British Police Stop 24/7 Monitoring of Julian Assange At Ecuadorian Embassy (ibtimes.co.uk) 336
Ewan Palmer writes with news that police are no longer guarding the Ecuadorian Embassy where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been taking refuge for the past three years. According to IBTImes: "London police has announced it will remove the dedicated officers who have guarded the Ecuadorian Embassy 24 hours a day, seven days a week while WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange seeks asylum inside. The 44-year-old has been holed up inside the building since 2012 in a bid to avoid being extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault charges. He believes that once he is in Sweden, he will be extradited again to the US where he could face espionage charges following the leaking of thousands of classified documents on his WikiLeaks website. Police has now decided to withdraw the physical presence of officers from outside the embassy as it is 'no longer proportionate to commit officers to a permanent presence'. It is estimated the cost of deploying the officers outside the Embassy in London all day for the past three years has cost the British taxpayer more than $18m."
It's a TRAP! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a TRAP! (Score:4, Interesting)
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What about the Greeks?
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What about the Greeks?
No. Greece ran out of money in 2010. They have squandered an additional 200B euros since then. There is little reason to stop wasting money as long as someone else is paying the bills.
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>>Honestly, if any entity literally ran out of money and could no longer afford an enforcement action and simply stopped for budgetary....
it's not a law enforcement action, it's an harassment action.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a TRAP! (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps. But it's also true that a country might refuse to guarantee it won't do something it has no intention of doing because it considers the demand an affront to its sovereignty.
Or it might be that the ambassador has no legal authority to make such a guarantee. For example, if a country has a with no death penalty has a law not to extradite criminals to countries where they may be executed, it might refuse to extradite a person wanted for a capitol crime to the US. If it's not a federal charge, and assuming the state in question has a death penalty, our ambassador wouldn't be able to promise much: he has no constitutional authority to tell the state DA what to do.
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Oh, I think the rest is all very likely. It's quite believable that Sweden is acting as a proxy for US interests. I think Assange would be foolish to get on any commercial flight, especially after what happened to the Bolivian president during the Snowden incident. I just wanted to point out that there are many motivations to consider when weighing why an ambassador acted in a particular way.
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Dude, you're supposed to reboot it every now and then.
Re:It's a TRAP! (Score:5, Interesting)
This hypothesis needs to be tested using an Assange look-alike.
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You do not need that. Rough similarity in body-structure and hiding his face will be enough.
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It's a trap! (Not that kind, the real kind.)
3 year sentance (Score:3)
I guess a three year sentence was what they wanted to give him. This guy is so paranoid that he imprisoned himself for years vs just trying to face the justice system, and perhaps getting out with a fine, or even declared innocent.
This guy had locked himself to prevent dealing with the legal systems of the UK, Sweden, and the United States. While they are not perfect and need reform, are still considered the world's fairest justice systems. Compared to the many other parts of the world where you would jus
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Re:3 year sentance (Score:4, Insightful)
still considered the world's fairest justice systems
How anybody could describe the US justice system as justice, let alone fair, escapes me.
Re:It's a TRAP! (Score:5, Informative)
Scandinavian here (Denmark)... I think you put way too much trust in our governments. Maybe Norway is still willing to stand up for themselves (they can afford it), but Denmark and Sweden tends to roll over when the US says so. Examples: Both Denmark and Sweden are EU members, and thus fall under the EU privacy directive. Yet, both countries are actively supplying information to the US. Or take the pirate bay. The founders got convicted, even though until the case, none of the lawyers sending DMCA notices to the pirate bay could come up with a Swedish law they were breaking. Not even the one Swedish university complaining about pirated books could find such a law. Yet, they all got convicted, including they guy whose only job function was speech (as in "freedom of") - the spokesperson for TPB.
Gift Horse (Score:5, Funny)
And as a gesture of goodwill, they've also left him a large wooden horse with a bow tied around it outside the embassy.
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And as a gesture of goodwill, they've also left him a large wooden horse with a bow tied around it outside the embassy.
