THE DIPLOMATIC impasse between Britain and Ecuador over the status of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is likely to continue for “some considerable time”, British foreign secretary William Hague warned yesterday.
He was speaking after the Ecuadorean government announced it was granting political asylum to Mr Assange, who is wanted for questioning in Sweden over alleged sexual assault.
The Australian has been fighting attempts to extradite him from Britain to Sweden since 2010 when two Swedish women accused him of sexual assault. The allegations came amid the fallout from the release by WikiLeaks of a huge trove of US diplomatic cables.
Mr Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since June 19th, fears the Swedish case may lead to his extradition and trial in the US.
Britain has said it could use a little-known piece of legislation from 1987, introduced in the wake of the shooting of a British police officer outside the Libyan embassy in London, to withdraw the Ecuador embassy’s diplomatic status, a move that would allow Mr Assange’s immediate arrest by the British authorities.
“The United Kingdom does not recognise the principle of diplomatic asylum,” Mr Hague said. “There is no . . . threat here to storm the embassy. We are talking about an Act of Parliament in this country which stresses that it must be used in full conformity with international law.”
Ecuador’s foreign minister Ricardo Patiño said his government made the decision to grant Mr Assange asylum after the UK and Sweden failed to provide it with guarantees that he would not be extradited to a third country after facing trial in Sweden.
Mr Patiño said granting political asylum was its “legal duty”, based on international law and his government’s belief that Mr Assange may face the death penalty should he eventually be extradited to the US. Ecuador has proposed that Sweden try Mr Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, an offer rejected by Stockholm.
In a statement yesterday, Mr Assange praised Ecuador’s “courage” and described its decision as “a historic victory”.
Mr Patiño warned any violation of his country’s embassy by British authorities would amount to “an unfriendly, hostile and intolerable act and furthermore as an attack on our sovereignty”.
Britain’s threat to strip the Ecuadorean embassy’s diplomatic status was criticised by one of its own former diplomats.
“If we live in a world where governments can arbitrarily revoke immunity and go into embassies then the life of our diplomats and their ability to conduct normal business in places like Moscow where I was and North Korea becomes close to impossible,” Britain’s former ambassador to Moscow, Tony Brenton, told the BBC.
The Swedish foreign ministry said it had summoned Ecuador’s ambassador to complain about the decision to make Mr Assange a political refugee. In a message posted on Twitter, Sweden’s foreign minister Carl Bildt said: “Our firm legal and constitutional system guarantees the rights of each and every one. We firmly reject any accusations to the contrary.”
Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa also took to Twitter to respond to Britain’s threat to remove diplomatic status, writing: “No one is going to frighten us.” Claes Borgström, the lawyer for the two women who made the allegations against Mr Assange, criticised Ecuador’s move and said his clients deserved justice.
“It’s an abuse of the asylum instrument, the purpose of which is to protect people from persecution and torture if sent back to one’s country of origin,” Mr Borgström said. “It’s not about that here. He doesn’t risk being handed over to the United States for torture or the death penalty. He should be brought to justice in Sweden. This is completely absurd.”