厄瓜多尔为阿桑奇提供政治庇护

厄瓜多尔周四宣布同意维基解密创始人阿桑奇的请求，为其提供政治庇护。此前一天，英国曾威胁称要强行进入厄瓜多尔驻英国大使馆拘捕阿桑奇。厄瓜多尔外交部长称，为阿桑奇提供政治庇护的决定是受国际法保护的，有关此举会破坏厄瓜多尔与英国关系的臆测毫无根据。他同时指出，一旦阿桑奇被引渡到第三国，就有可能最终被引渡到美国并受到不公平审判。英国方面则表示不会让阿桑奇安然无恙地离开英国，并称有可能会剥夺厄瓜多尔使馆的外交属性，然后直接逮捕阿桑奇。自英国最高法院同意将阿桑奇引渡至瑞典接受调查以来，阿桑奇一直在厄瓜多尔驻英国使馆寻求庇护。维基解密网站称阿桑奇或将于本周日在厄瓜多尔驻英国使馆门口发布一份现场声明，至于他是否会冒着被逮捕的风险出现在使馆门口，还是只在窗口露面或者发布一个视频链接，目前尚无从得知。维基解密的推特页面上，阿桑奇将厄瓜多尔为其提供政治庇护这一决定称为“历史性的胜利”，并表示“为我提供保护，不让我受审的不是英国，也不是我的祖国澳大利亚，而是一个勇敢的、独立的拉丁美洲国家。”

Ecuador granted political asylum to WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange on Thursday, a day after it said Britain had threatened to raid the Ecuadorean embassy in London to arrest the former hacker.

Britain has said it is determined to extradite him to Sweden, where he is accused of rape and sexual assault. Assange fears he will ultimately be sent to the United States which is furious that his WikiLeaks website has leaked hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic and military cables.

Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his country feared for the safety of the Australian, who had lodged an asylum request with President Rafael Correa, a self-declared enemy of "corrupt" media and U.S. "imperialism".

Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said that London would not allow Assange safe passage out of the country.

Patino told a news conference in Quito that Assange's extradition to a third country without proper guarantees was probable, and that legal evidence showed he would not get a fair trial if eventually transferred to the United States.

"This is a sovereign decision protected by international law. It makes no sense to surmise that this implies a breaking of relations (with Britain)," he said.

Even after Thursday's decision Assange's fate is still far from clear: Britain has said it could strip the Ecuadorean embassy of its diplomatic status, which would expose him to immediate arrest by the British authorities.

"The United Kingdom does not recognize the principle of diplomatic asylum," Hague said. "There is no ... threat here to storm the embassy."

Hague said the impasse could go on for a considerable time.

Assange has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in central London for eight weeks since he lost a legal battle to avoid extradition to Sweden.

WikiLeaks said Assange would give a live statement in front of the Ecuadorian embassy on Sunday, although it was unclear whether he would risk arrest by venturing out of the building or would simply appear at a window or by a video-link.

In a statement posted earlier by WikiLeaks on its Twitter page, Assange said Ecuador's decision was "a historic victory".

"It was not Britain or my home country, Australia, that stood up to protect me from persecution, but a courageous, independent Latin American nation."

EMBASSY PROTEST

Britain has said it could use a little-known piece of legislation from 1987, introduced in the wake of the shooting of a British police officer outside the Libyan embassy in London, to remove the Ecuador embassy's diplomatic status.

The Ecuadorean government has bristled at the warning: its foreign minister said Britain was threatening Ecuador with a "hostile and intolerable act", comparing the action to Iran's storming of Britain's Tehran embassy in 2011.

"I don't think they will dare to infringe international law ... Diplomatic headquarters cannot be broken into, we can't imagine that happening," Patino told the state-run news website El Ciudadano after the announcement.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington did not intend to get involved in whether Assange should receive asylum in Ecuador.

"This is an issue between the Ecuadoreans, the Brits, the Swedes," she said. Asked whether Assange faced persecution in the United States, she said: "With regard to the charge that the U.S. was intent on persecuting him, I reject that completely."

Outside the Ecuadorean embassy, supporters relayed the announcement about his asylum request over a loudspeaker to cheers and clapping from protesters.

It was unclear how long Assange could stay in the small embassy - housed on the ground floor of an apartment block - which is under 24-hour surveillance by British police.

His mother, Christine Assange, told Reuters her son was "geared up for the fight". She said: "He knows that he's got justice and right on his side. He's done nothing wrong, nobody in the world has charged him."

Britain's threat to withdraw diplomatic status from the Ecuadorean embassy also drew criticism from one of its own former diplomats.

"If we live in a world where governments can arbitrarily revoke immunity and go into embassies, then the life of our diplomats and their ability to conduct normal business in places like Moscow where I was and North Korea becomes close to impossible," Britain's former ambassador to Moscow, Tony Brenton, told the BBC.