Ecuador granted asylum to Julian Assange today, an act that will further escalate the conflict between Britain and Ecuador. As I discussed on BBC last night, there are some common legal misunderstandings about the status of an embassy, but as a practical matter Assange should be beyond the reach of the English. While the government has threatened to strip the embassy of diplomatic status and grad Assange, it is in my view an empty threat. However, Assange is not likely to see Ecuador any time soon since he can be arrested trying to leave the country.
Assange has embarrassed the United States with disclosures on Wikileaks that revealed, among other things that the government has lied to the public on critical matters. This includes disclosures of how the Obama Administration threatened Spain in order to protect Bush officials from being investigated for war crimes and torture.
It is widely believed that the United States government is pressuring both the government of England and Sweden on arresting Assange to allow it to extradite him. There is a rumored sealed indictment in the United States, which may prosecute Assange for espionage — a highly troubling prosecution for journalists and whistleblowers.
The British threat to raid the embassy is not legally unfounded. There is a common misunderstanding about embassies which are not legally “the soil of the foreign government.” An embassy in London sits on English soil and that country has jurisdiction over it. However, siting on that land is a building occupied with people with diplomatic immunity. As such, it is considered inviolate.
The British government is threatening to use a 1987 British law it says permits the revocation of diplomatic status of a building if the foreign power occupying it “ceases to use land for the purposes of its mission or exclusively for the purposes of a consular post.” The use of the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act however would trigger an international outcry and beg for acts of retaliations.
The the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations requires diplomats to comply with the laws of the host country and international law does not expressly endorse diplomatic asylum in such cases. That 1961 convention suggests that Ecuador is legally obligated to turn over Assange.
However, countries routinely are faced with such requests — most of which are turned away. However, the United States recently faced this very same dilemma in Beijing when a blind activist fled to our own embassy. Likewise, the U.S. faced this problem when Cardinal Mindszenty took refuge in our embassy in Budapest following the Hungarian uprising in 1956.
Ecuador may take a different view due to the agreement following the 1949 controversy over Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, leader of the Peruvian APRA movement, who took refuge in the Colombian embassy in Lima. The International Court of Justice ruled against the claim of diplomatic asylum. This led to countries in Latin America adopting of convention supporting such claims, but England is not part of that agreement.
Technically, Ecuador could conceivable get Assange as far as the airport if he rides in an embassy car with a diplomat. However, he has to step out of that car at some point and will face arrest.
It is a classic standoff. The extent to which Britain has pursued the case and issued the threatening letter to Ecuador probably reflects the degree of pressure coming from the Obama Administration. Officials have made it clear that they want Assange’s head on a pike and the best way to do that is to get him to Sweden on the sexual assault charges. Ecuador has offered to let Swedish prosecutors interview Assange at the embassy, but that country has refused.
I would be astonished if England uses its law to strip the embassy of its status. However, I would not be surprised to learn that Obama officials are pushing for precisely that step. Many of Assange’s supporters are likely to point out that we would have to wait for the next Wikileaks dump to learn the truth on that one.
Source: CNN
I am seeing stories that the British police have indeed gone into the Embassy….to take Assange. I sure as hell HOPE he had already left.
ex spy Andrea Davison is also seeking asylum in the Equadorian embassy in London. She has enough dirt of the Conservative Government to bring them down just like she and her friends did with the Thatcher/Major Gvt Is that why the Brits want to storm the embassy
PS. A fine film on FDR, quoted him as saying before his first swearing in, that if he did not succeed, he feared the nation would not survive whole. Such was his perception of the Great Depression, allegedly.
“When you destroy the prevailing mythology, you change people’s minds and spur them to action. Non-belief in the system leads to its collapse.”
When did that ever happen in America? Would that it would, but I doubt that it will happen.
this is the latest from The Australian: Also don’t forget Bradley Manning. People are protesting on his behalf today. His lawyer has the e-mails to prove that he was tortured on orders from the top.
“Assange to appeal if Britain blocks exit
From: AAP
August 17, 2012 3:27AM
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange will appeal to the International Court of Justice if Britain blocks his exit to Ecuador, renowned Spanish rights lawyer Baltasar Garzon says.
Garzon, who is helping Assange’s defence, told Spanish newspaper El Pais that Britain had a legal obligation to allow his client to leave the country once Ecuador granted him diplomatic asylum.
“What the United Kingdom must do is apply the diplomatic obligations of the Refugee Convention and let him leave, giving him safe conduct,” the former judge said.
“Otherwise, we will go to the International Court of Justice.”
Garzon, best known for trying to extradite Chile’s Augusto Pinochet from London to Madrid on human rights charges in 1998, criticised Britain’s threat to arrest Assange at Ecuador’s London embassy, where he has taken refuge.
Garzon said this was a threat of “invasion”.
The most influential people in Sport
Britain is obliged to abide by the Refugee Convention and to respect the
“risk being run by a person who is a victim of political persecution”, he said, according to the paper’s online edition.
Garzon was speaking from the Dominican Republic, where he was to attend the swearing-in of incoming president Danilo Medina, El Pais said…”
Storm the Ecuadorian embassy before Assange starts shooting you and me!
