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struggle4progress

(126,305 posts)
Thu Aug 23, 2012, 03:07 PM Aug 2012

The inconvenient truth about Assange: He’s a giant sleaze bag [View all]

by Lakshmi Chaudhry Aug 23, 2012

... The Obama administration has little interest in risking the bad PR that inevitably follow a very public and contentious extradition — and the Swedish government feels exactly the same. “There would be a storm in the media worldwide stopping any extradition. That would be the best guarantee he would have, together with the formal conditions,” notes former prosecutor Sven-Erik Alhem. Having Wikileaks back in the headlines serves no one’s interest except that of Assange ...

In his attempt to evade justice, Assange has smeared a nation with an excellent record of protecting individual rights. Reuters notes: ”Along with other Nordic countries, Sweden sees itself as a legal safe haven and it has welcomed thousands of leftist refugees from dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s to Iraqis fleeing the US-led invasion and war after 2003. The World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index 2011 report ranked Sweden first of 66 nations on fundamental legal rights.” In comparison, Ecuador — praised by Assange as “a courageous Latin American nation <which> took a stand for justice” —under President Correa has a long and shameful record of squelching press freedoms ...

Lemmee see if I have this: Assange supporters do understand how he could consent to being questioned by the Swedish authorities if he’s in England but not if he’s in Sweden, to go to Sweden if he won’t be extradited to the US but not if he might; but they profess not to understand that a woman could consent to f*** with a condom but not without one?

Swedish legal experts note that 9 out 10 rape charges are usually dropped before they reach the court, and the case against Assange is likely to meet the same fate. “But where there are no witnesses, no pictures and no technical evidence, only the accusation of the woman against the man and he says that sex was consensual, then normally the situation is that the word of the woman will not be enough for a conviction,” Swedish law professor Christian Diesen tells Reuters. So much for the grand CIA-engineered plot to take down Assange ...

http://www.firstpost.com/world/the-inconvenient-truth-about-assange-hes-a-giant-sleaze-bag-427536.html/2

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