Can the US President give a guarantee that the Supreme Court will decide a case in a certain manner? Because that's what that means.
Sweden is a country with laws, and an independent judiciary. Sweden has extradition treaty with the US (as do many people). If the USA follows a procedure, then the Swedish courts must hand someone over (and vice versa). That's what the (Swedish) law says. You're asking the Swedish government to guarantee that the Swedish courts won't decide a particular case in a particular manner.
So the catch-22 is that he says he is happy to go to Sweden in case he is given guarantees of not being extradited, but no such guarantee is possible under Swedish law.
What swedish authorities could (and should) do in this situation is just make some really broad statements about how even though they have agreements with the USA, no one would ever be extradited from Sweden to any country in case they risked facing the death penalty and/or are whistle blowers.
Not buying it. (Also EU law would prevent Sweden from extraditing him to the US without British consent anyhow. So either Britain is okay with his extradition and there's no need to get him to Sweden, or they're not and there's no point. And that's not even touching on the fact that Sweden couldn't extradite him to the US without an assurance that he could not face execution, which is politically very unlikely to happen. I don't doubt the US would love to grab Assange, but the legal extradition question is a complete red herring.)
Edit: Fix dumb typos, too tired.
After leaving Sweden he spent weeks in the UK though. Plenty of time to arrest and extradit him.
The argument is that it is a pretense to have him detained by US-controlled country to get him sent to US without proper judicial procedure.
Basically, both UK and Sweden said it can't rule out that he is sent over to US if he's detained for this unrelated "crime".
>>One: “The allegation of rape would not be rape under English law”
>>This is flatly untrue. The Assange legal team argued this twice before English courts, and twice the English courts ruled clearly that the allegation would also constitute rape under English law.
http://www.newstatesman.com/david-allen-green/2012/08/legal-...
It's the Supermax prison treatment including solitary confinement for life that he fears in the US.
You just have to look at how they treated Manning.
In face of that risk it certainly would feel like detention to me. Imagine someone would threaten to lock you up for life in solitary confinement and possibly even torture you on top of that if you ever left the room you are sitting in right now.
Wouldn't that feel like detention? Yes, because it is. That threat alone significantly restricts your freedom.
One of the requirements of extradition treaties is that the person is accused of something that's a crime in both countries. Assanges lawyers argued in the UK High and Supreme Courts that what he wanted for wasn't a crime in the UK. They lost. It's the opinion of the UK courts that what Assange is accused of, would count as a crime in the UK.
This is a crime in the UK & Wales, in fact their legislation specifically mentions sleep (this was specifically cited by the UK Supreme Court when it denied his appeal). This would also have been a crime in Canada (the Canadian Supreme Court ruled on a case a year or two ago in regards to sex and unconsciousness). It is also a crime in Sweden.
Reading the complaint against him, it's very hard to see how anyone could justify his actions. I'm sure there'll be much posted in this thread shortly though calling him a hero.
Lets assume Sweden drops the rape case against him. Then he would certainly be extradited to the USA. A country where the harshest penalty is the death sentence, a country that imprisons people for life without a due process and a country that tortures its prisoners.
Afaik the rape accusations in Sweden boil down to "he had sex with a woman w/o using a condom", but that could be wrong.
EDIT: Read up on the issue and the accusation is that he had unprotected sex with a woman while she was asleep.
He spent weeks in UK before going to the Ecuadorian Embassy. Why didn't the UK extradit him to the US?
Afaik the rape accusations in Sweden boil down to "he had sex with a woman w/o using a condom",
...while said woman was sleeping, and when the evening before she had categorically refused to have sex without a condom, AFAIK.
Frankly, the probability of the USA torturing or executing a celebrity journalist from a Western country isn't particularly high anyway, especially not when it involves extradition from a European country, but of course asking countries to rewrite their statute book to offer him a special personal guarantee it won't happen is a good way of deflecting a rape charge.
The one extradition case we have seen play out, to a country famed for its liberal criminal justice policy (Sweden) from a country famed for the rule of law (UK) gave him many opportunities to test the process through the courts. That was even through the European Arrest Warrant process which is supposed to streamline extradition processes.
