Assange - not Britain's problem?

So Julian Assange has exchanged the relative comforts of his own room at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the more spartan shared accommodation offered to residents at Her Majesty's pleasure. I suspect the prospect of having company in his cell will not necessarily be an improvement on the 7 years of his self enforced solitary confinement – but if things pan out as widely expected it's something he will simply have to get used to, either in the UK, in Sweden or (the stuff of his nightmares) the good ole US of A.

He is clearly a strange, even disturbed, individual. If the truth is being told by his former hosts, he is a deeply unpleasant man. Ignoring the rules imposed by the Ecuadorian government on his stay, such as using a non-declared mobile phone, hacking into the Embassy security system and files, installing (allegedly for his own protection) security cameras in his room are all somewhat rude things to do but given his evident paranoia perhaps understandable. Not cleaning your bathroom or showering for weeks on end is not simply lazy, it's filthy. Extreme goat breath and dental problems because you haven't cleaned your teeth for God knows how long is also questionable. Best not to consider the state the contents of his laundry basket (on the allegedly rare occasions it was emptied) must have been in. And as for the most shocking allegation – smearing shit on the apartment walls in some kind of deluded “dirty protest” - well, that is beyond the pale, not at all the sort of thing any normal self-respecting house guest would do, and it's quite understandable that he has been kicked out.

He has certainly gone down-hill during the years of his incarceration. When he walked into the place back in 2012 he was quite a smart, well dressed and – er – clean individual. White shirt, tie, suit, smart haircut – the debonair businessman rather than spy, enemy of the state or alleged sex offender. The appearance changed gradually over the years, and the smart suit and ties morphed into tee shirts, jeans and rather tacky mock-leather jackets. The hair grew whiter and more unkempt. By the time he was dragged, kicking and screaming (still seemingly craving the attention of the assembled press and tv crews) down the steps yesterday, he looked like a tramp. Bushy and untrimmed white beard. Dirty looking white hair slicked straight back and with a laughably small and stupid samurai bun thing at the back. Scruffy and probably dirty clothes. I've seen smarter guys dossing under cardboard boxes.

Dear, oh dear.

I remember when he first came to prominence with his WikiLeaks web site (the one Mr.Trump praised something like 164 times on his Presidential Campaign trail, as it dished the dirt on Hillary, but yesterday denied all knowledge of (“it's not my thing....”). I read a report then in I think Newsweek about his activities, and was broadly supportive. This was in 2010 and all the fuss about the whistleblower Edward Snowden was all over the news, and of course WikiLeaks (as well as the Guardian and other outlets who had used the the purloined information) was heavily mentioned. It seemed to me then, as it does now, that nobody should be above the law, whether individual citizen or government agency. Shining a spotlight, no matter how unwelcome, on the FBI, CIA, GCHQ or whoever was transgressing and ignoring the law to questionable ends seemed a good thing and still does. This is particularly so when the activities are sanctioned by a government. The fact that huge organisations like Google, Facebook and so on were doing very similar things – essentially data harvesting and selling without the owner's permission (and how exactly you define the precise “ownership” of online data is a legal question that continues to exercise legal minds still – and probably will for years to come) – did not enter the argument. I don't even remember it being mentioned.

Then came the Bradley (Chelsea) Manning Leak – the dumping of hundreds of thousands of pieces of information – text messages, e-mails, reports, and – most damaging of all – audio and video files that showed incontrovertibly that US forces were carrying out, with dreadful regularity and without a shred of regret or shame, atrocities that were clearly war crimes. And the US government, probably with the connivance of its allies (including the UK) was covering it all up. I was working in Trinidad at the time with a team of Americans, and they were apoplectic. In their view, without actually seeing any of the stuff – on principal they were not prepared to look at the evidence that was there for all to see – both Manning and Assange were traitors, spies, devils incarnate..... You name an unfavourable epithet and it was applied. Pretty much all of them were openly calling for the firing squad (except one who suggested solitary confinement in Leavenworth for the rest of his life). I had a look at WikiLeaks myself, and the information there was shocking – but none of my colleagues were interested. I thought he was actually doing a public service, although his methods were questionable.

Subsequent interviews shed some light on his activities. He was a hacker, pure and simple, and had been for years. His insistence that he was no more than a “publisher” - people passed the information to him, he and his team vetted it and published it when satisfied of its veracity – seemed a little contrived but he didn't seem to be doing anything different to investigative journalists the world over, just using more modern methods to achieve the same results. Grub Street moving into the 21^st century – and nothing at all wrong with that.

