Julian Assange (Wikileaks) arrested in London

Thunderian

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Looks like the Ecuadorans finally just got sick of him. I bet they asked him to leave ages ago. Probably because he was suing them. What a guy.


it will be interesting to see what happens now. He was arrested on a US warrant, but who knows if he'll be extradited, and maybe Trump will just pardon him, as people are urging him to do. Worst case for Assange, he gets a couple years in prison, and then annoys them so much they release him and send him packing.
 

The Zone

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I see this as another political lightning rod and do think he ends up in the US. Assange will be used to divide opinions further and I fully expect the left to say he is a total criminal for exposing Hillary e-mails. It is interesting that Scotland Yard arrested him. As for him being forced out and physically removed, Assange wanted that in that he actually is trying to sue the Ecuadorian government that turned on him with leadership changes. It will be interesting for people are very much split on him, many thinking he endangered military assets, etc.
 

Thunderian

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I found this helpful. Apparently the Ecuadorians did, in fact, just get sick of him.

Julian Assange has finally been arrested. What happens now? A guide
  • WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police on Thursday after Ecuador, whose London embassy had been his home for nearly seven years, withdrew his political asylum. Police went into the embassy at Ecuador’s invitation, removed Mr. Assange and brought him to a central London police station before a midday court appearance.
  • London police confirmed they had arrested him on behalf of U.S. authorities, who have had him under scrutiny ever since his site published secret government documents in 2010. His lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, said in tweet that he had been arrested for breaching his bail conditions and in relation to a U.S. extradition request. WikiLeaks claimed the extradition request involved “conspiracy with Chelsea Manning,” the former U.S. soldier who provided the documents leaked in 2010.
  • Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno said his government made a “sovereign decision” to revoke Mr. Assange’s asylum due to “repeated violations to international conventions and daily life.”
Who is Julian Assange?
The 47-year-old Australian founder of the whistleblower site WikiLeaks has been a thorn in the side of global intelligence agencies for years, particularly since 2010, when WikiLeaks published classified documents provided by soldier Chelsea Manning. The leaks included detailed logs of the U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as sensitive cables between diplomats and the State Department.​
Shortly after the 2010 leaks, Swedish authorities, investigating allegations that he sexually assaulted two women, issued an international warrant for his arrest. British police arrested him in London, and for two years, he fought a legal battle to avoid extradition to Sweden, which he feared would then hand him over to the United States. When Britain’s Supreme Court okayed the Swedish extradition in 2012, Mr. Assange fled and sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was granted asylum. He would end up staying at the embassy for nearly seven years.​
Who wants him for what, and who doesn’t
Sweden
Swedish prosecutors dropped the r*pe case against Mr. Assange in 2017. Theoretically, it might reopen if he returned there before the statute of limitations runs out in August, 2020, but Swedish chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren said Thursday that “we have not been able to decide on the available information” whether that could happen. In any event, a return to Sweden seems unlikely given that U.S. authorities want him first.​
Britain
British authorities had been seeking to arrest Mr. Assange for skipping bail, an offence punishable by up to a year in prison. But on Thursday, London police confirmed that the arrest was on behalf of a U.S. extradition request.​
United States
The fact that U.S. authorities want Mr. Assange is no secret, but it’s not yet clear what specific crimes they’re accusing him of. WikiLeaks claimed on Twitter that the extradition request dealt with “conspiracy with Chelsea Manning."​
The Justice Department secretly filed criminal charges against Mr. Assange as recently as last year. That fact accidentally became public in an unrelated Virginia court case in November, but the wording and nature of the charges was left unclear. WikiLeaks has also been implicated in cyber-meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, because it leaked confidential Democratic Party e-mails obtained by Russian hackers. But while Russian spy agencies and several associates of U.S. President Donald Trump who communicated with WikiLeaks have been charged, Mr. Assange is not one of the people indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in his now-concluded probe of the Trump-Russia connection.
Why was he arrested now?
Mr. Assange’s relationship with the Ecuadorians had been going sour in recent years as he flouted the conditions of his asylum while apparently continuing to co-ordinate WikiLeaks’ activities. Staff at the embassy complained that he was aggressive with security staff, rode a skateboard in the halls and flouted other rules of his living conditions. At one point he even sued Ecuador to have them pay his phone bills, medical expenses and clean up after his cat. The relationship deteriorated further when he was accused of leaking personal information about President Lenin Moreno’s personal life, including private photos of his family.​
“The patience of Ecuador has reached its limit” on Mr. Assange’s behaviour, Mr. Moreno said in a video statement announcing the withdrawal of asylum on Thursday. He alleged that Mr. Assange violated international asylum rules by continuing to intervene in the affairs of other states. Mr. Moreno brought up the example of WikiLeaks’s release of Vatican documents in January, though he did not mention the 2016 U.S. election.​
Reaction from WikiLeaks and its allies
WikiLeaks denounced the arrest as part of a campaign by "powerful actors" to discredit a publisher and journalist:​
Fellow whistleblower Edward Snowden, an American fugitive now living in Russia, also criticized the arrest, saying it set a dangerous precedent for freedom of expression:​
 
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Yeah it’s a lose-lose here.

1. Assange burned a lot of bridges with his reactionary behavior and role in the 2016 presidential elections and overall creepy behavior, I don’t doubt his accuser at all btw.
2. So it’s going to be very easy for the government to set a very poor legal precedent with his case.