If, and it is an if, Assange were to be subject to an extradition request from the US he would be able to challenge it through the courts. He wouldn't face the death penalty as European countries don't extradite under those circumstances. Similarly prison conditions can be argued and again European courts can require commitments from the US regarding conditions and treatment before they would approve an extradition.
The Gary McKinnon case is illuminating into the thinking behind extradition from Europe to the US.
Finally it is also worth saying that Assange has probably also shot himself in the foot if he ever did face extradition to the US. He was bailed in the UK (where there is a presumption of bail) and this able to flee to the embassy. If he were arrested again facing extradition to the US he would be much less likely to be granted bail and so unable to claim political asylum on a much more sympathetic case.
It's so braindead I can't even begin to respond.
Who would you call a hero? Have you watched the Manning videos?
[0] Julian Paul Assange (born 3 July 1971) is an Australian computer programmer, publisher and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, an organisation which he founded in 2006. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrik...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_War_documents_leak
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak
EDIT: s/awarder/awarded
He has evaded prosecution for rape for years
Innocent until proved guilty please, whether you or I like him or not.
Being prosecuted doesn't mean guilty. Calling being questioned being prosecuted isn't that far off the mark. And neither term implies guilt.
Sexual Assault
They were sitting in bed talking and he took off her clothes. They had sex again and she realised that he had only put the condom over the tip of his penis, but she let it pass.
They went to sleep and she awoke with the sensation of him entering her. She immediately asked 'Are you wearing anything?' and he replied 'You'.
She told him 'You better not have HIV' and he replied 'Of course not'. She felt it was too late, he was already in her so she let him continue, she was too tired to tell him once more, she had been nagging him about using a condom all night.
She never had unprotected sex before. He said he wanted to come inside her, he did not say when he would but he did. A lot leaked out of her afterwards.
She told him 'What if I get pregnant?'. He answered that Sweden is a good place to have kids. She jokingly told him that if she became pregnant he would have to pay her student loans.
On the train to Enköping he had told her that he had slept in Anna Ardins bed after a party. She asked if he had sex with Anna but he said Anna liked girls, that she was a lesbian.
Now she knows that he did the same thing with Anna. She asked him about how many he has had sex with, he responded that he didn't keep count. He said that he had HIV tested himself 3 months earlier and that he had sex with a woman after that and that she was tested and not positive.
She said sarcastic things to him in a joking tone, she believes that she was trying to de-dramatize what had happened, he in turn did not seem to care. When he was told the size of her student loans he said that if he was to pay her loans then she would have to give birth to a baby.
They joked that the child would be named Afghanistan. He also said that he ought to keep abortion-pills with him that would in reality be sugar-pills.
His phone rang and he had a meeting with Aftonbladet (swedish newspaper) on tuesday at 12. She explained that he would not make it to that meeting, so he pushed his whole schedule ahead by one hour.
After that he rode a bicycle with her on the back down to the train station. She paid his ticket to Stockholm. Before they separated he told her to keep her phone on. She asked if he was going to call and he said he would.
She took the bike home, showered and changed sheets. Since she didn't make it in time for work she called in sick and stayed home. She wanted to clean up and wash everything. There was semen on the sheets and she thought it was disgusting. She also went by the drugstore and bought 'dagenefterpiller' (abortion pills).
After she had discussed with her friends she realized that she had been the victim of a crime. She went to Danderyd hospital and from there to Södersjukhuset (another hospital). There she was examined and also tested using a so called 'rape-kit'.
edit: pdf of the original complaint (in swedish): http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/docs/memoria.pdf
Given how badly the US wants Assange, and how we know they treat people like him, it is completely understandable that he wouldn't want to leave the embassy. Therefore it is hard to understand why the Swedish prosecutor was content to sit on her backside when it's in everyone's (not least the alleged victims) interest to move the case forward.
Moreover, they will have looked into whether his human rights have been violated. I suspect that they will have formally found that Assange's right to enjoy asylum, which was granted by Ecuador, has been violated and whether appropriate accommodations have been made to ensure that Assange's medical and other human rights have been violated.
