If you spend 8 years confined to a small space, unable to travel freely due to a well-grounded fear of physical harm, you're most definitely "effectively imprisoned".
Plus, the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has also found that he is in arbitrary detention... in 2016. The UK has conveniently ignored this breach of human rights.
Whatever Assange did or didn't do, and whatever this media and political spectacle is, it isn't justice.
You already said that. Anything other than "we don't need no ethical opinions from nobody!" to add? Like if it is actually ethical? Or a giant waste of money?
Ecuador granted asylum not to shield Assange from justice in Sweden, but to prevent the US from using the Swedish case as an avenue to extradite him to the US.
The warrant was only withdrawn because without being able to interview Assange, the investigators cannot move forward. They have also reserved the right to reopen the case should Assange return to Sweden before the statute of limitations expires in 2020.
He also wasn't charged with rape, he was sought for questioning. And he consistently offered the Swedish Prosecutor to answer all questions from London, which the Swedish Prosecutor declined.
Right, because investigation and prosecution of an alleged crime is impossible without the suspect's testimony.
It was a trumped-up allegation. The timing and nature of it alone should have raised flags. Whatever truth there is to it does not warrant the diplomatic circus this has become.
Whether their claims have any merit or not is not for me to say, but how many other womens' rape allegations result in an international extradition effort...just for questioning?
The government wanted him already. Now they had a reason to bring him in, by making a bigger deal out of allegations they would otherwise ignore.
So everyone who is sought as a suspect in a crime is "effectively imprisoned", in your view?
Remember: Assange sought asylum to avoid an interview with Swedish law officials concerning allegations of sexual misconduct in possible violation of Swedish law.
Whatever Assange did or didn't do, and whatever this media and political spectacle is, it isn't justice.