At least the British still have a degree of respect for the diplomatic status of embassies even if they have a hard time being civilised about it. If Edward Snowden had sought shelter in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Washington it would probably have stood an excellent chance of been stormed by delta forces inside of 24 hours. I thought that the US Govt. showed uncharacteristic restraint when they made do with convincing France and Spain into refusing Evo Morales' jet entry and thus forced it to land in Austri
Re: Gift Horse (Score:3, Insightful)
Except America has never done anything remotely like that, ever. Your story is a total fucking lie.
Re: Gift Horse (Score:4, Insightful)
The US has been using European airspace and airports for illegal kidnapping (rendition) flights. I wouldn't put much past them.
Re: Gift Horse (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, the US government has never done anything crazy like abducting someone off the the streets, flying them to a foreign country black site for a little torture, and them realizing "oops, we grabbed the wrong guy" so lets dump him in the countryside another foreign country, oh wait.................
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Gift Horse (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's a link to something that never happened:
Re:Snowden will never leave Russia (Score:4, Insightful)
"Much like Kim Philby and others"
Oh well done, slipped that in nicely.
Snowden's a fooking hero, revealing massive law breaking and an out of control UStasi that threatens the very basis of the democracy. Every US candidate has a file on them in Alexanders database, because a fooking General decided that he was bigger than his country and it leaders.
He shouldn't have to learn Russian, he should simply retire in the US protected by whistleblower legislation. Because he isn't, we know the US isn't free from military control and those Presidential leaders are more puppets than leaders.
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You totally missed the point. The actual and real fact is, he can never return here. It's simply a fact.
Not a good fact, but none the less the reality.
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Never say never.
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And in accordance with our ancient religions, we will ceremoniously burn it to ashes as soon as possible!
"..it will remove the dedicated officers.." (Score:2)
Yeah, makes perfect sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
Spending $18m to monitor him was surely appropriate when he was wanted for "questioning in a sexual assault case", when anyone that wanted to interview him could visit him in the embassy.
Re:Yeah, makes perfect sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder who decided at which point things went from "appropriate" to "inappropriate"? Is there a government guidebook that says that spending up to $17M monitoring someone who's charged with having a quick shag in Sweden is appropriate, but once the bill reaches $18M it's getting a bit out of hand?
Just to put this into perspective, the cost of this little adventure would have put nearly two hundred extra police on the streets over the period in which it ran. So watching one attention-seeking Australian in an embassy potentially took two hundred policemen off the streets catching actual criminals.
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Re:Yeah, makes perfect sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does every piece of crap the government does always cost millions? What's the salary of a police officer? Lets be generous and for easy calculation say 100k in London. Say you have three police officers involved (2 in a car, monitoring, one in the office) working 8 hour shifts, so you need three shifts, meaning 9 police officers, lets make that 10.
10 police officers for 100k a year is a million bucks. How does it cost EIGHTEEN times as much? Give another million for the cars and surveillance equipment, office work, whatever. How are the other 16 million justified?
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Management, overhead, replacement cost, equipment cost.
You've got to be kidding yourselves if the cost of any operation is the sum total of the salary of those involved, and this is absolutely nothing unique to the public sector.
Heck I internally bill my time to another department at close to 4 times my salary. That is simply made up of my salary + overheads + lost opportunity cost. It's like those people who complain that contractors make twice as much money as staff without realising that they spend half
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I was being extremely generous with the salaries and accounted 1 million for equipment, which is ridiculous unless London police are driving Ferrari's. Sure, there are management costs, but somebody was managing these police officers anyway, whether they were monitoring Assange or not.
Actually, I made a mistake above only considering the costs of one year. 18 million was the cost for three years of montoring.
But even if we double the labor costs of a police officer (200.000$ a year), and multiply by three,
Re:Yeah, makes perfect sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we please end this "only wanted for questioning" deception every time Assange comes up? The Swedish criminal justice system does not work like the US criminal justice system. In the US, "questioning" is just questioning, and comes at the beginning of the investigation, followed by charging, then investigation, then a trial. In the Swedish system, charging comes at the end, and is preceded immediately by questioning so the suspect has the opportunity to say "no, copper, you got it all wrong!" And that can actually work, because the Swedish investigatory system is inquisitorial rather than adversarial. But once the questioning happens, the "right to a speedy trial" bits kick in, so they cannot simply question him without the ability to immediately charge and try him. Which is the goal, as they believe they can convict him of rape.