The UK has consistently said they would arrest Assange even if he came out of the embassy for medical reasons, effectively denying him the right to asylum in the event of a medical emergency.
I can't see how the UN could set any other precedent here. Regardless of the merits or lack thereof of the Swedish case, the UK and Sweden have allegedly conspired to violate Assange's rights and there appears to be ample reason to suspect that based on leaked documentation to date.
For example , I think here the questioning was more of a "placing under arrest" (there was something about how the questioning is mandatory before officially declaring someone a suspect). And the questioning needed to happen in Sweden for some constitutional thing?
So I don't remember the Swedish law stuff too sell either but there were legal barriers to questioning in the embassy
Not to mention that the whole "This is to bring him to the US" thing ignores that:
- extradition from the UK to the US requires going through UK courts
-Extradition from the UK to the US through Sweden requires goig through Swedish AND UK courts. Its strictly harder
"But they'll kidnap him or something": is Sweden easier to be kidnapped him from?
The whole Swedish side of the story is bizarre but any argument about US influence in the prosecution seems to not make any sense except if to commit character attacks. Because it made US extradition harder, not easier
It's not that many years ago that Swedish police cooperated in illegally black-bagging two asylum seekers and illegally handed them over to the CIA who shipped them off to Egypt - the regime they'd fleed - where they were promptly tortured by Mubaraks secret police.
If Swedish police was willing to effectively kidnap political asylum seekers and hand them off to a foreign government, in violation of Swedish law and international treaties, and not punish anyone for it, why should Assange trust them?
We know that CIA rendition flights continued for years after the above became publicly known and the Swedish government promised rendition flights would end. We know this because of Wikileaks documents. So why should Assange trust the Swedish and US governments not to conspire?
Whether or not there actually is some conspiracy (I don't believe there is), Assange has plenty of reasons to be paranoid about it.
Yes. Sweden has a history of just handing people over to the CIA.
The point is that after questioning, they have to make a decision whether to charge him. Either way, this would have moved the case forward.
>And the questioning needed to happen in Sweden for some constitutional thing?
Not true. As shown by the fact that they a) question other suspects abroad and b) have now agreed to have him questioned in the embassy after all.
>So I don't remember the Swedish law stuff too sell either but there were legal barriers to questioning in the embassy
This is absolutely not true and the Swedish supreme court called the prosecutor out for their bullshit.
Once he's in Sweden, how does a UK court have any jurisdiction? Anyway, the UK already wants to arrest him and hand him over to Sweden, given that they've been staking out the embassy for several years now.
Imagine if the London police had've spent all those staff-hours chasing domestic rapists. I reckon they would have nabbed at least one that they wouldn't have otherwise, which would bring them up to the same level of arrestees detained as all this effort spent on one guy (who hasn't even been found guilty in any court yet).
The idea that "they wouldn't do it; it's all too politically hard" discounts all the resources they've already spent because of politics.
Hasn't that been a traditional method of catching a suspect? "Come out with your hands up, we have you surrounded!"
Perhaps there is something significant in the fact that Assange is in the Ecuadorian Embassy. We'll have to wait for the reasons to be published.
The Swedish prosecutor has failed to her their duty (as confirmed by the Swedish supreme court) to in refusing to accept Assanges statement from the UK/Ecuadorian embassy.
Had the prosecutor done her job Assanges case would have already gone through the courts, but now he has been unnecessarily detained (essentially in investigative custody, by whom isn't relevant here) for several years.
Edit: I'm not sure why this is getting downvotes, Sweden has already admitted that there's no need to have Assange in Sweden unless he's sentenced. Therefore forcing Assange to stay in the Embassy under the threat of (unnecessary) extradition to Sweden can undoubtedly be considered detainment.
Had the prosecutor done their job Assange would've been charged, got his trial and potentially (very likely, considering the evidence) found not guilty.
Of course, a guilty sentence would completely change the situation.
