Follow-up on prior stories and a few new items | Glenn Greenwald

New developments in the Assange case, Saadiq Long finally makes it home, and Barrett Brown's mother is convicted

(1) The government of Ecuador continues its attempts to obtain assurances from either Britain or Sweden that Julian Assange's appearance in Stockholm for questioning on sex crimes allegations will not be used to extradite him to the US. This week, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on several interesting new developments in the case in Sweden, including the fact that the high-profile prosecutor driving the case from the start has now "abruptly" left it. Moreover, both Alexa O'Brien and Ryan Gallagher note that the Obama DOJ continues to say that its Grand Jury investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks is ongoing. Leaked documents from last year reflect that Australian diplomats believe the US is still intent on prosecuting WikiLeaks (a threatened prosecution which former New York Times General Counsel James Goodale recently described as "absolutely frightening" and "the biggest challenge" to press freedoms today).

Those of us who believe there is a valid fear that WikiLeaks will be prosecuted by the US for its journalism have long advocated - along with the Ecuadorians - that Assange immediately go to Stockholm to face the accusations against him in exchange for the Swedish government agreeing that his presence there will not be used as a pretext to turn him over to the US. In response, numerous WikiLeaks critics, led by New Statesman legal blogger David Allen Green, insisted that it would be impossible for the Swedish government to agree to this proposal because, as he put it last year, "any final word on an extradition would (quite properly) be with an independent Swedish court, and not the government giving the purported 'guarantee'." As I've detailed previously on several occasions, that claim is absolutely false: even if Swedish courts rule that extradition is legally proper, the discretion lies with the Swedish government (as it does with most governments in extradition cases) to decide if extradition should occur. The final decison-maker on extradition is the Swedish government.

This week, Stefan Lindskog, a justice of the Supreme Court of Sweden, the highest court in that country, definitively settled that disagreement when he wrote an excellent column on the facts of the Assange case and explained (emphasis added):

If a person whose extradition is requested opposes extradition, it falls to the Supreme Court to examine whether extradition can be legally granted under the conditions laid down by law. The Supreme Court then delivers its opinion to the government for use in its examination of the case.

If the Supreme Court holds that there is any legal impediment to extradition, the government is not allowed to approve the request. The government can, however, refuse extradition even if the Supreme Court has not declared against it.

The evidence that this is true has long been clear. Like most governments, the Swedish government retains the power to refuse extradition even when its courts find that it would b