The Forum > Article Comments > The arrest of Julian Assange - a reality check > Comments
The arrest of Julian Assange - a reality check : Comments
By Marian Dalton, published 9/12/2010Why would anyone believe that the Swedish charges against Julian Assange are part of an international conspiracy?
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Thank you for the link to the Swedish website. ( http://www.thelocal.se/30888/20101216/ ) That link is to a newspaper, 'The Local: Sweden's News in English'.
You have made two (perhaps understandable) errors in summarizing the link's contents.
The first is that you have misidentified the Director of Public Prosecutions mentioned in the news item as being a Swedish DPP. The DPP being reported upon in the news item is in fact the UK DPP.
The second error is that you have mis-spelled the name of that DPP as 'Stamer'. The surname is in fact reported as 'Starmer' in the news item. I'll grant that to Australian eyes the name 'Keir Starmer' could give an impression of perhaps being a Swedish name.
Having cleared that up, what is interesting in the news item is this:
"A spokesman for the [UK] Crown Prosecution Service
told AFP: "We did take the decision to oppose bail
without consulting the Swedish authorities, but that
is absolutely standard practice."
He said it was common in extradition cases for British
lawyers to take decisions on the course of action to be
followed without consulting the country which issued
the arrest warrant -- in this case Sweden."
Would it be churlish of me to question, the above being the case, whether the decision of the previously incumbent 'political master class' to incarcerate Brian Howes (still detained in Scotland under similar conditions as now apply to Assange) for 214 days WITHOUT CHARGE, let alone extradition hearing, was a decision made entirely at such UK 'lawyers' discretion, or was made because it arose out of the terms (HSPD-6?) under which the UK Extradition Act 2003 was framed?
If, as I suspect, it was the latter, does the exercise of this claimed 'lawyers discretion' to seek the denial of bail in the Assange case reflect an attempt to (wrongly) apply the strictures applicable to the extradition of a person in UK custody TO THE US, rather than those applying to the constitutional monarchy that is the Kingdom of Sweden, to Assange?
Was the first (rejected) Interpol warrant even raised in Sweden?