By
Greg Barns, Crikey, 12 January 2011:
Julian Assange’s lawyers are going for the jugular in their attack on the Swedish and UK government’s attempts to extradite Assange to Sweden where there is an investigation under way concerning his alleged in involvement in sexual offences. Not only do Assange’s lawyers run the usual arguments about the offences not being extradition offences — that is, there are no like charges in English law — but they say that the Swedish prosecutor who wants Assange extradited has no authority to do so, and that the whole thing is an abuse of process.
Strong stuff, but if the 35-page skeleton argument that Assange’s legal team has filed overnight with the City of Westminster Magistrates Court, ahead of the hearing in early February, is correct in its view of the law, then the Swedes are cactus! (See video here of Assange’s brief appearance at Belmarsh Magistrates’ court in London overnight.)
The Swedish prosecutor who is handling the Assange sex offences matter, Marianne Ny, a Public Prosecutor in Gothenburg, has no power to seek extradition, say Assange’s lawyers. The submission cites media statements by Ny and correspondence she had with the Australian High Commission in London in December in which she made it clear that her “purpose in requesting an arrest warrant, and subsequently an [extradition warrant], against Assange, was not in order to prosecute him, but in order to facilitate his ‘interrogation’, i.e. to facilitate his questioning.”
Assange’s lawyers correctly cite a line of strong and unambiguous English and European legal authority that says that you cannot extradite a person merely to question them. And you certainly cannot do so when there is documented evidence, as there is in this case, that Assange’s lawyers have repeatedly told the Swedish authorities that Assange was more than happy to meet them for questioning.