Judging from his written submissions, he says that the UK has caused him to face "an impossible dilemma", namely, choosing between confinement in the embassy or giving up his (inalienable) right to non-refoulement as a refugee. Apparently the WGAD has previously held that putting someone in that position involves unlawful detention. So it turns out that is the significance of the fact he is in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Perhaps there is something significant in the fact that
Assange is in the Ecuadorian Embassy
What about forcing down a presidential plane (of a nearby country)? Would a government in their right mind do that?
Once a hegemonic country's closest-held secrets are involved, all bets seem to be off.
I'm actually a bit surprised that Britain didn't stage some kind of covert snatch from the Ecuadorian embassy after all these years (at the behest of the US).
I find it a bit humorous though, that Assange said he would honor the UN panels decision just moments before that decision is leaked to the press. Funny how he didn't make that promise when he first applied for the ruling...
Technically, they are not forcing him at all.
IMO
When those two prisoners escaped from prison in upstate new york,it cost new york 23 million dollars to find them [1] (and they were only fugitives for less than a month).
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/ny-prison-escape-manhunt-cost-state...
He's a high-profile fugitive who is evading arrest for alleged sexual offences against women in a member state in Europe.
Oh, - it's because he is "high-profile" that makes him special. So it's not about the alleged crime at all? It's due to wikileaks after all!
There is something illogical here, I think.
The amount of money they spend guarding the embassy is ridicules. A similar spending would have been accepted if it was just some random guy. The British public should furious about wasting £12.6 million trying to catch a guy that many not be guilty, or may only be guilty of something that's only rape in the Swedish sense.
Don't get me wrong, if guilty then I don't care who he is. In that case he should be punished. It's just that I don't think Sweden should be allowed to hand him over to the US afterwards.
Still the amount of money wasted trying to catch him should say something about why the UK police wants him. You simply don't spend that kind of money trying to catch a person, just so you can question him.
1. Assange is not violating any Swedish laws or policies by staying in the embassy and avoiding extradition, he has no obligation to return to Sweden and every right not to.
2. Assanges presence in Sweden is not required by Swedish policies or laws, Swedish courts already called out the prosecutor for not accepting his statements from the embassy.
The duty of the prosecutor also seems to need clarifying, some people here seem to think that the prosecutor has no obligation to agree to interview Assange in the embassy. This is absolutely not true.
Do you not think that the victims(although not entirely applicable here) are OK with the prosecutor indefinitely delaying the case until the crimes expire just because she is too arrogant to pick up the phone and ring up Assange or buy a 30 euro plane ticket to London?
Another thing worth noting is that many people seem to think UK is a particularly easy country to extradite people from, this isn't exactly true. See Gary McKinnon and Lauri Love.
Sweden has a history of just handing people over to the CIA.
Anyone violating bail should expect to spend the rest of their life under threat of arrest and not assume they can make it go away by hiding out for a few years.
[1] it'd be nice if we put some political pressure on Sweden to resolve the issue remotely but that's neither here nor there.
He is violating his bail conditions in the UK but I don't see how that's relevant here. Assanges goal isn't avoiding arrest, but extradition.
>Anyone violating bail should expect to spend the rest of their life under threat of arrest and not assume they can make it go away by hiding out for a few years.
I'm not entirely sure about the UK system on this but in most countries crimes expire.
I wouldn't doubt this -- but if you can provide a quick recap for those not familiar with this side history, that would be most helpful.
Then later on the stories started changing and the charges were mysteriously resurrected by a different prosecutor as political pressure on Wikileaks intensified. Suddenly they want to question him again, but by this time he's left Sweden (as they said he could). So not surprisingly he is now suspicious as hell.
One key part of what Assange is accused of is initiating sex with a person who was asleep. This is a crime in many countries (Sweden, Canada, UK) that have specific legislation around consent (the UK laws actually include "sleep" in their language about consent).
Talent is more important then morals.
The panel's ruling will not have any formal influence over the British and Swedish authorities and the UK Foreign Office said it still had an obligation to extradite Mr Assange.
I don't quite understand: Why appeal to the UN in the first place, if their ruling is not legally binding?