@ Tony, putting aside the question of whether your suggestions should work from a legal standpoint, do you really believe they would work from a practical standpoint?
@Otteray, I don’t see why anyone would assassinate Assange when it would be much simpler and much less criticism/backlash to just physically take hold of him and send him back to Sweden if he tried to leave the embassy.
Elizabeth Juanita Campbell
Very recently a blind Chinese man was granted the right to “go to school in the United States” (REALLY ASYLUM) and China did not arrest this man as he used the Chinese freeway to leave: Why would Britain (country of decorum and status, breeding and education, manners and civility, pomp and circumstance…historic Magna Carta….why would so fine and unsavage a country arrest a man (Assange) as he uses the freeway in an attempt to be free)?
Class, listen up: Which country is FREE: U.S.A., China, England, North Korea?
(a) All of the above
(b) one of the above
(c) none of the above
(d) Venezuela
🙂 🙂 🙂
It’s as likely as not that the US is rather happy with the way things are right now. Their mission is to intimidate whistle blowers and journalists, not to create martyrs.
By the time this is over, the gentleman may need an American lawyer who is not afraid to confront authority. Perhaps someone who is framiliar with this website.
“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell
And as you obliquely point out, HenMan, revolution is an inherently dangerous business.
“And as you obliquely point out, HenMan, revolution is an inherently dangerous business.”
Assange’s work is indeed revolutionary in a new way that is effective and that is precisely why they need to get him. Assange has piloted a new, effective, non-violent form of revolution and that is why the powers-that-be feel they must stop him. More of us need to heed his lead and utilize the information technology revolution to change the world peacefully. Change is not a matter of killing weaponry, it is convincing the overwhelming majority of us humans that we are being abused. When you destroy the prevailing mythology, you change people’s minds and spur them to action. Non-belief in the system leads to its collapse. See the USSR for an example, unfortunately Reagan and G.H.W. Bush empowered the autocrats and undercut Gorbachev.
A dangerous business, telling the truth.
As a practical matter, it is unlikely that Assange will leave the embassy anytime soon. The suggestions above are may be technically accurate, but they would cause sufficient embarrassment to England to make it unlikely they would be allowed, legal or not. Unfortunately, this does not work in Assange’s favor as his continued presence in the embassy will mean continued pressure on England by the US to extradite him by way of the Swedish farce. The longer he stays there, the harder it will be to get him out of the country under the protection of Ecuador.
On the other hand, one has to wonder just what the US will do with him if and when they get him. Bradley Manning is already sure to become a martyr once he is sent to jail by a
kangarooObama court, Assange will be a publicity nightmare even if, nay particularly if, the proceedings are held in secret.“and the offense, while labeled a form of “rape,” is more like a misdemeanor, it is not equivalent to forcible rape. Somebody correct me if they know different.” Tony C.
——————————
it is forcible rape…it is not physically forcibal rape….it is a misdemeanor for the obvious reason. It id also known as head-phucking and is indulged in as a hobby by Orcs, Trolls, Reivers, miscreants and some Insurance Companies.
Tony, if they are willing to violate all kinds of codes of conduct regarding the embassy, they are perfectly capable of claiming a plane that disappears over a 12,000 foot deep ocean had an accident. Of course, the wreckage would never be found, and planes do have accidents from time to time.
Governments count on the fact that people have short attention spans. A few ‘sternly worded letters’ would be exchanged, and diplomatic ties would be broken off for a while, and then things would go back to normal; i.e., FUBAR, soon enough.
Britain has said they will not honour an asylum claim. (They certainly honour them where war criminals are concerned.) I think this ruling of fiat will alarm many nations. I hope the US and UK have miscalculated that other nations will ignore how the US and UK use the “law” as a weapon.
Glenn Greenwald pointed out that Assange will agree to go to Sweden if they promise not to extradite him to the US. Sweden will not make that promise.
No doubt we will start to hear of al Qaeda bases in Ecuador very soon.
Tony C,
I seem to recall some European adventures where diplomats were purposely assisinated……. Redundant, I am sure… But i seem to recall some ship getting blasted…..torpedoed…..
Collateral damage functions well as warnings.
See NW sector drone killings in Pakistan. At least the State Department says it does as motivation for the misdeeds.
@Otteray: I think there might be some difficulty in claiming an error over a highly publicized flight with Ecuadorian diplomats on board. It would pretty much evaporate any plausible deniability IMO. Assassinating Assange would be one thing, killing the pilot and an ambassador along with him would be something else entirely.
I am about the last person to be a conspiracy theorist, but once an airplane is in the air, it is a highly vulnerable target, especially if it does not have fighter escort. I seem to recall Iraq Air Flight 655 was shot down on a scheduled route that was shot down by the USS Stark with a guided missile. 290 people died. The Airbus A300B2-203 was “mistaken” for an Iranian fighter plane. Sure it was.
I once met the guy who blew up a plane with more than sixty people on board just to get one person. That happened in the 1960s, IIRC.