Julian Assange’s Jeopardy

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Julian Assange. (Image source: Cancillería del Ecuador/Wikimedia Commons)

What comes next for Julian Assange after his years holed up in Ecuador’s embassy at London? Glenn Greenwald has a report on the Intercept suggesting that eviction from his current sanctuary is imminent and that if he leaves, Wikileaks’ founder could face a year or more in prison at Britain as he maneuvers to avoid extradition to America. It strikes us as a thorough report, save for the omission of any mention of the case known as United States v. Alvarez-Machain.

That case, decided in 1992, could prove to be a precedent were America simply to seize Mr. Assange and bring him here without resort to any extradition treaty. The first of the several times we’ve written about Alvarez-Machain was in connection with the Libyan terrorist Abdelbasset al-Megrahi, who’d been released early from the prison sentence he was serving for murder in the bombing in 1988 of a Pan American clipper, Maid of the Seas, in which 270 persons perished at Lockerbie, Scotland.

Al-Megrahi, suffering from cancer, was let out of prison so he could go home to live out his remaining days in Libya. It struck us that President Obama could have sent agents to seize him and bring him to America for trial. That’s because of the way the courts handled Humberto Alvarez-Machain, a Mexican physician who allegedly participated in the murders of an American drug enforcement agent, Enrique Camarena Salazar, and a DEA pilot.

Dr. Alvarez-Machain’s role in the crime, the DEA believed, was, as Chief Justice William Rehnquist later put it, to have “participated in the murder by prolonging Agent Camarena’s life so that others could further torture and interrogate him.” So the doctor was snatched in Mexico and brought to America in a small, fast plane and arrested when it landed. This infuriated Mexico, not to mention Dr. Alvarez-Machain.

When it got to the Supreme Court, though, the justices cast aside the objections. It noted that the Supreme Court had once blocked the prosecution of a defendant brought to America from England for a crime not covered by our extradition treaty with Britain. Its reasoning, though, was simply that once the United States had begun proceedings under the extradition treaty, it was obligated to stick to its terms.

More relevant to Dr. Alvarez-Machain, the justices decided, was an 1886 case in which a thief who’d fled to Peru was brought back here by what the court called the “forcible abduction” by a Pinkerton agent. The court allowed proceedings against the thief — it rejected his claims to rights under the extradition law — precisely because the extradition law had been skirted. Though Dr. Alavarez-Machain was eventually acquitted, the precedent can’t bode well for Mr. Assange.

Mr. Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy at London in 2010. Ostensibly this was to avoid his extradition to Sweden to answer an allegation of sexual assault. That case has been dropped by the Swedes. Mr. Assange may still be in trouble in Britain for his failure to surrender to the British police. Mr. Assange has maintained his real concern is the danger of extradition to America in connection with the probe here into activities of Wikileaks.

In any event, Mr. Assange has managed to make himself anathema to both the Democrats and the Republicans. Last year, future secretary of state Mike Pompeo called Wikileaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” Secretary of State Clinton called Mr. Assange “a tool of Russian intelligence.” It’s not our intent to suggest that Mr. Assange be kidnapped. It is merely to caution against supposing that, should he exit his Ecuador haven, extradition is the only jeopardy he faces.


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