I've dipped into the site from time to time since then, but truth be told it's turgid, unless you are in the intelligence community or an investigative journalist yourself – which I am not. A lot of the content is not in English, for a start – WikiLeaks has a global reach and seeks its content accordingly. There is also just so much stuff there – picking your way through to find the odd nugget (and without doubt there are many) is a full-time job and needs a specific mentality that I simply do not possess. It continues to provide its service still, with or without Assange in day to day control.

But it was not the WikiLeaks spy stuff that sent him scurrying up the steps of the Ecuadorian Embassy seven years ago. It was something more simple, more basic than that. He was a fugitive from the Swedish Justice system, and fearing that the UK authorities were going to arrest him and put him on the next available flight to Stockholm, he did his runner.

He had been accused by a pair of Swedish women of some sexual shenanigans in Gothenburg. One woman pointed the finger at him for sexual assault – basically a bit of unwanted fumbling in a nightclub somewhere: offensive and completely unacceptable in this day and age, and deserving of the Swedish police force's attention. The other charge was much more serious – the woman claimed to have been raped in a hotel room by Assange. It was mainly for this allegation that the Swedish authorities requested he travel to Stockholm for an interview – no charges had been brought against him for either charge (and still haven't) - , “helping police with their enquiries”, as the press would normally report it.

Assange basically hit the panic button. Fearing arrest and deportation to the States, where it was made clear a warrant for his arrest on espionage charges relating to the Manning Dump was being prepared, he denied everything and holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he was granted political asylum.

Which is where we are today. He is now in British police custody and has 9 weeks to prepare his defence, because the Americans, clearly pre-warned by either Britain or Ecuador (or both) has issued an extradition request on a quite minor charge of unauthorised accessing of a government computer. More charges, more serious, are expected to follow, once they've got their grubby little mitts on him. The Swedish authorities have also stated they are considering applying for extradition to them: although the assault claim has expired under a 5 year statute of limitations, while he was holed up in his Embassy retreat, the more serious rape allegation remains in force, and its statute of limitation expires next year. To be clear: at this point, no charge has ever been brought against him for this.

I am not outraged by any of these goings on – except for his appalling behaviour in the Embassy for all these years. I can't get upset about his assistance in the Manning Dump because I seriously believe what he did was intended to be in the public interest. The American troops' behaviour that he highlighted was disgusting and unforgivable – and if anyone should be on trial it should perhaps be any identifiable individual who gave the order to take out innocent women and kids or neutral journalists doing their job and then laughed as the order was carried out, or the guys who pulled the trigger and cheered. They are the murderers, not the guys who revealed their crimes to the world at large.

I should probably be more upset about the sex-pest allegations, because the offences – sexual assault and rape – are clearly unacceptable, just wrong on so many levels. But right now they are simply that: allegations. No arrest has been made, as far as is public knowledge no evidence or proof has come to light, and Assange is wanted in Sweden simply for interview and if then needed, charge. Legally (if you accept the usual innocent until proven guilty position) the bloke hasn't done anything wrong. That is for the Swedish police and justice system to prove. If they do so, they must throw the book at him and bang him up for a long time. Then, I will get outraged.

But now? Frankly, I'm ambivalent. I have a definite problem with extraditing him to the States, because there is no way he will ever get a fair trial there – not under the current regime, anyway. It would also set a nasty precedence that would allow the Americans to demand the head of any investigative journalist who does his job properly and exposes something that the administration of the time disagrees with and wants covered up. Cover up is never acceptable, no matter which country or administration is involved.

So send him to Sweden then? That seems to me the best answer: he's essentially been on the run from their justice system rather than our own, the alleged rape took place in Sweden and hence should be punished in Sweden – if proven. Assange's fear remains that Sweden will merely pass him over to America, and this might happen quickly (if charges are not brought for this case) or at the end of his prison sentence (should it be proven and he serve jail-time). It's a valid fear, I think. However he ends up in America, he will likely face and quite probably (guilty or not) serve years in the pen, maximum security.

But he has clearly brought this entire situation onto himself, and seems to be a very unpleasant and manipulative individual, with a gift (and need) for self-publicity. A bit of Marmite character – he has many high profile supporters (Lady Gaga and Pamela Anderson were regular visitors to the Embassy, and of course Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott have already made their pitches in Parliament and on Twitter to stop a US extradition. They should be more focused on Brexit!) but most people either dislike him or like me don't really care too much.

At the end of the day, it should not be Britain's problem – we have far more important things to take care of than the future of Julian Assange.