Assange - foreign office threaten to arrest him

[Empusa]

Article here

They are talking about revoking the Ecuadorian embassy's diplomatic immunity in order to enter the embassy.

Wonder if they will actually do so?

I had't heard of the 1987 Act before this.

I note one of its provisions says "The Secretary of State shall only give or withdraw consent or withdraw acceptance if he is satisfied that to do so is permissible under international law".

Have the reasons for withdrawal if consent, and any supporting legal advice, been published?

I cannot believe the UK government is threatening this!

Why didn't they just wait? I'm sure the Ecuadorians would have quietly suggested Assange leave, he can't stay in their embassy for ever.

Now that they have threatened Ecuador national pride means they will need to grant Assange asylum.

And if the UK ends up storming their embassy the political ramifications are huge, dubious legality aside...

It is a stupid naive political move which I wonder if they've done under pressure from the US.

Storming the soverign territory of Ecuador with only a wafer thin/dubious legal justification will have massive consequences. Can you imagine if a Chinese dissident claimed political asylum in a UK embassy and the Chinese said the same thing???? Why not? We ignored Ecuador's territory. How can we say it's unfair if China did it to us?

Also. Why did we not storm the Libyan embassy or ignore diplomatic immunity when that Libyan shot our policewoman a few decades ago but we're willing to do it for someone who has committed no crime in the UK?

I agree with Itsfine. Just wait. He will have to come out eventually. He can't stay inside forever. He's effectively imprisoned himself.

The more we do things like this, the more it does start to look like some US witch hunt.

Look at the trial of Kimdotcom who ran megauploads. Despite the fact he lives in New Zealand, the US are trying to extradite him having stormed his house with armed SWAT teams in a dawn raid, with illegal search warrants and illegally removing evidence from the country. The first judge resigned commenting "we have met the enemy and he is US." His alleged crime? Copyright infringement. Not murder...not drug dealing....copyright infringement.

"Why didn't they just wait? I'm sure the Ecuadorians would have quietly suggested Assange leave, he can't stay in their embassy for ever. "

Last I heard they were granting him asylum. But yes, he'll have to leave the embassy eventually, hopefully they'll get him then.

"Look at the trial of Kimdotcom who ran megauploads. [...] His alleged crime? Copyright infringement. Not murder...not drug dealing....copyright infringement."

I think sexual assault falls into a slightly more serious category.

We didn't do so after the murder of WPC Fletcher because that occurred in 1984 and the Act dates from 1987. Perhaps that murder was one of the reasons for bringing in this provision.

I think it would be sledgehammer to crack nut in this case, but the actual FCO statement says they were only giving reminders of both this Act, and also about the apparent impossibility of moving Assange out of UK; it wasn't a statement of intention to act in that way.

It will be interesting to see how events unfold today, especially allowing for the possibility that he has already been moved covertly out of the Embassy.

Thanks for pointing that out to me Edith. It's still a dangerous precedent to set.

Emp, yes Assange's alleged crimes are worse but in the megaupload case, the force used was vastly disproportionate.

Assange is a coward with no back bone and if he was innocent of all charges in Sweden he would go there and clear his name. What kind of a man is it that can only count Ecuador as the only county in the world that will accept him, the alleged sex pest.

Asylum granted.

I wonder what will happen next, as UK authorities have said they will not grant him safe passage.

Presumably the Noriega option is a no-no?

Well at least we all know Ecuador isn't a puppet state of the USA unlike us.

I have to say that I'm not sure if he's guilty or not of the charges in Sweden. But could he be deported to the US afterwards? Yes. Would he have got a fair trial? No.

From the BBC:

The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which both the UK and Ecuador have ratified, says that its protections do not apply to "any person with respect to whom there are serious reasons for considering that? he has committed a serious non-political crime outside the country of refuge prior to his admission to that country as a refugee".

The allegations faced by Mr Assange in Sweden are sexual assault and rape - serious non-political crime.

The 1987 act, creating the power to revoke the status of a diplomatic mission, was passed by Parliament in the wake of the Libyan embassy crisis three years before, when PC Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead with a bullet fired from inside the embassy. Ministers said they needed powers to revoke an embassy's status where the mission was not being used for a proper purpose connected to diplomacy.

