Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, remains at the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge, England after British and Ecuadorian officials met and were unable to come to consensus on how to handle the journalist's case.
Assange ended up in the embassy after Sweden requested his extradition following charges of rape from two Swedish women. When the British government agreed to comply with the request, the founder of Wikileaks took solace in the Ecuadorian government's building.
Some analysts see the Swedish rape accusation as a political ploy that would lead to Assange's eventual extradition to the United States, where he would stand trial for publishing over 200,000 sensitive documents related to the American military's action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange allegedly got that information from Army private Bradley Manning, who has been standing trial for the past two weeks for leaking classified national defense information and aiding the enemy.
Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has offered Assange asylum in his country, an ironic twist for an administration that has been historically weak on free speech. On June 14th, the Ecuadorian passed a law regulating the media of the country through state control over radio and through weakened protections for journalists and publishers in libel cases, the Economist reports. In 2011, the president sued a columnist and three publishers of El Universo, an Ecuadorian newspaper, to the tune of $40 million.
Meanwhile, the Ecuadorian-Great Britain controversy is the latest in a history of contentiousness between Great Britain and South America. In 1982, the British fought a remote war with Argentina over conflicting sovereign claims for the Falkland Islands, a largely inhospitable, sparsely-populated group of islands in the South Atlantic, just off the coast of Argentina.
According to Assange, Britain is cherry-picking the laws of extradition because it values its relationship to Sweden more than its relationship with Ecuador.
"It is legally bound, under higher laws which it has acceded to, as part of its United Nations obligations, to accept the transfer of political refugees to the country which granted asylum," Assange told reporters, from inside the embassy.
"That the UK government chooses to ignore its obligations under international law and instead favour an interpretation of EU law is, of course, political."