Why hasn't Assange appealed to the European Court of Human Rights? Both Sweden and the UK are members and he's subject to a European arrest warrant.
It's also worth a look at some of the arguments here: https://justice4assange.com/extraditing-assange.html
(edits: made the above clearer that the FAQs were from Assange's side)
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/media/2012/09/legal-mythol...
[Edit: tone]
Julian Paul Assange (born 3 July 1971) is an Australian computer programmer, publisher and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, an organisation which he founded in 2006. He is currently a fugitive from UK and Swedish justice, in Ecuador's London embassy after having been granted political asylum by Ecuador in August 2012.
Effectively, he is detained; he won't get far if he leaves.
From there, it gets more complicated. Is that effective-but-technically-not detainment lawful, and even if it's not lawful, doesn't he have the option of lawful detainment by choosing to leave the embassy? After that, though, he's likely on the hook for a bit more than just a bit of questioning in Sweden. It's a very complicated situation, which is probably why the UN chose to be involved.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/06/19...
Its charter gives it no legal power; it is like a version of Amnesty International housed in the UN.
As comparisons go, this is quite specious.
To wit: it is quite misleading to suggest that an entity specifically chartered by the UN (to present its findings to the UN) is somehow comparable to an independent NGO that happens to share office space in the same building.
This detail is strangely absent from all the existing coverage of this story.
Legal power aside, is there some larger process at play that requires them to side with Assange? Or is this just a play for a Pyrrhic victory?
If that is the case, what is there that we (as supporters of Assange's plight) can do to add pressure to the UK government and forward the effort towards securing his freedom?
Or maybe some times things aren't what they seem and their are political motivations, and they require politics to fight them, not just blindly following false justice
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/695084493825273856
Do we have reason to believe Assange knew about the decision beforehand?
Moreover, do we have reason to be less interested in the larger context of the UN panel's decision than in the ways in which we can paint the motives of Assange's statement?
https://twitter.com/AP/status/695260597533962241
UN says Sweden's foreign ministry was informed last month.
Vaguely remember something like that.
Think of what good all that money could have done instead.
Why don't UK folks do a petition for THAT so your parliment has to argue it, instead of something useless (but impressive) like banning Trump from the UK
The courts can't just ignore that because he's been hiding out for too long. The justice system has an obligation to bring him in.
Generally there's an expectation of reasonable effort, 24/7 police guard isn't going to magically stop him from leaving.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35490910
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Detention/Pages/WGADIndex.asp...
Apparently their report is to be published tomorrow.
I personally don't see how is he "detained" when he himself decided to sit in the Embassy. Maybe because the UK by waiting on him to exit the embassy doesn't recognize his status of having political asylum granted by Ecuador? I'd like to read the (as the article says, legally directly non-binding for the UK) report of the UN Working Group myself to adjust my opinion.
Up to then it's just media making noise, still no new information, except that the report is expected to be published.
I believe he's with reasonable probability in danger of being extradited to the US and there having the fate similar to Manning's. As far as I understand there is also some kind of "working group" formed in the US that specially works on his case, and the US really successfully does such things as demanding the extradition of people they want to prosecute and then getting them.
Edit:
If somebody wants to try to guess what the arguments of the Working Group can be, the starting point should be:
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FactSheet26en.pd...
"according to the Group, deprivation of liberty is arbitrary if a case falls into one of the following three categories:
A) When it is clearly impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty (as when a person is kept in detention after the completion of his sentence or despite an amnesty law applicable to him)(Category I);
B) When the deprivation of liberty results from the exercise of the rights or freedoms guaranteed by articles 7, 13, 14, 18, 19, 10 and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, insofar as States parties are concerned, by articles 12, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26 and 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Category II);
C) When the total or partial non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial, spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the relevant international instruments accepted by the States concerned, is of such gravity as to give the deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character (Category III)."
It's not about the "detention" but about the "deprivation of liberty." That has more sense.
Threats of storming into an embassy is not illegal?
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-wikileaks-assange-ecuador-...
