Egyptian authorities that the asylum seekers would not be tortured, but didn't do anything to ensure this could be enforced, and of course they ended up getting tortured. (EDIT: But even if one were to believe that Swedish authorities actually believed those assurances, a parliamentary investigator also determined that the treatment in Sweden violated Swedish law - they were arrested and violated and handed over without any required legal procedures, and even if they had been legally extradited, the treatment itself still would be illegal - see below) Here's an article about Swedish military intelligence interfering after the CIA continued the rendition flights via Sweden for years after they had supposedly stopped: http://www.swedishwire.com/politics/7497-cia-rendition-flights-stopped-by-swedish-military http://www.swedishwire.com/politics/7497-cia-rendition-fligh... This article also has more details about the Egyptian incident, including: > Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, two Egyptians who had been seeking asylum in Sweden, were arrested by Swedish police in December 2001. They were taken to Bromma airport in Stockholm, had their clothes cut from their bodies, suppositories inserted in their anuses and in diapers, overall, handcuffs and chains put on an executive jet with American registration N379P with a crew of masked men. > They were flown to Egypt, where they were imprisoned, beaten, and tortured according to reports by Swedish investigative pogramme "Kalla fakta". The Swedish ambassador visited them only six weeks later. We can hope that was the end of it, given that Swedish military intelligence did act, but the fact of the matter is someone high up authorised it initially, given that it required the cooperation of police, security services and the CIA, and to this date it is not clear who did. Either someone did it under the nose of top levels of government, or the very same people who claimed to have put a stop to it authorised it in the first place. What we do know is that there's been no proper investigation apart from a finding by a parliamentary investigator that the rendition flights were in violation of Swedish law. In other words there are no guarantees that the arrangement haven't simply been changed.

dazc 12y ago

Because the UK has a policy of refusing extradition where there is a possibility of a death penalty. http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/fact_sheets/extradition/ http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/fact_sheets/extradition/

spiralpolitik 12y ago
This also applies to other European union states. I believe its against European law to extradite if the death penalty is in play.
- vidarh 12y ago
  And it's against international law and Swedish law to hand people over to be tortured, yet Sweden did so.
rmc 12y ago
The death penalty is illegal under the European Convention of Human Rights. All EU (etc) countries won't extradite if the death penalty is possible. Even Russia (who is in the CoE) doesn't extradite for death penalty.

belorn 12y ago

If you got a international arrest warrant sent after you for something which every lawyer you talk to (and lawyers media talk to) describe as a "he said, she said situation that has zero chance to ever reach a court", and this days after you made international news, what would your theory be? My conclusion would be that the Swedish investigators are trying to gain some diplomatic points. A "US extradition" might or might not be on that road map, but equally likely (or unlikely) is justice. When a suspected witch hunt is launched, you don't stay and see what kind of punishment the mob is going to do. You think of the worst possible thing they might do, and then hide.

balabaster 12y ago
Or you use the U.S. tactics of smearing the accusors and prosecutors with ad hominem attacks to the point that there's no way a fair trial can be achieved... unfortunately, the U.S. has far greater experience in this arena than Assange does so is it any wonder he's in hiding, there's no way he'll ever beat them at their own game. The last man that tried to take a one man stand against the U.S. was shot in his bedroom, the one before that was found in a rat hole... If Assange wasn't holed up somewhere as politically sensitive as a foreign Embassy on foreign soil, he'd have either ended up in the same boat or would have "disappeared" to a U.S. black site somewhere never to be heard from again until it was politically advantageous for the U.S. to "find" him.

CPLX 12y ago

He is not in the UK. He is currently residing in a quasi-sovereign area of the country of Ecuador, which happens to be in London.

matt4077 12y ago
"Contrary to popular belief, diplomatic missions do not enjoy full extraterritorial status and are not sovereign territory of the represented state" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_mission#Extraterritoriality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_mission#Extraterrito...
- CPLX 12y ago
  Yes, there is some subtlety here. But the point stands, which is all the discussion of "why he picked the UK" as a place to avoid extradition seems to be missing the point. If he were comfortable with the government of the UK he'd be relaxing in a pub or reading in the park rather than holed up inside an embassy somewhat out of the reach of UK law for two years.
- godgod 12y ago
  Imagine the diplomatic row if UK jackboots stormed the Ecuadorian embassy. The embassy is as safe as any other place right now.
dghf 12y ago
This page [0] says otherwise (about embassies in general, not specifically the Ecuadorean embassy in London): > U.S. embassies and consulates abroad, as well as foreign embassies and consulates in the United States, have a special status. While diplomatic spaces remain the territory of the host state, an embassy or consulate represents a sovereign state. [0] http://diplomacy.state.gov/discoverdiplomacy/diplomacy101/places/170537.htm http://diplomacy.state.gov/discoverdiplomacy/diplomacy101/pl...

foobarqux 12y ago

The UK has a more mature legal system, more public support for Assange and, because of its size, is less subject to influence, particularly economic influence. We also have evidence that the UK courts resist US extradition requests via the McKinnon proceedings. Finally, the US obviously wants to prosecute Assange and the publicly acknowledge existence of a grand jury investigation proves it.