On 11/08/2021 04:31, jim bell wrote:
To: Stephan Simanowit Amnesty International press@amnesty.org
From: Jim Bell
I am an American with great interest in Julian Assange's case, and probably engaged in discussions with him about 1995 (although at the time he was under a pseudonyn) on the Cypherpunks email list.
However, I happen to have learned Federal law, although I have never been a lawyer or paralegal: I spent probably 15,000 hours in various law libraries learning many areas of American Federal law.
Over the last few years, I realized that Assange has some issues(defenses) that I am not aware were being discussed in the news media. However, I haven't read the actual legal filings from the UK case, so I didn't learn if they have been used. However, I did send some of this material to Barrister Jennifer Robinson, who is Assange's barrister. I didn't get an answer, although I didn't expect to receive one.
A very brief description, gone into much greater detail below.
1. In virtually every issue against Assange, there appears to be no "extraterritoriality jurisdiction" present in American Federal law. This means that American courts have ruled that in order to apply American law to crimes committed in areas physically outside America,
However if the effect of a crime committed by person who is outside america is against eg a computer or other thing or person inside america, then in american law that crime was committed within the bounds of the unitedstates, notwithstanding that the criminal was not in america. So issues of extraterritoriality do not apply. Applies also to some US forces when they are abroad, their bases and assets are sometimes regarded as being inside the unitedstates. As an aside, for the purposes of the UK extradition hearing, whether the US courts have jurisdiction is a question of UK law, not US law. It is just possible (though unlikely) that assange might be correctly extradited under UK law then a US court might decide not to continue on US law extraterritoriality grounds. Peter Fairbrother