General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: If the US wants Julian Assange, why not extradite him directly from the UK? [View all]Xithras
(16,191 posts)Under UK law, a person has the right to fight an extradition and the extraditing country is required to lay out all of their evidence and prove that there's a substantial possibility that they actually committed a crime. That would require the US government to make a vast amount of intelligence data public in the UK, which they don't want to do.
Sweden, on the other hand, has a well documented history of working as a partner on our "extraordinary renditions", and we have a bilateral extradition treaty with them that is far less onerous than the treaty we have with the U.K. Under the terms of our treaty with Sweden, Assange wouldn't have the same right to protest the extradition as he has in the U.K. And even if his rights WERE upheld and they declined to rendition him AND provided him with a chance to fight the extradition, Swedish courts permit any evidentiary hearings to occur behind closed doors and out of sight of the media. Of course, that's unlikely, as Sweden hasn't actually opposed a U.S. extradition request in 13 years. We ask, they provide.
The extradition treaty between Sweden and the UK is a complicating factor, but that doesn't change the fact that Sweden is a more favorable place for us to pursue him.