How did the UN get it so wrong on Julian Assange?
Joshua Rozenberg
It must be appalling to find yourself subjected to arbitrary detention. You would have no power to challenge said detention. You would have no idea when, if ever, you would be set free. And that concept is reflected in the first of five definitions offered by the UN working group on arbitrary detention: “when it is clearly impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty” ...
They had assumed that Assange had been “detained in the embassy of Ecuador by the authorities of the United Kingdom,” the Ukrainian lawyer wrote. In fact, the Wikileaks founder had fled bail in June 2012 and used the embassy “as a safe haven to evade arrest”. Fugitives often do that, Tochilovsky pointed out. But “premises of self-confinement cannot be considered places of detention for the purposes of the mandate of the working group”.
That is so self-evidently true that it seems hard to believe the majority could have been persuaded otherwise. Assange has always been free to leave the embassy at any time.
Of course, he knew he would be arrested for breach of his bail conditions. Of course, he knew he would face extradition to Sweden. Of course, he knew that he might face extradition to the United States once proceedings in Sweden were at an end. But that does not mean he was detained, and still less that his detention was of an arbitrary character. How, then, did the majority of the working party get it so wrong? ...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/05/un-julian-assange-wikileaks
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