Ecuador grants political asylum to Julian Assange

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times

August 16, 2012, 5:01 p.m.

LONDON — Britain doesn’t want him. Ecuador does. Therein lies a very large rub.

A tense diplomatic faceoff grew uglier Thursday after Ecuador announced it was granting political asylum to Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing WikiLeakswebsite who has been holed up for the last two months in its embassy in an upscale London neighborhood.

Officials in Quito say Assange faces political persecution for releasing confidential documents embarrassing to the U.S. and other governments, and demanded that he be given safe passage out of Britain. The British government says it is duty-bound to ship Assange to Sweden instead, where he’s wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual assault.

PHOTOS: WikiLeaks founder granted asylum in Ecuador

The impasse leaves the anti-secrecy campaigner a virtual prisoner in the office where he has been cocooned since he jumped bail on June 19, beyond the reach of Scotland Yard.

That, in turn, has sparked lively discussions over the next moves in a bit of absurdist diplomatic theater starring an Australian in Britain asking Ecuador for asylum to avoid extradition to Sweden because he fears the United States.

How might he be smuggled out of the embassy? In an oversized diplomatic bag? In the ambassador’s limo?

Both seem unlikely. A quick and simple solution, if ever there was one, appears to be out of the question.

“It looks like we’re set for a long standoff,” said Dapo Akande, an expert on international law atOxford University. “It’s difficult to see that one side is going to back down in the short term.”

Assange, 41, denies the allegations at the root of the matter: that he assaulted two women during separate encounters in Stockholm in August 2010. He acknowledges having sex with them but disputes their accusations that coercion or force was involved.

He insists that the allegations are part of a plot to remove him from Britain and ultimately to ship him to the U.S., where he says authorities are eager to put him on trial — and some politicians have said he should be executed — for orchestrating the leak of thousands of classified State Departmentand Pentagon documents.

Assange sought refuge inside Ecuador’s embassy shortly after Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that his extradition to Sweden could proceed. Police say his bail conditions obliged him to abide by a nightly curfew at a designated address, and that he would face arrest the moment he stepped outside the embassy, located in the Knightsbridge neighborhood. Under international convention, embassies are considered sovereign territory of the countries they represent.

The choice of Ecuador as protector wasn’t random: Assange had earlier struck up a rapport with President Rafael Correa during an interview he conducted with the Ecuadorean leader for a Kremlin-backed Russian television channel.

But critics noted the irony of Assange appealing for help to a man accused of cracking down on journalists in his own country.

Simon Pachano, a political scientist at Flacso graduate school and think tank in Quito, said offering Assange asylum allowed Correa to show he was protecting a person regarded by some as a icon of free expression, “which would permit the Ecuadorean government to counter the poor image that has grown internationally with the persecution of domestic news media.”

Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, reacted furiously Wednesday to a letter from British officials that he said was a threat to raid the embassy to arrest Assange. Ecuador is not “a British colony,” Patino said.

On Thursday, Patino said Ecuador accepted Assange’s argument that he was in danger of being shipped off to the U.S. and that, in essence, neither Britain nor Sweden could be trusted to give him due process.

“We believe his fears are legitimate,” Patino told reporters.

Assange hailed the Ecuadorean government for having the courage to grant him asylum.

Sweden summoned the Ecuadorean ambassador to denounce the decision. William Hague, the British foreign secretary, rejected the aspersions against his country.

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-assange-asylum-20120817,0,1077463.story