Assange finds ally against bully tactics

The Wikileaks founder is being sheltered by a nation that cracks down on journalists, but Ecuador is no stranger to facing down world powers, writes Dan Buckley

“WE are not a British colony,” thundered Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, on being told that British authorities planned to storm the country’s embassy in London if officials did not hand over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who fled there to avoid extradition to Sweden.

With more twists than a Jeffrey Archer novel, the Assange case has gained international attention since he enraged Washington in 2010, when WikiLeaks published secret US diplomatic cables.

The Australian sought refuge in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he sexually assaulted two women. Assange denies the allegations and claims they are a ruse to get him extradited from Sweden to the US, where he could face whistleblower charges punishable by death.

This is no drama-queen whinge as, under US law, anyone who is seen to aid and abet terrorism can face the electric chair or gas chamber. According to US authorities, the WikiLeaks publications violated national security, making it a terrorist organisation.

On Nov 29, 2010, Republican Party member Peter King, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder asking that Assange be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, and that he should be declared a terrorist.

The same day, King also wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, requesting that she designate Wikileaks as a foreign terrorist organisation. If convicted of membership of a terrorist organisation, Assange could be put to death, so it is no wonder that he has been taking refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since Jun 19.

That scenario makes Patiño’s reposte all the more potent. As far as colonialism is concerned, he knows his history. Ecuador — so named for its geographic proximity to the equator — was never a British colony. But its imperial master for almost 300 years was Spain and, for around 100 years before that, the Inca Empire. Since then, various bouts of military rule — punctuated by periods of fragile democracy — have given the South American nation, and its current rulers, a taste for machismo that no amount of big-nation bullying can diminish.

Britain’s tough talk also takes what has become an international soap opera to new heights, and it may raise difficult questions for London about the sanctity of its own embassies. The Ecuadorean government has said any attempt by Britain to remove the diplomatic status of its embassy would be a “hostile and intolerable act”.

As protesters gathered yesterday outside the embassy building in London, a Foreign Office spokesman declared: “Under British law, we can give them a week’s notice before entering the premises and the embassy will no longer have diplomatic protection. Giving asylum doesn’t fundamentally change anything.

“We have a legal duty to extradite Mr Assange. There is a law that says we have to extradite him to Sweden. We are going to have to fulfil that law.”

However, doing so would violate another law — or, at least, a cherished principle of international relations: The inviolability of an embassy.

“I think the Foreign Office have slightly overreached themselves here,” Tony Brenton, Britain’s former ambassador to Moscow, told the BBC. “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.”

This is not the first time Ecuador has seen off a diplomatic challenge from a powerful country. In April last year, its government expelled US ambassador Heather Hodges after (you guessed it) Wikileaks released a cable in which she suggested President Rafael Correa was aware of corruption allegations against a senior police officer he had promoted. That, above all else, goes to explain why Assange chose Ecuador for his flight to freedom.

Nevertheless, it may seem odd that Assange, who shot to fame as a fighter for media freedom, chose a country where freedom of expression is repressed. President Correa has presided over a crackdown on journalists there. In February, the publisher of the Ecuadorean newspaper El Universo took refuge in the Panamanian embassy in the capital, Quito, and was granted asylum, after the newspaper was ordered to pay $40m (€32.4m) and he was sentenced to three years in prison for defaming Correa.

Assange’s presence in the embassy and the decision to grant him asylum raises the prospect of a showdown: If Assange attempts to leave the embassy he will face arrest and probable imprisonment in Britain for violating his bail conditions.

In any event, he faces an Olympic marathon or two to make it to South America. It won’t be easy, as the embassy is located in a red-brick building just behind Harrods department store in Knightsbridge and, getting from there, undetected, on to a flight from Heathrow Airport, would be virtually impossible.

There has been speculation he could be brought to the airport in a diplomatic car, be smuggled out in a diplomatic bag, or even be appointed an Ecuadorean diplomat to give him immunity. But lawyers and diplomats see those scenarios as unworkable.

Assange is very astute, though, as he has shown with his choice of legal representative. He has hired the high-profile Spanish jurist, Baltasar Garzon, as a legal adviser.

Over the past 30 years, Garzon has made a name for himself by taking on controversial cases, winning notoriety — and enemies — as well as admiration. He is best known for ordering the arrest of former Chilean military leader Augusto Pinochet in 1998, and he recently stirred controversy by attempting to order an investigation into the killing of tens of thousands of civilians during the dictatorship of Franco.

In a sign they might lean on Assange’s side, Patiño said he welcomed Garzon’s involvement in the case, as his government had “a very good relationship” with the campaigning lawyer. Garzon is part of an international panel set up to oversee a judicial overhaul in Ecuador.

In the end, though, it may have been Assange’s mother, and not his lawyer, who did the trick. Christine Assange flew to Ecuador from Australia last week to plead her son’s case.

“He is freedom-loving, he cannot run, he cannot go outside to see the sky. Outside the UK, police wait like dogs to take him... he cannot exercise the way he normally could and he’s under extreme psychological stress,” Christine Assange said in a tearful plea to the authorities in Quito.

Like a Jeffrey Archer heroine, she won the day.