Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been living in the Ecuadoran embassy to the United Kingdom in London for more than 5 years, believing that if he were taken into custody by the UK police, he would face extradition to the USA where he would be tried for publishing details of war crimes committed by the US military.
Assange has feuded sporadically with his Ecuadoran hosts over the past few years, and both parties have repeatedly expressed their desire that Assange could leave the embassy. The UN has recognized that the UK government has subjected Assange to unlawful detention by not allowing him to go free.
Assange fled to the Ecuadoran embassy to avoid an order to go to Sweden to be questioned in connection with sexual assault allegations. Both he and the government of Ecuador repeatedly offered to make him available for questioning in the embassy, but the Swedish prosecutors refused this offer and eventually ran out the statute of limitations for the crimes that Assange was accused of.
After granting citizenship to Assange, Ecuador asked the UK to extend diplomatic immunity to him. The UK refused, stranding Assange with an extra passport but no path to freedom.
Britain's Foreign Office said Thursday it had rejected Ecuador's request to grant diplomatic status to Assange, who was born in Australia.
"The granting of Ecuadorean nationality does not in any way change Julian Assange's legal status in the U.K.," a government spokesman said. "The Government of Ecuador knows that the way to resolve the situation is for Julian Assange to leave the embassy to face justice. Nobody should pretend that granting him Ecuadorean citizenship is a route to solving this longstanding issue."
Ecuador grants nationality to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange [CBS]
(Image: Snapperjack, CC-BY-SA)
Atomik Grain Spirit is a (largely) (radiation-free) moonshine vodka distilled from grains grown in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as part of an experiment to determine the transfer of radiation from soil to crops; so far, the University of Portsmouth researchers behind the project have only made one bottle, but they hope to go into production […]
James Daunt gave up a brief career in banking and opened a small, family-owned chain of London bookstores bearing the family name (the original store, in Marylebone High Street, is literally the most beautiful English-language bookstore I've ever set foot in); in 2011, he took over management of Waterstones, the UK's last, foundering bookstore chain, […]
An Lord Ashcroft Poll for Holyrood found that the largest group of Scots with a preference favour independence from the UK: 46% leave vs 43% remain; after removing undecided voters, the figures are 52%-48%.
The field of data analytics is growing as fast as the internet itself. Self-driving cars, airline pricing, and huge marketing campaigns are all driven by the insights that data scientists can distill out of vast sums of information. Even with the help of powerful software like Python, it’s a highly skilled position. But those skills […]
If you’re marketing on the web, your Google-fu needs to be strong – and up to date. Without a firm grasp on what drives traffic, you’ll never be able to take the wheel. That’s why even if you know where to put your keywords, a little extra effort goes a long way on any marketer’s […]
Want to keep the dentist away? A little tooth care at morning and night isn’t bad, but it won’t keep the stains from smoking or fried foods at bay for long. If you enjoy your food and want to avoid the consequences, an upgrade from that old analog toothbrush can make a huge difference. Among […]
