Julian Assange will never be allowed free passage out of Britain, the British government said on Thursday night, raising the prospect of the fugitive WikiLeaks founder's effective imprisonment inside the Ecuadorean embassy in Knightsbridge for months or even years to come.
Ecuador threw down the gauntlet to the UK, Sweden and the United States on Thursday by granting political asylum to Assange, who has been holed up in its cramped embassy on the ground-floor of 3 Hans Crescent, London, for two months, avoiding extradition to Sweden to face questioning on allegations of rape.
Following a dramatic day which saw protests, arrests and an increasingly ugly diplomatic fall-out between the UK and Ecuador, the South American country's foreign minister said it was granting asylum toAssange, 41, because of “serious indications” that the US could threaten the Australian's “security, integrity and even his life”.
Officials in Washington are furious that Assange published thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables online, and some Republican politicians have called for the death penalty if he ever faces espionage charges in America.
Britain insists that nothing has changed now that he has been granted asylum. He can only leave the embassy and travel to the Ecuadorean capital Quito, if Britain agrees to allow him safe passage to an airport.
Quito has warned that any attempt to enter the embassy and seize Assange would constitute an assault on Ecuador's sovereignty and would be tantamount to an “invasion”.
On Thursday night, in an announcement that sparked rumours that Assange might be willing to court arrest, WikiLeaks said its founder would give a statement at 2pm on Sunday “outside the Ecuadorean embassy”.
The brief statement on Twitter was surprising because it has generally been assumed that diplomatic immunity ends at the front door of the embassy. The mansion block which holds the Ecuadorean embassy is also home to the Colombian embassy and a host of luxury flats, therefore police could arrest Assange as soon as he steps into the lobby.
A crisis in relations with much of South America is brewing as a result of the Foreign Office's earlier apparent threat to snatch the Wikileaks founder from the Ecuadorean embassy. Foreign Office officials must now try to solve the conundrum of going about arresting Assange without sparking an international crisis.
The deepening acrimony is poisoning British relations with other nations in South America. Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela - all hostile to the UK - already back Ecuador, and the UK government anxiously awaits the reaction of the continent's superpower, Brazil. Whitehall sources admitted that an apparent threat - delivered by a diplomat in Quito - to raid the London embassy had inflamed the situation.
The Foreign Secretary William Hague, asked on Thursday night whether the impasse could last for months or years, said: “It could. It is, above all, a difficulty for Ecuador and for Mr Assange but this is a strange position for an embassy to be in. Diplomatic immunity exists to allow embassies and diplomats to exercise proper diplomatic functions. The harbouring of alleged criminals, or frustrating the due legal process in a country, is not a permitted function.”
The founder of the world's most famous online whistleblowing platform fled to the embassy 59 days ago after the last of his legal appeals to stop his extradition to Sweden on rape allegations was exhausted.
Assange has insisted that such drastic action was necessary not to avoid a potential prosecution in Sweden, but because he feared a further extradition to the US. Sweden remains convinced that Assange is simply trying to avoid questioning over charges that he raped two women in 2010, an allegation he denies. - The Independent