Ecuadorean diplomats even offered the option to send him to Sweden outright, as long as the Swedish government guarantees he will not be extradited to a third country. Swedish authorities refused.
Tell me please: how will Swedish rape victims' human rights be offended by the Swedish inability to ship him to another country? Are Swedish punishment terms not enough?
Sweden presumably has a treaty obligation to extradite him to other countries though - they would be legally unable to agree to such a condition. (I'm ignoring the fact that if they were able to except him, that kind of piecemeal approach to treaty obligations would be a terrible idea on the whole.)
Swedish law demands 2 stages of interviews - the second one (the "criminal proceedings" that are "equivalent to being charged" in the words of the High Court) is the one that has to take place in Sweden. If the suspected murderer was the pre-charge interview, that explains the discrepancy - if not that's very significant. Do you happen to know which set they were?
> A very different perspective from Vaughan Smith, a friend of Assange who put him up for more than a year at his Norfolk residence. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's World at One this afternoon, Smith said:
>> [...]
>> I think there's a lot of pride involved here... They have interviewed an alleged murderer in Serbia but they choose not to come to London to interview Julian Assange. I think that's very disappointing.
Well they don't want to interview him. They want to interrogate him. And interrogation is not something that usually takes place on the suspected's convenience. Assange have walked out of interviews in the past.
No — but how often are such promises made? Hypothetically, if there came up an allegation that he had murdered someone in, say, Spain, and it was obvious he was guilty, would it be just that he could not be taken to Spain to be tried as a result of such an agreement?
Agreements between foreign countries are all about trust. You'll find that there's very little law covering this sort of thing (Vienna Convention being probably the strongest of them), and governments are pretty much free to do as they please. China promised not to touch Cheng Guangcheng once he left the US embassy in Beijing, and they kept their word, because doing otherwise would have been bad business.
If Swedish public opinion were horrified to discover Assange was a serial killer in Montana, they could ship him over pronto, agreement or no agreement, and Ecuador would understand why their agreement had to be broken. No loss of trust, no loss of face.
The fact that the Swedish government won't accept this sort of agreement has nothing to do with what they can or cannot do, and all about what they plan to do. Accepting such an agreement and then turning around to extradite him to the US on espionage charges would be taken as bad faith by the international community, so Swedish diplomats cannot do it. Is this why they refused? I guess we won't know until they get hold of him.
They want to question him over a complaint regarding compelling him to take an STD test. When he was charged and then those charges were dismissed he remained in Sweden for weeks. The story is so much more complicated than a simple charge for 'rape' (Assange has not been charged) One of the people he had relations with withdrew support for prosecution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu4WCskniEc
How are the rape victims' human rights being violated in this process?
They have not charged him with a crime (rape victims should be furious about this). They want him for 'questioning' but refuse to question him in London (again, furious).
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union applies to every man, woman, and child within the European Union. They apply both if you are a convicted criminal or have had a criminal offence committed against you.
How do you assume that he is guilty? The way all countries including America are taking an interest in him, it sounds less rape related and more of a power struggle.