In the US, Assange would already be charged, and they'd be trying to bring him in for arraignment.
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Re:Yeah, makes perfect sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, not exactly. What a country will extradite and will not extradite somebody for is spelled out in the treaty itself, and varies from treaty to treaty.
As a rule though (and this is spelled out in treaties the US has with other nations,) the US will not extradite somebody for doing something that is protected by the constitution. If it isn't protected by the constition but is legal in the US and not legal elsewhere, then the US will extradite.
There are some very rare exceptions to this rule though. For exa
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That's interesting. As a rule of thumb extradition treaties only cover acts that are crimes in both countries.
I think you may have the burden backwards. If it is a crime in both countries, then they are obligated to extradite him. If it's not a crime in both countries, they can still extradite him if they want to.
Re:Yeah, makes perfect sense... (Score:5, Informative)
You are wrong about this being the law on university campuses. Nowhere in the US is a woman allowed to give consent before sex, then revoke consent after, and have the sex then be treated as rape. Go on, name one place where that's the case (in law, not just according to the statements of the defendant). If you can't, then you are a MRA lying and whining to slander SJW because you hate women, not because you are actually upset over the laws.
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" these rules are law on many American university campuses, if you didn't know."
No. They are regulations made (and only enforceable by) a university. They are not 'laws'.
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There's 2 different things. First one is the "not wearing a condom" thing, which is what the Assange cult members are repeating ad nauseam to make the charges look less serious.
The second one is the girl waking up while he was inside her. That part is typically swept under the rug by the Assange cult members because it's more difficult to argue that "she was asking for it". See:
The judges said: "It is clear that the allegation is that he had sexual intercourse with her when she was not in a position to consent and so he could not have had any reasonable belief that she did."
Another bullshit statement from the Assange cult members is that he agreed to be interviewed by the Swedes in the Ecuador embassy i
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You are "doing it wrong".
Using the "not wearing a condom" thing to make the charges look less serious assumes that the charge is directly related to not wearing a condom (ie. that, because of that, it is defined as "rape" there, though it may not be in most other places). No one is saying implying that an undeniably clear rape charge isn't as bad if the rapist was or wasn't wearing a condom.
FWIW, I don't have a horse in this race, and I'm not trying to make him look better or worse. Just trying to help expl
Trap. (Score:2)
Who and from what department is replacing them?
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""London police has announced it will remove the dedicated officers" Who and from what department is replacing them?
Maybe these guys [wikipedia.org] are now on the case...
Or, given that they spent $18,000,000 (or would it be 18,000,000 British Pounds?), perhaps that's the unit that was on the case from the beginning...
maths seem off (Score:5, Insightful)
It is estimated the cost of deploying the officers outside the Embassy in London all day for the past three years has cost the British taxpayer more than $18m.
So dollars, then? Six million a year for 24 hour surveillance. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
$684.93 per hour. Thank you Wolfram Alpha. [wolframalpha.com] This has the smell of one of those 1000 kilo drug busts that calculates the value of the seizure by multiplying by the gram price.
Re:maths seem off (Score:4, Funny)
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To stay awake, of course.
Was there not a single employee at the Ecuadorian embassy willing to leave a door unlocked for less than 18 million?
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International incident. Act of war.
Re:maths seem off (Score:5, Insightful)
This is small potatoes. That government spent $15 BILLIONS on a patient records system for the national health services before giving up. That's 7x more than the wonderful healthcare.gov website (which at least is "working").
Re:maths seem off (Score:5, Informative)
And to add insult to injury, apparently nobody is responsible for that massive fuckup. It is just stealing from the taxpayer, no crime in that.
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Expert support 24/7 with its overtime is expensive beyond just officers outside.
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Add in the teams for real time facial recognition, license plate readers and other technical surveillance (internet, wifi, cell, sat) of the site or anyone walking near the site. Expert support 24/7 with its overtime is expensive beyond just officers outside.
