General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Context and the Assange case. [View all]cemaphonic
(4,138 posts)If he leaves the embassy, he'll be arrested by the British police, and since he has exhausted all of his extradition appeals, they would send him along to Sweden where he would presumably be charged and stand trial for the remaining rape charge* (the statute of limitations for the other 3 charges he was facing are expiring, which is why he is in the news lately) He will also likely face legal consequences at some point for jumping bail in the UK, but I don't know whether that would be resolved before or after he goes to Sweden.
*One of the favorite arguments of the pro-Assange crowd is that "there are no charges!" which is one of those technical semantic gotchas that leave out a lot of legal context and language barriers. In the Swedish legal system the defendant is formally charged later than in the US system and (important for this case) a pre-arrest interview is conducted as part of the process. Since he has evaded Swedish jurisdiction so far, they have not yet reached the point of charging him, but the European Arrest Warrant (which is one of the key formal mechanisms for his extradition from the UK to Sweden) spells out exactly what he stands accused of. As far as the UK High Court that judged his extradition appeals is concerned, the Swedish equivalent of what would be charges in the UK (and US) legal system exist.