You might remember that it was in a Facebook post on November 29th, Sarah Palin wrote that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be “pursued with the same urgency as al-Qaida and Taliban leaders.” Now, Robert Stary, Julian Assange’s Melbourne-based lawyer, has threatened Sarah Palin (and others) saying he’ll prosecute her if she steps foot in Australia.
Stary tells National Public Radio he’ll pursue a “private prosecution” because her remark is essentially a call for Assange’s execution.
“Our main concern is really the possible extradition to the U.S. We’ve been troubled by the sort of rhetoric that has come out of various commentators and principally Republican politicians — Sarah Palin and the like — saying Mr. Assange should be executed, assassinated,” Stary says.
Stary thinks his client’s defense should be pretty straightforward, because he considers Assange to be a journalist, protected by U.S. First Amendment guarantees of free speech, however he claims that anyone who incites others to commit violence against his client, even outside Australia, Stary says, is violating Australian law, and can be held accountable for it.
“Certainly if Sarah Palin or any of those other politicians come to Australia, for whatever purpose, then we can initiate a private prosecution, and that’s what we intend to do,” Stary said.
This might be just as laughable as the claims that Palin was to blame for the Arizona shootings. Looks as though Stary wants to capitalize on all of the mainstream media’s misdirected blame toward Palin and blow it out of proportion that Palin is now inciting violence worldwide. I don’t understand how Palin’s statement that Assange should be “pursued” has been misconstrued into a call for Assange’s execution, but the bottom line is that Assange has bigger things to worry about and is really in no position to even think about prosecuting anyone else, especially for something as silly as this.
As published on Examiner.com