‘I was targeted after I made Assange sex crime claim’ says accuser of Wikileaks founder

[struggle4progress]

55. Whether he could be charged in the US rather depends on what he has done. If he simply

published documents that came into his possession innocently, free speech considerations should protect him. There are suggestions of activities allowing less innocent interpretations of his motives and behavior, that might actually support (say) espionage charges

If he ends up extradited to Sweden from the UK, a forward extradition to the US would require the concurrence of both Sweden and the UK and could be contested in both Swedish and UK courts

Such an extradition request would be governed by the principle of dual criminality, according to which countries do not honor extradition requests if the alleged act would not be a crime in the country from which extradition is sought

The UK usually honors US extradition requests, but espionage against the US is arguably not a crime in the UK or Sweden. Swedish law law does not allow extradition for alleged political or military crimes. And Sweden has extraordinarily broad transparency laws, which perhaps explains why Assange had an application pending for permanent resident status there when the rape investigation began. So espionage allegations would be quite unlikely to result in forward extradition to the US from Sweden