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There was no storming of the Embassy. There was a reminder to Ecuador of the legal position.

Remember, the UK is legally obliged to extradite him to Sweden. The US doesn't come into this, although of course they may make a request to Sweden once Assange has faced the charges there.

IAGTBF and NG - well said. The Swedish were offer the option to come and qustion him here - they declined, why? If it so serious, why can't they make the journey? Don't see why its up to him 'to go to Sweden and clear his name'!

I think the 1987 Act is a good one (so there'll never be another Yvonne Fletcher murderer gets away with it situation) but it would not be appropriate to use it in this situation. I doubt the government will-there is an element of sabre-rattling, I suspect.

But Assange is stuck. The minute he leaves the embassy he WILL be arrested-Ecuador can't enforce or insist on their grant of asylum being recognised in the UK. So JA has to stay there for ever. Which is it's own punishment really. He could end up in there for longer than he would have spent in Sweden if convicted. Ha ha.

It's up to him to go and face charges in Sweden because that is where he has allegedly committed sexual assault and rape.

By the way, the Stockholm police have already questioned Assange when he was in Sweden, after which Swedish prosecutors decided that their case against Assange should be on charges of rape, sexual coercion and sexual molestation.

So if they questioned him and have reason to charge him , why haven't they? People on here seem to be assuming guilt, when the man has not even been charged. He is being accsed of a serious crime, so they should come here and question him if they have enough eveidence to warrant that.. Why should he be expected to be summoned abroad simply for questioning?

Ha ha Eldritch? The concern as I understand it is that he will spend little time in Sweden because he will be extradited from Sweden (not a bastion of civil liberties) to the US on a capital charge. Ecuadorian Embassy or death by lethal injection? - "Ha ha"

Does anyone have a feel for the merits of the Swedish allegations?

Yes he is such a woe is me look at me individual that he is no doubt loving the attention of basically being in self imposed house arrest when if we was, as he claims to be, innocent he could take a flight to Sweden, spend a few days there and all would be sorted within a short while. Obviously he knows what he did to the different woman on different occasions and if he left sufficient evidence to leave himself open to conviction.

A quick not guilty and return to obscurity is the last thing a self promoter like him would like.

Sorry - x posted with DoE and MrsGuy but interested to hear more on this point.

What would be the point of questioning him again here if, assuming they concluded they could charge him, they then couldn't extradite him anyway.

It depends on how Swedish law works. In France, victim and alleged perpetrator can confront each other in the presence of police - don't know if that happens in Sweden, if so, that wouldn't be possible. DNA collection may only be admissible if it is done in a police lab. Who knows?

I am not assuming he is guilty but the Swedish are acting in line with their law and with Interpol (who are involved)

I know I should know this, but why is Assange worried about being extradited to the US from Sweden, but not from Britain? Surely they both have extradition treaties with the US?

Have to have some sympathy with the Ecuadorian embassy here; Assange must be THE most annoying guest.

Sarah, Sweden will not extradite him unless assured that he will not face a capital charge-no ECHR signatory would. Those assurances are adhered to, otherwise there would be no future extraditions. So the death penalty is a red herring. Plus, the US could get him at least as easily from here as from Sweden, so why haven't they applied?

What would the capital charge be anyway? Espionage wouldn't fit very well, treason doesn't apply. When this all first blew up there were some interesting articles about how difficult legally this was for the US and the US attorney General did make a statement tacitly admitting that somewhere.

I don't for a minute expect JS to be blase about possible extradition to the US, but his case is overstated.

Originally they canceled the arrest warrant and dropped the rape investigation then the senior prosecutor lady, that some feel is a man hater, said that there were grounds for investigation and reissued the warrant for arrest. He has already been questioned but no charges have been brought. Why does he need to go to Sweden to be questioned? If they'd brought charges I would understand the extradition. Is it that he physically has to be in the country to be charged?

Mooncup - I don't know the answer but I believe that Sweden has never turned down a US extradition request (can anyone confirm)? The UK despite perceptions as a US puppet regularly does so.

Eldritch - could the US extradite on non-capital charges and then lay a capital charge once he is on US soil?

Understand what you say about the difficulties of making a capital charge stick though.