UK on the verge of committing an act of war...

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...by storming the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

If anyone has been watching the Wikileaks Facebook page or Twitter feed in the last hour, you know what this is about. The UK government is seeking to take Julian Assange into custody for "sex crimes" committed in Sweden.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politi ... 249pe.html

https://twitter.com/wikileaks

Last edited by PM on 15 Aug 2012, 10:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Disgusting. They wouldn't be threatening to storm an embassy for just some nobody that was accused of those crimes.

Ecuador granted him asylum. This blackmail made it impossible for it to do otherwise I think particularly after Ecuador publicised it.

So he's now an Ecuadorian citizen? Blimey, he'll have a decent book to write in his old age.

This will certainly have repercussions. I'll be keeping close attention to the development of this situation.

As irrational as it may be. That may make him a martyr of free Internet and further enlarge the chasm between politicians and people.

asylum and citizenship has nothing to do with eachother,

i cuold as a dane seek asylum in any embassy from any country, that is if they are on sovereign soil, something fewer and fewer embassies are

No embassy--not one single one of them--is on sovereign soil. Every embassy is the territory of the receiving State, in this case the United Kingdom. Embassies and the official residences of heads of mission are granted immunity, but that is an action by legislation of the receiving State, which is legally free to repeal that legislation, or suspend its application at any time.

Now, there are certainly consequences for that. But let's remember who violated the Vienna Convention first:

The execution of Sweden's request for extradition is an internal affair of the United Kingdom. The matter was adjudicated before the courts of England and Wales, and Mr. Assange attorned himself to the jurisdiction of those courts. Only when he lost did he seek to evade jurisdiction.

Nowhere in the Convention nor in customary international law is it provided that a diplomatic mission may be used as a means to harbour an individual who is seeking to evade the authorities of the receiving State. Ecuador is interposing itself between the Courts of England and Wales and an individual who is under the jurisdiction of those courts. It is an intolerable abuse of diplomatic immunity that is in now way saved by Mr. Assange's other actions.

There is certainly nothing new about embassies taking in fugitives or refugees from the host country. Britain itself has done so, on numerous occasions.

Name two.

John William tried to take refuge in the British Embassy in 1726, but he was arrested by the Spanish authorities, within the Embassy. I can find no other record of a person seeking refuge in a British Embassy in the last 286 years.

You must have got that off this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pe ... ic_mission

It is only a list of notable individuals, not a comprehensive list.

It is quite easy to name a second: Vasil Mitrokhin, for example.

My first sources were Denza's Diplomatic Law and some monographs from my days in Canada's foreign service. Indeed, until I did a google search, I didn't even know about William and I assumed that Britain had never harboured an individual against the authorities of a receiving State.

There are important differences between Mistrokhin and Assange.

First, Mistrokhin was not harboured at the British Embassy in Riga. He had a house and, were the Latvians so inclined, they could have exercised jurisdiction over him at any time.

Second, no one--including the Russians--was seeking to arrest, detain or otherwise impede Mistrokhin.

So again, name two. Any other attempt by a British mission to keep an individual out of the hands of local authorities, recognized as lawful authorities by the United Kingdom, who were seeking that individual.

Further research has turned up a possibility that will bear further scrutiny.

In 1984, six individuals sought refuge in the British Consulate in Durban. I have only found one journal article that covers the case, and it is not clear whether the British authorities simply stood passively by until the six left (having been refused asylum by any other country), or whether they took any active steps to shelter them.

It's a possible case of a British attempt to confer extraterritorial asylum, but I suspect that the British officials were passive.

This is why you are my freaking hero.
Dumb folks try to win arguments.
clever ones try to find the truth.

It is only a matter of time before the US just kills Assange outright. All the better for them if he's in Ecuador, they won't have to worry about offending any nations they are really friendly with, with action on their soil. Neither the US or UK have a history of great respect towards other nations' sovereignty.

Killing the frontman will not cripple an organization, but it is likely to cause international riots and Anonymous will likely go insane all over the US cyber infrastructure if that happens.