- Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (l) and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.
By NBC News and wire reports
August 16, 2012 Updated at 8:52 a.m. ET
LONDON — Ecuador granted asylum to Julian Assange on Thursday, expressing fury at a threat by Britain to seize the WikiLeaks founder at its London embassy.
Ricardo Patino, the Ecuadorean foreign minister, told a news conference in Quito it was upholding international law by granting asylum to Assange.
Britain earlier said it would it would revoke the diplomatic status of Quito’s embassy in west London — where the Australian has been holed up since June 19 — in order to seize Assange irrespective of the asylum decision.
Ecuadorean Foreign Affairs Minister Ricardo Patino addresses the media during a news conference to announce the government’s decision over Julian Assange’s case at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Quito August 16, 2012. Ecuador has granted political asylum to WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said on Thursday, a day after the British government threatened to storm the Ecuadorean embassy in London to arrest the former hacker. REUTERS/Erick Ilaquize
Patino expressed fury at Britain’s earlier threat to arrest Assange, saying it was a direct threat to the Ecuador’s sovereignty.
Assange, who incensed American government officials by publishing thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables and Iraq and Afghan war dispatches in 2010, sought refuge in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden over assault and rape claims, which he denies. He exhausted all appeals after a 17-month legal battle.
Ecuador’s Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patino, accused the UK of making an “open threat” to enter its embassy to arrest Mr Assange, an Australian national.
Sweden immediately summoned Ecuador’s ambassador in Stockholm, according to foreign ministry spokesman Anders Jorle. He said: “We want to tell them that it’s [unacceptable] that Ecuador is trying to stop the Swedish judicial process.”
In his statement, Patino said there was a risk Assange would be taken to the United States where he “would not have a fair trial, he could be judged by special or military courts, and it is not unlikely to believe he would be treated in a cruel and degrading way, that he would receive a life sentence or death penalty, with which his human rights would not be respected.
A version of Patino’s statement was posted online by Ecuador’s foreign ministry (in Spanish).
Assange’s recognition as a political refugee by Ecuador’s leftist government was a big symbolic victory for the ex-hacker, but it did little to answer the question: `How will he ever leave the embassy?’
“We’re at something of an impasse,” extradition lawyer Rebecca Niblock said shortly after the news broke. “The U.K. government will arrest Julian Assange as soon as he sets foot outside the embassy but it’s very hard as well to see the Ecuadorean government changing their position.”
She said there was practically no precedent for the situation, invoking the case of a Hungarian cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, who camped out at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest from 1956 to 1971. “One can’t see Mr. Assange doing the same thing,” she told BBC television. “One side will have to back down eventually.”
Outside the embassy on Thursday, protesters chanting slogans in support of Assange tussled with police.
Protester supporting Assange is arrested outside Ecuadorean embassy in London Aug. 16, 2012.
“There was a serious escalation in the police presence, including a helicopter overhead,” said NBC News’ Keith Miller at the scene. “This has turned from a legal situation into a major physical standoff in central London. The next move will be interesting because the only way for Assange to leave the embassy is through the front door, where he would be immediately arrested.”
A Reuters reporter saw at least three protesters being dragged away by police as the crowd shouted: “You are trying to start a war with Ecuador.” About 20 officers were outside the embassy trying to push away the crowd of about 15 supporters.
“It is too early to say when or if Britain will revoke the Ecuadorian embassy’s diplomatic status,” a Foreign Office spokesman earlier told Reuters by telephone.
“Giving asylum doesn’t fundamentally change anything,” the spokesman said, adding that Britain had a legal duty to extradite Assange to Sweden.
After the announcement, a spokesman said the UK foreign ministry “disappointed” but would still carry out its “binding obligation” to extradite Assange to Sweden.
“Throughout this process we have drawn the Ecuadoreans’ attention to relevant provisions of our law,” the British Foreign Office wrote on its Twitter account early Thursday.
Ecuador: UK threatened to break WikiLeaks’ Assange out of embassy
“We are still committed to reaching a mutually acceptable solution,” it tweeted.
‘Colonial times are over’
Quito bristled at the threat.
“We want to be very clear, we’re not a British colony. The colonial times are over,” Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said in an angry statement after a meeting with President Rafael Correa.
“The move announced in the official British statement, if it happens, would be interpreted by Ecuador as an unfriendly, hostile and intolerable act, as well as an attack on our sovereignty, which would force us to respond in the strongest diplomatic way,” Patino told reporters.
London had warned Ecuador in writing earlier in the day that a 1987 British law permits it to revoke the 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.” Its Foreign Office said later in statement that it is Britain’s “obligation to extradite Mr. Assange.”
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Ecuador, whose government is part of a left-leaning bloc of nations in South America, called for meetings of regional foreign ministers and the hemispheric Organization of American States to rally support in its complaint against Britain.
British officials have vowed not to grant Assange safe passage out of their country. They say they will arrest him the moment he steps foot outside the embassy.
WikiLeaks’ Assange defiant over UK police request
But they had not previously suggested publicly that they might strip the embassy of its diplomatic inviolability.
The Associated Press found no record of that law ever being used to justify forcible entry into an embassy. Under the 1961 Vienna Convention, diplomatic posts are considered the territory of the foreign nation.
NBC News partner ITV News’s coverage of Assange: ‘Not going near a police station soon’
In a statement, WikiLeaks accused Britain of trying to bully Ecuador into denying Assange asylum.
“A threat of this nature is a hostile and extreme act, which is not proportionate to the circumstances, and an unprecedented assault on the rights of asylum seekers worldwide,” it said Wednesday.
NBC News’ staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