Quite. I suspect no expense was spared; no technology denied this Assange hunt.
Interestingly, three of the four charges against him expired last month vis-a-vis stautes of limitations. If he remains on sovereign Ecuadorian ground until 2020, the last charge is reported to be null and void.
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If you have ten people working on it, eight even, it sound quite reasonable.
I charge around 70 pounds per hour ... and I guess in that scenario, if you want to calc total costs, you have to take into account cars, fuel, accountants, probably hotels, probably the rent of the building from which some guys do observations etc etc.
So the math does not seem off at all to me.
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Cheese and rice... 70 pounds an hour? Good for you! ($107 or €94)
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Six million a year for 24 hour surveillance. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
$684.93 per hour.
A quick Google search indicates they had "at least four" officers at a time watching the embassy. Let's say 5, to accommodate the times when there are more. That works out to $137 per hour per officer. Their base salary is only part of that. There's overhead -- something I can imagine is quite steep for a police officer, given the extensive supporting infrastructure in the police department compared to other kinds of businesses. And perhaps there are also bonuses, overtime, etc., for these kinds of assignme
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So I wasn't the only one wondering what makes UK policemen so expensive?
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Government can be insanely efficient. Simply make someone accountable for blunders and you'll see him be the most responsible person ever.
18 million for someone that was NEVER Charged?! (Score:5, Insightful)
18 million for someone that was NEVER Charged?!
Yup, no political motivation, move along citizen.
Re:18 million for someone that was NEVER Charged?! (Score:4, Informative)
For skipping bail actually.
Re:18 million for someone that was NEVER Charged?! (Score:5, Informative)
No, he has not been charged. [bbc.com]
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Re:18 million for someone that was NEVER Charged?! (Score:5, Informative)
You're a liar. Assange has repeatedly offered to be interviewed at the Equadorian embassy. Swedish officials have interviewed people abroad in similar circumstances numerous times in the past. Those officials are every bit as dishonest and dishonorable as you are in this case. Read this. [bbc.com] -PCP
Re:18 million for someone that was NEVER Charged?! (Score:5, Informative)
That's not how things work here. The police typically interview you before charges are file. Assange has refused the interview.
No he hasn't. The Swedes are refusing to interview him in the Embassy [rt.com]. Now, why would that be? Think, think...
Re:18 million for someone that was NEVER Charged?! (Score:5, Interesting)
The delay in the charges was sufficient to indicate US interference in the case.
Sweden has remotely interviewed others in similar circumstances, yet refuses to do so here? Why?
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Much like the charge
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He was questioned by the police while he was in Sweden. He was in Sweden for 40 days after the allegations were first made to to the police and was not stopped from leaving the country. They could have withheld his passport and ordered him not to leave the country while he was under investigation, but they did not do so.
18 million pounds (Score:3)
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Interesting.... (Score:3)
I wonder how much this has to do with the frosty US/UK relations as of late? If you think about it this whole Get-Assange-At-Any-Costs thing is mostly for US benefit. The conventional wisdom is that if the UK gets him they immediately turn him over to the US authorities who want to lock him up and throw away the key.
Personally, I think that many countries - not just the UK - are a bit pissed at the US for the middle east retreat and the resulting onslaught of refugees. Maybe I'm connecting too many dots here but this might be just a Fuck-You-Obama-Go-Get-Him-Yourself kind of thing, *Shrug*
Either that or... (Score:2, Insightful)
"He believes that once he is in Sweden, he will be extradited again to the US where he could face espionage charges"
Hold on. That's what he says he believes. It's also quite possible that he believes he will be convicted for the sexual assault charges, but that he stands a better chance claiming that he's the victim of a conspiracy.
Everybody loves a free speech martyr. Sexual predators are usually not so popular.
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There are no sexual assault charges. Assange is not formally charged with anything at all. He has repeatedly asked the Swedish authorities to come question him at the Equadorian embassy with regard to as-yet completely unjustified allegations from years ago. The Swedish authorities, against all reason and without explanation, have refused to come question him. Why do you think that might be? -PCP
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This makes a pretty convincing case, IMHO:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/08/18/would-sweden-ever-extradite-assange-to-the-united-states/ [foreignpolicy.com]
No more tourist attraction (Score:2)
No longer proportionate? (Score:2)
So, in other words, you actually really honestly think it was at some point in the past? When would that have been?
