It is amusing to read that a number of Julian Assange’s supporters, who posted bail on his behalf, will lose because of Assange’s defiance of an extradition warrant by seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Former British Army Captain, Vaughan Smith, said
How were we supposed to know he was going to run and hide in Ecuador’s embassy? We never envisaged when we agreed to become sureties that the matter would become a diplomatic argument.
Smith should have realised that when one posts a surety there is a risk of it not being refunded if the offender absconds. It’s a bit rich for Smith to then argue that the surety should be refunded because Assange did something that Smith didn’t expect.
I hope Assange is enjoying his cramped living conditions. I think a Swedish prison might be more comfortable.
Delicious schadenfreude, right there.
Posting bail for someone is like lending money to family…you had better accept the worst case scenario of not getting a single dollar back before you sign that cheque.
Megan
9 Oct 12 at 5:56 pm
Assange is such a narcissistic swine that he won’t lose a moment’s sleep over dudding his mates. It’s all about him. They, however, may now see reality. As usual, an expensive lesson but probably worth it in the long run.
Cato the Elder
9 Oct 12 at 6:01 pm
Jules is right to fear a trip to the US.
The US Intelligence ‘community’ has had their Congressional spokesmen frothing at the mouth to get hold of him. So much for ‘no interest in extraditing him’, try ‘at the speed of light’.
20 years to life, I’m guessing.
Pour encourager les autres.
Alfonso
9 Oct 12 at 6:08 pm
They are out of pocket through the delusion that he is more likely to be extradited to the USA from Sweden than from the UK!
Any extradition to a third country from Sweden requires British consent. By law, the United Kingdom could only consent to onward extradition from Sweden to a third country if there was no prospect of a death sentence. Murder is the only constitutionally permissible capital crime in the USA
Assange did not break any laws by publishing the leaks that were provided to him. he did what the New York Times has done and thier information has higher classifications. the wikileaks was only top secret.
Jim Rose
9 Oct 12 at 6:23 pm
Jemima Khan gets bent over again. Gotta love those Lefties.
H B Bear
9 Oct 12 at 6:30 pm
to explain that wikileaks was only top secret, that is stuff a new graduate or a corporal has access on their first day at work. manning was not a senior adminstration official or top CIA officer with access to top secret codeword material
Jim Rose
9 Oct 12 at 6:30 pm
You do realise, if you were a brain-damaged lefty (I know a tautology), you’d still be saying that you’d vote for him to be a Senator.
Token
9 Oct 12 at 6:36 pm
Bullshit.
Unless ones military specialty specifically calls for it, as Manning’s did, that level of clearance is seldom seen below the field grade officer ranks or that of senior enlisted staff. The Manning case is a prime example of why.
Zatara
9 Oct 12 at 7:39 pm
zatara, all he leaked was gossipy embassy cables and bibs and bobs. the new york times was my source for his material being only top secret
Jim Rose
9 Oct 12 at 8:21 pm
I saw an aerial shot of Our Julianne’s digs on TV news at some stage – it’s about the size of a couple of large inner Sydney terraces with no backyard. He looks like he’s woefully short on Vitamin D at the best of times and nowhere to wander about outside won’t help that.
What’s he do all day – stare at the ceiling, play Donkey Kong, examine the mirrors for FBI listening devices?
His human right to lots of compassionate phone calls from ditzy Jemimamaah will have been exhausted now that she’s done a couple of hundred thousand together with Happy-Jolly Pilger and two others.
Brave Captain Smiff was crying like a baby to the magistrate about waiving his $23,500 because he can’t afford to eat now, or something. It seems he didn’t understand what “going guarantor” really means.
Mick Gold Coast QLD
9 Oct 12 at 8:54 pm
Can’t believe they fell for the old run and hide in the Ecuadorian embassy trick!
Harold
9 Oct 12 at 9:01 pm
True. But it is not so simple. He may be convicted in Sweden due to their liberal interpretation of the rape laws. The whole process, the supporters claim, may have been instigated by his enemies. This way, they can keep him in prison, and if a request comes from the US, he can be extradited, with UK consent if necessary. If, OTOH, he is let free in the UK, he can escape to a country unfriendly to the US.
This is your interpretation. NYT lawyer was interviewed and denied that wikileaks was anything like the media. The difference is that wikileaks did not digest information, they just relayed it. Anyway, whether he can claim journalistic immunity remains to be tested in court.
Boris
10 Oct 12 at 1:53 am
Thank you Jim. Too many people being suckered and distracted by the fake opposition of Julian Assange. He has released nothing of real substance, and now has made his private life into the whole story. He is a classic mis-direction ploy. He is a Straw-man. He is not in opposition to anyone or anything. He is part of the machine.
Paul
10 Oct 12 at 8:27 am
Words fail:
Pop nobility Lady Gaga dines with the holed-up hactivist Julian Assange
Myrrdin Seren
10 Oct 12 at 9:39 am
I wonder if he has transferred some money to ‘my Sydney lawyer’ for his instructions into looking at the possibility of suing Gillard for defamation. Another victim to add to the list of those stiffed?
delfino
10 Oct 12 at 9:41 am
On a serious note. Regardless of his ego or what he has or has not achieved, Assange has been captured by the lefties (say Occupy for example) as their poster boy. He has never professed to be a lefty or a socialist and, in fact, in several interview he refers to himself as “Libertarian” as he dislikes government secrecy, foreign wars, big government. I suppose I just find it funny that both sides of the mainstream spectrum have disowned him. And historically you will find most Libertarians do get shunned by both sides (because they don’t “fit” into either side.)
Lysander Spooner
10 Oct 12 at 10:07 am
If you just arrived from Mars, and saw the libertarians at Catallaxy ready (willing?) for Assange to be dealt with by the authorities, you would wonder if there was some missing piece in the jigsaw.
Big Jim
10 Oct 12 at 10:32 pm
I don’t know how accurate it was but the Julian Assange movie (Assange as a teenager) was pretty good.
SteveC
10 Oct 12 at 10:48 pm
Did the movie depict how Assange got hundreds of Africans killed and him boasting about it later?
What about the anti-Taliban informants he got killed – as reported by The Guardian?
How about his links to a Nazi sympathiser?
C.L.
10 Oct 12 at 11:02 pm