Assange Wins Right To Submit Appeal 144
beaverdownunder writes "Julian Assange has won the right to submit an appeal of his extradition to Sweden on 'public interest' grounds. He now has two weeks to come up with a convincing argument for Britain's Supreme Court. From the article: 'The judges ruled that Mr Assange's case is of general public importance, but the Supreme Court could still refuse to hear his case. Mr Assange now has 14 days to formally lodge an appeal, meaning his stay in Britain, where he has been staying since his arrest in December last year, is certain to stretch into 2012.'"
Re:First he has to win this appeal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. If he wins his appeal then he's safe in the UK. If he travels anywhere else that has an extradition treaty with Sweden then he's at risk again, including possibly in his native Australia.
Re:First he has to win this appeal... (Score:3, Insightful)
From the level of paranoia he and his supporters are publicly showing, he's never going to be "safe", someone will always be out to get him...
For example, the huge fuss made over "number plate recognition cameras" that his supporters claim were "recently installed" near his bail address. Turns out that not only are they bog standard excessive speed warning cameras (which don't even record vehicles breaking the speed limit), but they had been there since 2002 and 2003.
Re:Public interest? (Score:5, Insightful)
No the summary is awful, when I read it I thought "Oh god, people are going to completely misunderstand that", and it seems by the second post they have.
The "public interest" bit refers to the fact that it's within the public interest to determine in British courts whether it's right for a prosecutor for the government to issue a European arrest warrant when such warrants are meant to be issued by the judiciary. It's also questioning whether Assange can even be referred to as the accused, when the Swedish police still to this date haven't yet even actually charged him with anything.
So "public interest" isn't about Assange, it's about examining the issues Assange's case raises - the public interest is ensuring justice is done, at question because it's not clear that the European Arrest Warrant has been correctly issued not whether the British people have an interest in seeing Julian himself protected.
Effectively, it would not be in the public interest for someone to be extradited if there is no legitimate legal grounds to do so, whether they're Julian Assange, Abu Hamza, or Gary McKinnon, justice must be upheld regardless of whether they're perceived middle ground, bad, or good.
Re:First he has to win this appeal... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not really. If he wins his appeal then he's safe in the UK.
Yeah, but he won't. The whole thing is corrupt from top to bottom.
Re:First he has to win this appeal... (Score:5, Insightful)
We Brits do have a legal process and it is being followed to the letter in this case. That the case now looks likely to go to the Supreme Court is pretty good evidence of that (implying, indeed, rather more scrutiny than you might get around a "normal" extradition case). The thing with a legal process is that it will sometimes produce decisions you like, and sometimes produce decisions you don't. That's normal - not evidence of a conspiracy at work.
There are elements of the case that are worrying (though more in general than wikileaks-specific terms), but both the Swedish and UK legal systems do seem to be "working as intended".
Re:First he has to win this appeal... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were him, I'd be concerned about any travel, even if the destination fits your description. The reason is that the people he has pissed off are powerful enough that they may well trump up an emergency landing in some country that would extradite him. I don't even think they would work much at hiding it . . . something like a flight from London to Paris making an emergency landing in Oslo . . . the idea being that the emergency landing isn't anywhere near a straight line between points A and B.
Re:Might just be replying to a troll, but .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Got a question for you. What, exactly is it that he betrayed? The Western/American ideals of freedom, truth, and liberty?
Re:First he has to win this appeal... (Score:5, Insightful)