Fuck, when some of your MPs date rape some sluts it ain't even worth the quid to prosecute them even if you don't have to do a 24/7 siege on their premises.
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How can this be shown to be false before he actually tries it?
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By comparing the US/UK & the US/Swedish extradition treaties. The US/UK treaties make it enormously easier from the UK directly.
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Citation needed (Score:3, Interesting)
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"Shown to be false" is not actually possible to do here. You must be soft in the head.
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Snort, you're certainly right. Debates between people with specific experience of the US/UK & US/Swedish extradition treaties in previous /. stories are at fault...
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Wrong, the extradition treaty between the USA and Sweden does NOT apply if charges made by USA were cyber crime or theft. In fact, the USA could be very creative in making charges that do not apply to the "political" exception the treaty has.
In short, you make up nonsense in ignorance.
Re:Extradition from Sweden is a lie (Score:5, Informative)
Assuming they even bother with the formality of extradition.
Remember, Sweden (like other European countries) has a record of just handing over foreign suspects to the CIA for torture.
The police took them to Bromma airport in Stockholm, and then stood aside as masked alleged CIA operatives cut their clothes from their bodies, inserted drugged suppositories in their anuses, and dressed them in diapers and overalls, handcuffed and chained them and put them on an executive jet with American registration N379P.
I don't think any extradition lawyers were present.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Compare the extradition treaties between the UK & the US & between Sweden & the US. The US/UK treaties make it much easier to extradite Assange from the UK but of course believing the creed of Assange makes everything else irrelevant.
Re:Extradition from Sweden is a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare the extradition treaties between the UK & the US & between Sweden & the US.
OK. Sweden has just handed us people without proper process before. Has the UK?
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And what has been shown to be false? That the US keeps an open case against him, with orders to arrest, were he to come into US jurisdiction? Anything short of a presidential pardon would seem to indicate that it has *ne
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The US could clear up all these
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He's not made any special demands of Sweden, and doesn't act like he's above them. He just has acted in
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What an extra-ordinary person then Assange person is, above laws and able through divine right to dictate to nations the terms under which he will make himself available to their justice system to answer for accusations of rape. We must all abandon all notions of democracy and justice and bend the knee to his holiness...
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What an extra-ordinary person then Assange person is, above laws and able through divine right to dictate to nations the terms under which he will make himself available to their justice system to answer for accusations of rape. We must all abandon all notions of democracy and justice and bend the knee to his holiness...
It's more extraordinary circumstances. He is subject to ecuadorian law , not us law or swedish law or french law currently due to his location. Its more unusual than whats happening in Europe right now where thousands are claiming asylum being subject to persecution is one reason why asylum is granted.
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While awaiting the findings of the UK courts he was also subject to UK law. Come on, you remember, the laws he promised to obey as a condition of not being placed in detention as a flight risk? Yeah, those laws he broke in fleeing to the Ecuadorian embassy that he thinks don't apply to him -- because he only has to obey the laws he wants to.
Re:He hasn't been charged (Score:5, Informative)
By US standards, he was charged, then dismissed of the crime, and is now being tried a second time for the same crime. Almost nowhere else in the world has the strict double jeopardy laws the US has, but if we apply US standards, the charges and process are invalid many times over for many different reasons.
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Double jeopardy is about being tried and found innocent by the court, and then being tried again for the same crime. It says nothing about being arrested/charged, then released, then being re-arrested/re-charged, as the outcome of the charge was never decided by a court. A judge may optionally dismiss a case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought back before the courts unamended.
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George W Bush, is that you?
"Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.
"I don't know why you're talking about Sweden," Bush said. "They're the neutral one. They don't have an army."
Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: "Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army." Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.
Bush held to his view. "No, no, it's Sweden that has no army."
The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.
A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with administration officials and other dignitaries for the White House Christmas party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. "You were right," he said, with bonhomie. "Sweden does have an army."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html [nytimes.com]