Foreign Office: Assange decision 'changes nothing'

Britain and Ecuador were embroiled in a diplomatic face-off Thursday after the Foreign Office said Quito's decision to grant asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, holed up in its embassy in London, "changes nothing".

Ecuador decided Thursday to grant political asylum to Assange, who sought refuge in the country's embassy in Britain to avert extradition to Sweden

Commenting on the "disappointing" decision, a spokeswoman said: "Under our law, with Mr Assange having exhausted all options of appeal, the British authorities are under a binding obligation to extradite him to Sweden. We shall carry out that obligation."

Earlier Thursday, official notes emerged which showed that Britain told Quito it would refuse Assange safe passage out of the country were his asylum bid granted. The note read: "We must be absolutely clear this means that should we receive a request for safe passage for Mr Assange, after granting asylum, this would be refused."

Sweden also issued a statement rejecting the asylum decision. "Our firm legal and constitutional system guarantees the rights of each and everyone. We firmly reject any accusations to the contrary," Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said on his Twitter account.

"The Ecuador government, loyal to its tradition to protect those who seek refuge with us at our diplomatic missions, has decided to grant diplomatic asylum to Mr Assange," Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said at a news conference.

Patino said his government reached its decision after Britain, Sweden and the United States refused to provide guarantees that Assange would not be extradited to the United States where he fears trial for the release of a trove of classified US documents.

"If he were extradited to the United States, Mr Assange would not receive a fair trial (and) could be judged by special tribunals or military courts," he said.

"It is not implausible that he would be subjected to cruel and degrading treatment and be condemned to life in prison or capital punishment."

Britain ordered Assange extradited to Sweden, where he was wanted for questioning about allegations of rape and sexual assault, after he had exhausted all legal appeals.

He then turned up at the Ecuadoran embassy in London on June 19, and requested political asylum.

Patino said Assange's imprisonment in Sweden "would open up a chain of events that would impede his avoiding extradition to a third country."

"As a result, Ecuador feels his arguments mean his fears are genuine, that he could be the victim of political persecution because of his decisive defense of the freedom of expression and the freedom of the press," he said.

Protesters cheered outside Ecuador's embassy in London as the decision was read on live television.

Around a dozen policemen, some wearing stab vests, were positioned outside the embassy in the exclusive Knightsbridge district of London near the Harrods department store. Three protesters have been arrested.

Earlier, Ecuador hit out at Britain for threatening to breach its embassy's diplomatic immunity and enter the building to arrest the 41-year-old Australian, while WikiLeaks said such action would be "a hostile and extreme act".

Patino said it would be "unacceptable" for British police to enter the embassy.

Patino said Wednesday that Ecuador had received "an express threat in writing" from Britain "that they could storm our embassy if Ecuador does not hand over Julian Assange."

"Ecuador rejects in the strongest terms the explicit threat made in Britain's official communication," Patino told reporters.

"The position taken by the government of Great Britain is unacceptable, both from the political and the legal point of view," he said, warning that entering the embassy without authorization "would be a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention" on diplomatic relations.

The Foreign Office has threatened to invoke the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act of 1987, which it says allows it to revoke the diplomatic immunity of an embassy on British soil.

The US has mulled action against Assange after WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of confidential US files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a vast cache of embarrassing US diplomatic cables.

Assange's supporters say he could even face the death penalty in the US, pointing to authorities' harsh treatment of US army private Bradley Manning, who is on trial for allegedly leaking secret military documents to WikiLeaks.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ecuador-decide-assange-asylum-thursday-minister-213502579.html

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