Things are heating up in London. Per Reuters:
Britain on Wednesday warned Ecuador that it could raid its London embassy if Quito does not hand over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been taking refuge at the mission since mid-June.
In Quito, the Ecuadorean government said that any such action would be considered a violation of its sovereignty a “hostile and intolerable act.”
“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 that decision has not yet been taken. We are not going to do this overnight. We want to stress that we want a diplomatically agreeable solution.”
In Quito, the government bristled at the threat and said it would announce its decision on Assange’s asylum request on Thursday at 7 a.m. (1200 GMT).
“We want to be very clear, we’re not a British colony. The colonial times are over,” Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said in an angry statement after a meeting with President Rafael Correa.
True, Ecuador is not a British colony. In fact it has very little to do with Britain or with Julian Assange at all, a fact that makes its decision to get involved and grant asylum all the more odd. (Especially given that asylum is not available to those accused of non-political crimes; and Assange is wanted for questioning in connection with allegations of sex offenses.)
Ecuador might do well to take note that this is not just another day at the Foreign Office: The last time that the British entered another country’s embassy — Iran’s — was in 1980, and they did it with flash bangs, abseil ropes, and automatic weapons.
As the British government has argued,
“The UK has a legal obligation to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden to face questioning over allegations of sexual offences and we remain determined to fulfill this obligation,” a Foreign Office spokesman said earlier.
Ecuador will test this commitment at its peril.