[But for
all its attractions — denied him, in any case, by his confinement to the
embassy — it is hardly the sanctuary that Mr. Assange would have chosen. In his
vision, he has been the matchless pioneer of a movement set to transcend
boundaries of nationality, custom and law, using WikiLeaks to tear down walls
of secrecy and foster a new era of global transparency and justice.]
By John F. Burns
 |
Dan
Kitwood/Getty Images
A
police officer outside the Ecuadorean Embassy in
Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, is staying in the
embassy of
|
But now, after Ecuador’s decision on
Thursday to grant him asylum and Britain’s vow to arrest him the moment he
steps out of the sanctuary he has found in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the
Australian-born Mr. Assange seems at last to have secured a fixed address.
Considering the diplomatic impasse and the vehemence of opinion on both sides,
it is one that could be his for months, or even years, if neither Ecuador nor Britain relents.
The address — 3 Hans Crescent — lies in the heart of London ’s exclusive Knightsbridge district. Barely 50 yards from
Mr. Assange’s safehouse is the men’s clothing section of Harrods department
store, one of Europe ’s most expensive places to shop.
But for all its attractions — denied him, in any case, by
his confinement to the embassy — it is hardly the sanctuary that Mr. Assange
would have chosen. In his vision, he has been the matchless pioneer of a
movement set to transcend boundaries of nationality, custom and law, using
WikiLeaks to tear down walls of secrecy and foster a new era of global
transparency and justice.
The word he has used more than any other is “free.” But the
situation in which he finds himself now is akin to a genteel prison, and one
without limit of sentence. His quarters come with an air mattress laid on an
office floor, and a window to gaze in the direction of London ’s distant airports, and the possibility they represent of
a flight to Ecuador , one of the few countries left where he would be beyond
the reach of Interpol.
For now, that flight might as well be a million miles away,
given the 20 or 30 Scotland Yard officers keeping a 24-hour vigil outside the
embassy. Friends who have visited Mr. Assange say he has a computer and a
broadband connection, at least one cellphone, and regular deliveries of takeout
food, carefully inspected by the police.
Conceivably, Prime Minister David Cameron’s government
could yet follow through on its warning to Ecuador before the asylum decision that it might invoke an obscure
British law that would empower it to suspend the embassy’s immunity and send
the police in to arrest Mr. Assange.
The government has been frustrated by his decision to trump
a 20-month legal battle against extradition to Sweden to face questioning on
allegations that he sexually abused two young women during a visit to Stockholm
in 2010 — allegations he strenuously denies — by fleeing to the embassy. It was
a battle he took all the way to to Britain ’s Supreme Court and lost, after running up millions of
dollars in mostly unpaid legal fees.
His decision to seek asylum in Ecuador , shortly before he was to have been escorted by the
authorities aboard a flight to Sweden , entailed defaulting on a $240,000 bail bond posted by a
group of wealthy supporters. He coupled this with a denunciation of the British
legal system, which he cast as a corrupted tool of his enemies, the United States principal among them.
His case, articulated in a flow of unsigned WikiLeaks
statements, has been that the “political persecution” he has suffered in the
British courts has been aimed at getting him to Sweden so that he can be
extradited onward to face serious charges in the United States for WikiLeaks’s
role in securing and publishing tens of thousands of secret United States
military and diplomatic cables in 2010.
The Obama administration has refused to say what plan it
has, if any, to seek Mr. Assange’s extradition to the United States , where an American soldier, Pfc. Bradley Manning, faces a
court-martial, and a potential life sentence, for what prosecutors have said
was his role in transferring the documents to WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks has shrunk substantially in the months that Mr.
Assange has been fighting his legal battle, with many of its best computer
programmers and Assange loyalists quitting in protest against what they have
described as his highhanded manner, his elusiveness about what he has done with
millions in donations, and the organization’s shift from one that declared
itself to be a nonpartisan dropbox for whistle-blowers to an agency of the
political left.
Still, Mr. Assange has his backers. “No one is going to terrorize
us!” President Rafael Correa of Ecuador wrote via Twitter just before the asylum decision was
announced. Outside the embassy in London , supporters chanted Mr. Assange’s name and waved placards
hailing him as a hero of the world’s oppressed.
Inside, Mr. Assange told embassy officials, according to
their account, that the ruling was “a significant victory for myself.” But he
added, perhaps presciently, that “things will probably get more stressful now.”
That appeared to be a reference to the possibility of a
raid on the embassy, though Britain ’s foreign minister, William Hague, seemed to rule that out
for the time being by telling reporters that Britain intended to pursue a “negotiated solution.”
The Cameron government appeared to have heeded anxious
warnings from some of the country’s most eminent retired diplomats. Sir Anthony
Brenton, a former ambassador to Russia, told the BBC that a British breach of
diplomatic immunity, even if sanctioned in domestic law, would “make the world
a very different place,” with diplomats everywhere vulnerable to punitive
action by host governments.
In Ecuador , lawmakers convened a session on Thursday to discuss the
standoff. There were more consultations in Washington among diplomats at the Organization of American States.
Still, there appeared to be little room for maneuver, with
Mr. Hague saying “no one should be in any doubt” of Britain ’s determination to fulfill its obligations to Sweden under Europe ’s extradition law.
For his part, Ricardo Patiño, the Ecuadorean foreign
minister, said in Quito that Ecuador would insist that Britain give Mr. Assange safe passage out of the embassy to an
Ecuador-bound flight.
There remained an important wild card — Mr. Assange himself
— that suggested to some monitoring the situation that a sudden change in the
plot could not be ruled out.
Idiosyncratic to the core, Mr. Assange, some backers say,
is sure to have been busy conjuring up yet another twist — “tunneling out of
the embassy, giving himself up, who knows?” as one old friend who has remained
in touch with him expressed it.
Reporting was contributed by William Neuman
from Caracas, Venezuela; Maggy Ayala from Quito, Ecuador; Ravi Somaiya and Alan
Cowell from London; and Christina Anderson from Stockholm.
This article has
been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction:
August 16, 2012
A previous
version of this article misspelled the given name of a contributor. She is
Christina Anderson, not Christine.
Dan
Kitwood/Getty Images
A
police officer outside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London . Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, is staying in the
embassy of Ecuador , which has granted him asylum.