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by dominicjj 1785 days ago
I'll forgive the author for not mentioning it because it's gone completely unmentioned in the Western media: the case against Julian Assange has collapsed completely. The prosecution's star witness, a convicted child molester, has walked back all of his original accusations.

https://archive.is/qNq8u
2 comments
boomboomsubban 1785 days ago
I think it's unmentioned because it has nothing to do with the US appeal of the extradition ruling, which is the topic of the article.

And though I view the retraction as an important and under covered event, it does not collapse the case completely. The witness is only relevant to one of the eighteen charges against Assange, and even in that charge he was mostly used as a character witness to label Assange as a malicious hacker.

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pphysch 1785 days ago
It is definitely relevant, and the reason for all this legal "murk". The USG+SIGs don't have a good faith case against Assange, but want to punish him as much as possible. He's already where they want him--in and out of solitary confinement in a miserable 5EYES prison.
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okamiueru 1785 days ago
How is "The witness is only relevant to one of the eighteen charges against Assange, and even in that charge he was mostly used as a character witness to label Assange as a malicious hacker." logically congruent with "has nothing to do with the US appeal of the extradition ruling"?

Seems a pretty good contradiction, unless I'm missing something.

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boomboomsubban 1785 days ago
The appeal has nothing to do with any of the charges, the extradition was denied based on humanitarian grounds. Basically the ruling was "yes the US has valid reason to extradite Assange, but that's likely to kill him so we won't extradite."

It's possible that they would not say the US has valid reason to extradite after the retraction, but unless the refusal is overruled, that doesn't matter.

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okamiueru 1784 days ago
So, you are definining "nothing to do with" based on the assumed end result, and not... whether it had something to do with it?

It's a strange argument, but, ok, I guess? Thanks for clearing it up.

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boomboomsubban 1784 days ago
> you are definining "nothing to do with" based on the assumed end result,

I have no clue how you've reached that conclusion. I'm saying this article is just about the extradition appeal, a decision that is being made regardless of what the charges are.

If the appeal is successful, the retraction will be important in the resumed extradition hearing. Articles about that possible hearing should definitely mention the retraction.

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okamiueru 1784 days ago
I'm still very confused by your argument. Maybe I'm missing some pieces. If this is an appeal based on a verdic related to X, then the appeal is also related to X. It seems disingenuous to imply otherwise.

"a decision that is being made regardless of what the charges are". Is the extradition not based on the charges? And is the appeal of the extradition then not also based on the charges?

If the charge was based on a staged witness, and the extradition was based on these charges. Is then not the appeal of extradition related to the staged witness?

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jeffrallen 1785 days ago
The Stundin Report itself: https://stundin.is/grein/13627/
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