Owen Jones on Julian Assange

[french frank]

Resurrected sans off-topic diversion.

I can't think there's a lot more to add just at the moment, until the next move is made. But I had a request to restore the thread so that the principal arguments can be read.

[aeolium]

But an extradition request could have been made at any time from late 2010 - in which case the process would have been complete well before it became the high profile case it now is.

I disagree with this. Any request by the US for Assange to be extradited from this country would have been exceptionally high-profile at any time - much more than the already highly controversial extradition processes of individuals such as Gary MacKinnon. It would have been seen as an essentially political extradition, not a criminal one, and as such could not have failed to have created extreme difficulties for the Home Secretary and the government. In this it would have been quite different from the extradition process for the criminal allegations in Sweden.