There are 21 convictions of CIA operatives in Italy. They were convicted for capturing Abu Omar and delivering him to Egypt in 2003.
This happened at the height of the US/Middle East conflict (before major combat started in Iraq). Abu Omar was a prominent member of Jamaat Islamiya, a peer organization of Egyption Islamic Jihad, a group publicly affiliated with "al Qaeda" (probably more for PR purposes, though) and a group led in part by Omar Abdel-Rahman, the guy who coordinated the first bombing of the WTC.
Julian Assange is not a leader of a violent Islamist movement. We are not at war with Julian Assange. No foreign policy objective is accomplished by kidnapping him off the streets of Sweden or Iceland or wherever he is now.
I don't want to sound (too much) like I'm advocating for the capture of alleged terrorists off western city streets. That's not my point. My point is this: do I believe that the CIA might try to kidnap or kill someone they believe to be a key figure in a bona fide "terrorist" (ie: organized, violent, competently armed, transnational militant Islamist) organization? Absolutely.
Does that mean kidnapping is S.O.P. for the CIA any time anybody antagonizes the US? Ralph Nader better watch his ass, then; third-party left-wing candidates pose a greater danger to the current administration.
Julian Assange is not a leader of a violent Islamist movement
Interestingly enough, it seems that neither is Abu Omar. After rendering him to Egypt where the secret police tortured him for a few years (electric shocks to the genitals, rape, beatings, the usual), an Egyptian court finally freed him declaring that there was no evidence against him. So, to recap: the CIA kidnapped a guy and delivered him to the Egyptian secret police for torture. But even in an insanely corrupt dictatorship like Egypt, where prosecutors have, um, very wide discretion let us say, they couldn't get any charges to stick. Including association with a terrorist organization, which is a serious crime under Egyptian law. So as far as we know, there's no reason to believe this guy has ever done anything wrong.
I mean, if a police state like Egypt can't manage to find (or concoct) something, anything with which to convict him, how dangerous can he be? And if he's not actually dangerous, then sending 20-odd CIA agents to kidnap him and render him for torture seems kind of crazy....My point is: the CIA sometimes acts in ways that make very little sense on the outside.
Would it make sense for them to kill Assange? No, it would be insane. But this isn't an organization that has historically demonstrated an overabundance of sanity. I doubt they're trying to kill him, but arguments premised on CIA sanity seem...rather weak.
It was not insane to kidnap Abu Omar. From what I can tell, it was coldly rational and warranted in a cost/benefit sense, based on the evidence available to the government at the time.
Should the CIA have kidnapped him? No. We can see one strong argument against extrajudicial detention and exfiltration right here: it puts us on a slippery slope, where we have to take pains to argue about why we might kidnap a "terrorist" ("ah, but what's a terrorist! it's whatever you say it is, righ!"... sigh), but wouldn't kidnap a free-speech activist.
You can present no evidence that the "CIA" or any other agency in the US government is plotting the kidnap, murder, or even the propaganda-based discrediting of Julian Assange. All you can do is posit that something like that might happen, and sit back waiting for everyone else on the message board to try to prove the negative. Isn't that fun?
It was not insane to kidnap Abu Omar. From what I can tell, it was coldly rational and warranted in a cost/benefit sense, based on the evidence available to the government at the time.
I do not see how it could be rational. Based on years of torture, we apparently have learned nothing that could justify a conviction in even a kangaroo court.
Look, I know that many people believe that everyone who any government anywhere ever declares to be a terrorist is automatically guilty. But really now: he hasn't been convicted of anything. Even though he was tortured for years. Even though was under the control of a police state that has a long reputation of convicting innocent people the state doesn't care for. And despite all that: no convictions. Which means he never should have been kidnapped and tortured. When you kidnap and torture innocent people, you are doing something wrong.
All you can do is posit that something like that might happen, and sit back waiting for everyone else on the message board to try to prove the negative. Isn't that fun?
Again, you seem very confused. I'm not trying to disprove your larger assertion. I'm calling into question subsidiary arguments that you've made. Those subsidiary arguments are not proving a negative, so you need not weep any more on that score. Now, since you've made many many subsidiary arguments, I don't think that calling a handful of them into question seriously damages your larger claim, but if you believe otherwise....
Please stop trying to get me to justify the kidnapping of Abu Omar. I don't think it was the right thing to do, and the evidence suggests that it wasn't an effective course of action.
I'm doing my best to foresee all the various ways this discussion can turn into an HN referendum on the "war on terror", and I'm obviously failing, because I'm reading things about genital electrocution and discussing the 2003 kidnapping of a Jamaat Islamiya recruiter instead of what has actually happened with Julian Assange, someone who's newsworthy exclusively for having posted files to the Internet.
Earlier you said: "Because if the CIA (or whoever in the US government) is trying to use another country's legal system to frame someone that would be considered the conducting operations on foreign soil. That's very much against International Law without getting the permission of the Swedish State Department."
The US doesn't care much about foreign law; the kidnapping in Italy is just one example. Carrying out covert actions on foreign soil is in the CIA's mission statement: "Conducting covert action at the direction of the President to preempt threats or achieve US policy objectives."
Do I think the CIA had anything to do with this? I have no idea. But I don't think the CIA can be ruled out based on the US's respect for foreign governments and international law.
