States requests Mr Assange's extradition from Sweden, the request would need to be considered by both the Swedish and United Kingdom Governments, and that any decision to surrender Mr Assange to the United States could be appealed in the courts of both countries as well as the European Court of Human rights. The response is a complete refusal to make any representations on Mr. Assange's behalf. States, including Australia, are always free to make representations on the behalf of their citizens. In other documented cases Australia has made such representations. In U.S. death penalty cases, European states often ask for diplomatic guarantees from the United States that the death penalty be exchanged for life imprisonment. That Bradley Manning has been charged with a capital offence which may be extended to Mr. Assange would not, in practice, prevent his extradition from Europe as the U.S. could be expected to offer such a guarantee. Similarly even if the U.S. afforded Sweden or the U.K. such a guarantee, the repeated calls for Mr. Assange's assassination by senior U.S. figures would mean that he would have to spend many years in solitary confinement in order to reduce the risk of coming to harm within the U.S. prison system. Mr. Assange was placed in solitary confinement, even in the U.K., inorder to reduce such risks. It is correct to say that under some, but not all, circumstances, the United Kingdom is meant to tell Sweden whether it will accept the onward transfer of a previously