Looks like the Ecuadorans finally just got sick of him. I bet they asked him to leave ages ago. Probably because he was suing them. What a guy.


it will be interesting to see what happens now. He was arrested on a US warrant, but who knows if he'll be extradited, and maybe Trump will just pardon him, as people are urging him to do. Worst case for Assange, he gets a couple years in prison, and then annoys them so much they release him and send him packing.

No indication as of now that Trump is interested in returning the favor for Assange’s vital role in his election-with or without Russians. It would be good politics for Trump to pardon him, it’ll rally his base and keep the myth alive that Trumpolini is fighting the deep state.

Bottom line is this case is bad pretty much any way it plays out, it’s going to be fascinating from the perspective of a political junkie.
 
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JoChris

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Thunderian

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I think the only thing Assange will be charged with will be conspiracy to hack. The feds don't generally build cases they can't win, and if they charged him with publishing secrets the trial would be a long mess that might go badly against them.

Trump has declared love for Wikileaks in the past, and as @JoChris said, if it wasn't for Wikileaks, Hillary “Can’t we just drone this guy?”Clinton would be in the White House. Assange should be thanking God she doesn't have that kind of power any longer, and since Obama set precedent by commuting Chelsea Manning's 35-year sentence after she served just seven, it's a very good possibility that if Assange cooperates and agrees to a quick trial, he could set himself up for a pardon at the end of Trump's second term.
 

Mr.Anderson

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I've seen the leaked files. A couple of them about Brazil, lots about scientology, some about 9/11... Sadly nothing I could really find personally appealing.

Plus assange seem reeeeally deranged after the first wikileak incident
 

polymoog

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No indication as of now that Trump is interested in returning the favor for Assange’s vital role in his election-with or without Russians. It would be good politics for Trump to pardon him, it’ll rally his base and keep the myth alive that Trumpolini is fighting the deep state.
start at 5:18 for the whole thing, but the key point is at 6:54. theres no reason why trump couldnt come to his defense.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/KcGdyIaUlmc/
 

Thunderian

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Trump may not get the chance to pardon him. Assange will face sentencing in England for jumping bail there, and Sweden can still file charges for r*pe.
 

Thunderian

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Julian Assange Charged With Espionage, Mishandling Classified Information
dailywire.com/news/47619/julian-assange-charged-espionage-mishandling-emily-zanotti

The United States issued an updated charging document Thursday, accusing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange of espionage and mishandling classified information he received from then-information officer Chelsea Manning.

The 18-count indictment includes the single count of conspiracy that appeared on Assange's arrest warrant issued shortly before he was evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and taken into British custody.

LMT Online reports that federal prosecutors believe "Assange worked with a former Army intelligence analyst to obtain and disseminate classified information." The indictment also argues that Assange cannot be considered a "reporter" for purposes of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press.

Instead, the U.S. government seems to claim that Assange is a foreign agent engaged in the "explicit solicitation of classified materials" that he could publish in pursuit of an agenda, not as mere information for Americans he believed were kept in the dark about their country's role in the deaths of Iraqi civilians during the initial years of the Iraq War.

The indictment, as the initial claim of conspiracy, stems from Assange's interactions with Manning, who stole thousands of classified documents, audio and video files, and funneled them to Wikileaks in the hopes that Wikileaks would publish them. In the initial arrest warrant, the U.S. government described Assange as "encouraging" Manning, helping him to hack further into a classified database in order to get better material.

Manning was eventually arrested and convicted on espionage charges.

Assange believes himself to be a reporter and publisher, and considers Wikileaks a protected media outlet. To be convicted of espionage, a court of law would need to find that Assange is not, in fact, simply a publisher — and that's what the U.S. government is arguing in order to avoid any long-term consquences for other journalists who obtain and publish classified information.

Prosectuors, LMT reports, say Assange "repeatedly encouraged sources with access to classified information to steal it" and wanted the information he received to have potential "political, diplomatic, ethical or historical impact on release."

Assange's attorney's contend that Wikileaks is a news media outlet and that, if he is convicted of espionage for publishing material that turned out to be classified, Assange's case could have repercussions for any member of the media who published information the U.S. government didn't want readers or news consumers to see.

"The factual allegations against Mr. Assange boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source," Assange's attorney Barry Pollack said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

The 18 counts carry with them a maximum jail sentence of 170 years, but there's no guarantee that Assange will face trial in the United States. A court in the U.K. is currently considering at least two requests for Assange's extradition — from the United States and Sweden — and is not expected to rule on where Assange is headed next until early June. Sweden filed its charges late last week, resurfacing an arrest warrant issued for Assange in the early 2000s stemming from an alleged sexual assault.

Assange remains in jail in the U.K. awaiting the court's decision.
 

Phithx

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German TV Exposes the Lies That Entrapped Julian Assange

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52954.htm

Probably Dutch TV replayed on German TV

"One of the main German TV channels (ZDF) ran two prime-time segments on Wednesday night exposing authorities in Sweden for having “made up” the story about Julian Assange being a rapist.

Until last night most Germans, as well as other consumers of “major media” in Europe, had no idea of the trickery that enmeshed Assange in a spider-web almost certainly designed by the U.S. and woven by accomplices in vassal states like Sweden, Britain and, eventually, Ecuador."

Continued ...
 
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