Or threats to arrest him inside an diplomatic transport? Or even threats to ignore any diplomatic immunity at all?
Nothing illegal here it seems.
I agree with you that it is an obvious pressure by the state, the question remains how is that technically illegal and how is he technically "arbitrarily detained."
I'm looking forward to read the details tomorrow, or something more that you know even now.
I also find it good that Ecuador remained firm, because otherwise the claim would be that Ecuador agreed to what was demanded (as in UK saying "we've just made threats but haven't done anything else"), so there would be no chance even to consider if something is legal or not.
I thought the point was to get people round the negotiating table in a safe environment, rather than breeding resentment by forcing people to sign things at gunpoint?
http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-siege-of-julian-assange-i...
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FactSheet26en.pd...
"according to the Group, deprivation of liberty is arbitrary if a case falls into one of the following three categories:
A) When it is clearly impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty (as when a person is kept in detention after the completion of his sentence or despite an amnesty law applicable to him)(Category I);
B) When the deprivation of liberty results from the exercise of the rights or freedoms guaranteed by articles 7, 13, 14, 18, 19, 10 and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, insofar as States parties are concerned, by articles 12, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26 and 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Category II);
C) When the total or partial non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial, spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the relevant international instruments accepted by the States concerned, is of such gravity as to give the deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character (Category III)."
It's about the "arbitrary deprivation of liberty" against his human rights.
Assange doesn't want to go to Sweden and there's no need for him to do so, so forcing him to stay in the embassy just because the prosecutor wants it is undoubtedly "arbitrary".
On the other hand, I suspect that if he had that sort of background there wouldn't be many people here willing to advance the argument that the original prosecution must be politically motivated, or it wasn't a real crime...
Justice is supposed to be blind.
Politics aside, there is no human reason why informed, intelligent people could not speak and asses him within the embassy, then give the same treatment to those making claims and present their findings accordingly, it's only the totalitarian inhuman systems of political practise that have prevented sound, logical reasoning to take place.
If the evidence clearly states that he directly hurt other human beings then he should face punishment for that in the country that he is a citizen of, if it is unclear he should be presumed innocent until proven guilty but still investigated transparently and humanely.
With regards to assisting parts of Wikileaks - he was part of a large community of people (remember, we're humans and we want to get along for the most part) that exposed corruption and wrongdoing by people and governments in positions of power. If you have to break a law to prove that laws have been broken both parties must be treated with the same scrutiny - end of story.
Edit: I'd like to add that if the sexual assault claims were true he should be treated as a mental patient that committed a crime rather than a criminal with malicious intent of direct wrong doing. You can't heal, or change people with punishment - humans are adaptive, complex organisms that need quality education, therapy, social training and reflection and then they need to play a part in the community to help prevent such things from happening again. If you think about the money that's been spent with regards to the alleged sexual crimes alone - with those millions of dollars just think about how many people that could help, not just with education but also improving mental health, support networks and so forth that can make a difference not just to 1-3 people but thousands of people. The value of where our money has been spent on this is clearly very poor.
Why did he go to the UN? Probably because they're not a court and have no actual power here.
https://twitter.com/AP/status/695260597533962241
A U.N. official says Sweden was informed last month of a U.N. panel's decision on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
While the panel hasn't officially released its decision, Sweden's foreign ministry said Thursday that the advisory group had concluded that Assange has been a victim of "arbitrary" detention at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where he sought refuge in 2012.
Instead of correcting the system, those in power are trying to going after whistle blowers. The system is no longer a democracy.
If there is an updated article showing more recent developments, then a link to that would be awesome
We're with you Julian.
As the article correctly points out, this is currently a rumor, the panel has not yet ruled.
http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/02/25/snowden-training-guide...
https://theintercept.com/2015/04/02/gchq-argentina-falklands...
Remember: JTRIG (NSA+GCHQ) is very interested in online propaganda and controlling public opinion through shills.
Note: Both serve their governments, which have decided to treat Assange as an enemy rather than a journalist.
I don't think this is okay. I encourage everyone to be on guard for this sort of behavior on news stories related to Assange.