Thursday 4 February 2016

Panel Beating

I hope that those who are lining up against Julian Assange are exactly as proud as they should be.

They are siding with old New Labour against Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Tariq Ali, George Galloway, and the ghost of Tony Benn.

As of today, they are siding with old New Labour against the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, too.

It is time for Parliament to tidy up the shambolic laws on sexual offences.

It must then be made impossible for anyone to be extradited to face charges that fell short of those standards, or for such convictions to have any legal standing in this country.

A man ought no more to be extradited to face a rape charge as defined in Sweden, than a woman (or anyone else) ought to be extradited to face any charge in Saudi Arabia.

Like several others on the more-or-less Corbynite Left at and around the University of Durham, I am proud to call the staunch Tory, Louis Richardson, my friend.

The Crown Prosecution Service has recently been crowing about thousands more prosecutions for rape with no prospect of conviction, because the verdict is not the point.

It now has an open policy of always pursuing these cases to the bitter end, entirely regardless of any likely outcome.

In other words, it is openly engaged, on an organised basis and on an industrial scale, in the Common Law intentional tort of malicious prosecution. At public expense, and indeed formally in the name of the Queen.

No comments:

Post a Comment