Wednesday, August 15, 2012

HOT: Britain Threatens to Storm the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, says a decision on the asylum request of Julian Assange had been made and will be revealed on Thursday.

Reports now indicate that Ecuador has accused the UK of making a "threat" to enter its embassy in London to arrest Wikileaks' Julian Assange.

"Today we received from the United Kingdom an express threat, in writing, that they might storm our Embassy in London if we don't hand over Julian Assange," Patino said.

"Ecuador rejects in the most emphatic terms the explicit threat of the British official communication."

"If the measure announced in the British official communication is enacted, it will be interpreted by Ecuador as an unacceptable, unfriendly and hostile act and as an attempt against our sovereignty. It would force us to respond," he said.

UPDATE Here's Michael Rozeff on Great Britain's threat:
Britain threatened Ecuador concerning Assange. But the threat is illegal because it conflicts with a treaty that Great Britain signed. Here's the threat: "Under British law we can give them a weeks' notice before entering the premises and the embassy will no longer have diplomatic protection," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

But the United Kingdom signed the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations in 1963. It states in Article 31 that "The authorities of the receiving State shall not enter that part of the consular premises which is used exclusively for the purpose of the work of the consular post except with the consent of the head of the consular post or of his designee or of the head of the diplomatic mission of the sending State."

It's really a sad day for international cooperation and order when Great Britain stoops so low as to undermine (break) a convention that has been hundreds of years in the making in order to lay their hands on Assange and ship him off to Sweden.

6 comments:

  1. Just when you think the U.S. Government is the WORST...

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    1. Don't worry Mike, the US government is still the worst.

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  2. I have this fantasy that Assange is already out of there. In my dream they used the time when everyone was distracted with the Olympics to move Assange to Ecuador where he is now hunkered down in a dark bar in Quito.

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  3. The U.S. wants Assange real bad. Those rape charges are so transparently bogus that the governments involved either think the masses are total idiots (a good bet) or they just don't care what people think at all.

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    1. Yeah.
      Governments order police to (threaten to) storm embassies all the time just to get a 'rapist'.

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    2. Yeah, especially when the "rape victim" hosted a party for her "rapist" after being "raped." And when the "victim" is a radical feminist who once posted on her blog about using phony rape charges to take revenge on a cheating boyfriend.

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