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Assange Seeks Political Asylum in Ecuador
(Ecuador Times) – Ecuador’s Foreign office is currently analyzing the request of political asylum made by Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks. The Ecuadorian foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño said Ecuador is weighing the request.
Assange is at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, UK. The move occurred less than a week after Britain’s Supreme Court rejected Assange’s attempt to block his extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning after two women accused him of sexual misconduct. He denies such allegations.
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Meanwhile Patiño informed that in the request of Assange, he “regretted the defective statement of abandonment, received by the authorities of my country, Australia.” The foreign minister added that Assange had written to the Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa saying he was being persecuted and seeking asylum.
Assange Asylum and South American Diplomatic Intrigue
(Common Dreams) – Though Assange will surely heave a huge sigh of relief if he receives asylum in Quito, I suspect that Ecuador was not his first choice. In December, 2010 I reported that the WikiLeaks founder was interested in moving to Brazil and even basing some of his organization’s operations in the South American nation. Brazil, Assange remarked, was “sufficiently large so as to resist U.S. pressure; the country has the requisite economic and military means to do so.
Officially, Brazil forms part of South America’s “Pink Tide” to the left, but secretly the political elite is divided with some senior figures in the security apparatus opposing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and negotiating with the U.S. behind closed doors.
Perhaps, Assange might have reasoned that Ecuador was a safer bet than either Brazil or Argentina. A closer ally of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Correa has been a populist critic of “neo-liberal” style economics and even booted the U.S. out of its strategically located Manta military base on the Ecuadoran coast. But perhaps most importantly, the WikiLeaks documents relating to Ecuador have served to embarrass Correa’s political foes as well as the U.S. Embassy in Quito. Indeed, according to my lengthy piece, the Americans regarded Ecuador as their own private fiefdom.
The secret US indictment below the fold …
The secret US indictment, Assainge awaiting the “Manning treatment” [Part 2]
Pressure is reportedly being applied to Bradley Manning, the corporal charged with leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to Wikileaks, to implicate Assange in crimes. (Manning himself has been detained since May 2010, including in conditions described as cruel and inhuman by the UN special expert on Torture, and faces life imprisonment).
Finally, Wikileaks has published leaks from the security company Stratfor, which indicate that Assange has already been secretly indicted in the US.
Assange has reason to fear his likely treatment if he is sent to the US. For a start, US prison conditions are often extremely severe, as Manning has found out. Secondly, high profile US politicians and commentators have intemperately labelled Assange a terrorist, and have even called for him to be taken out extrajudicially. Such wild west language may be mere bluster to impress Fox News devotees, but that is cold comfort for its subject.
And the situation wasn’t helped by the baseless labelling of Assange as a criminal by his own government, in the form of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and then Attorney General Robert McClelland (who later had to sheepishly concede that Assange hadn’t committed any crime in Australia).
Assange’s bid for political asylum in Ecuador could be successful
Ecuadorean journalist pleads asylum case in Miami
MIAMI (Reuters) Feb 8, 2012 – An Ecuadorean newspaper columnist sentenced to jail and ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages for criticizing President Rafael Correa pleaded his case for asylum with U.S. immigration officials, claiming he is a victim of political persecution.
Emilio Palacio, 58, fled to Miami in August after the government won a criminal libel suit against him and three owners at El Universo newspaper over an op-ed criticizing the president’s handling of a 2010 police revolt.
A court sentenced Palacio and the owners to three years in prison and ordered payment of $40 million in damages. The case has become a symbol of deteriorating press freedom in Ecuador where Correa faces mounting criticism that he uses courts to muzzle the media, say media rights groups.
UNHCR in Geneva mistakenly granted asylum status to the fugitive banker wanted in Quito
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
