Ecuador: Wikileaks' Assange seeking asylum

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves the Supreme Court in London, in this Feb. 1, 2012 file photo. / AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth

Updated 3:46 PM ET

(AP) QUITO, Ecuador - Ecuador's foreign minister said Tuesday that WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has taken refuge in the South American nation's embassy in London and is seeking political asylum.

Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said Ecuador is weighing the request.

The move comes less than a week after Britain's Supreme Court rejected Assange's bid to reopen his attempts to block extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning after two women accused him of sexual misconduct during a visit to the country in mid-2010. He denies the allegations.

Assange extradition closer after U.K. ruling

His legal struggle to stay in Britain has dragged on for the better part of two years, clouding his website's work exposing the world's secrets.

Patino told a news conference that Assange had written to leftist President Rafael Correa saying he was being persecuted and seeking asylum.

He said that Assange, who is Australian, had argued that "the authorities in his country will not defend his minimum guarantees in front of any government or ignore the obligation to protect a politically persecuted citizen."

He said it was impossible for him to return to his homeland because it would not protect him from being extradited to "a foreign country that applies the death penalty for the crime of espionage and sedition."

The reference is to the United States, as Patino says the letter spells out.

Assange, 40, claims the U.S. has secretly indicted him for divulging American secrets and will act on the indictment if Sweden succeeds in extraditing him from Britain.

In the letter, he accused Swedish officials of "openly attacking me" and investigating him for political crimes, according to Patino.

The foreign minister said his country would consider the asylum request "taking into account the respect for the norms and principles of international law as well as Ecuador's policy of protecting human rights."

In November 2010 Ecuador's deputy foreign minister said the country was offering residency to Assange. However, Correa told reporters the following day that neither he nor Patino had approved the offer and that it would need to be studied.

Assange shot to international prominence in 2010 with the release of hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. documents including diplomatic cables and a hard-to-watch video that showed U.S. forces gunning down a crowd of Iraqi civilians and journalists whom they had mistaken for insurgents.

Australian authorities have cooperated with the United States in investigating WikiLeaks' conduct. The Australians have concluded that Assange has broken no Australian law.

Last month, Australian Prime Minister Julie Gillard said her country could not protect Assange, a former computer hacker, from other countries' justice systems.

Her foreign minister, Bob Carr, said Washington had said nothing to indicate an indictment was planned there.

[venusvegasvada]

Another loser about to cash in his chips.

[silvereagle2718]

Interesting. I am reminded of the Egyptian uprising. All but one of the Americans charged chose to leave. The one chose to stay and face trial. Perhaps the one that chose to stay will find his reward in Egypt and Assange will find his punishment in Equador. And, at least officially, he will have nobody to blame but himself.

[AnnieDanny]

He doesn't look very innocent to me: hiding in an embassy. If he's so confident that there's no problem in Sweden, why is he doing this?

And, how did this happen? I thought he was on house arrest. Seems as if he has had some help getting to this embassy.

[RichZubaty]

I'm pained to join the ranks of the ignorant cowards who have posted here so far - probably paid soldiers or DHS/State Department drones - who know nothing of the Pentagon Papers, and how the right for a news outlet to publish, whether the New York Times or Wikileaks, is the lifeblood of democracy. There would have been no North African revolt, no uprising in Spain, no Occupy Wall Street, without him. Send Assange to Ecuador and let him get back to work. We need to know what's happening in Afghanistan and Israel and Egypt and a dozen other places, and our captured corporate media sure isn't going to tell us. The man is an international hero. Let him do his job.

[josephp5]

Thank you for bringing up the Pentagon Papers. There are many similarities between Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg, the man who revealed the Pentagon Papers. Those papers showed that the US government knew very early on that the Vietnam War could not be won. Yet Johnson and later Nixon kept it a secret from the citizens that were providing the blood and money for the war. When Ellsberg, an analyst that had worked on the study, released them to the New York Times, Nixon did everything he could to destroy Ellsberg---from breaking into his psychiatrist's office to attempting to poison his soup with LSD and make him look like a stoner. He also sent secret word to the judge in the Ellsberg trial that he was being considered for a Federal Judge position (provided he put Ellsburg away for life, of course). If the Watergate scandal had not revealed "other matters" such as Nixon's pursuit of Ellsburg, he probably would be still in jail today, forgotten by everyone. It was an outrage that the Government keep the truth about Vietnam away from the American people, and illegally persecuted people like Ellsburg that revealed the truth, despite official secrecy.

People today that are quick to condemn Assange for leaking "secrets" should remember the lesson of the Pentagon Papers. I think that lesson can be summed up as, "Governments lie."

[josephp5]

Jullian Assange has not been charged with a single crime, in any country. Yet Britain wants to "extradite" him to Sweeden for "questioning" in a rape case investigation.

Has anyone ever heard of someone being forcibly extradited for mere questioning, without even being charged in a crime?

Something is clearly fishy in the way governments like Britain and the US are treating Assange. If they have the goods on him, for either espionage or rape, then indict him and put him on trial. But that's not happening. Instead, it looks like the US and British governments want to leak accusations about Assange and try him in the court of public opinion. They want him to be labeled as a spy and traitor, without having to face the public themselves with specific charges.

And what did Assange do that was wrong? I saw the Apache helicopter video that he released. It is an outrage. I challenge anyone who thinks that Assange is a spy to view that video and tell me that they are proud of the US actions and think that this needs to be kept secret. The Iraqis know exactly what's happening. So do our soldiers over there. The reason the government wanted this to remain secret is only to keep the American public from seeing it. It could turn public opinion against the war.

By the way, leaking secrets is only a crime if you are sworn to keep them, like a military officer or a military contractor. It is not illegal at all for reporters to leak secret material. It happens all the time! The only difference is that most of the time, the secrets are leaked by the government in order to influence public opinion in a way favorable to the government. How many times do you read in the New York Times, "The US Government is engaged in [some secret activity], according to anonymous officials" or some such thing?

The government only seems to have a problem with Assange because he leaked secrets that show how awful the war is in Iraq and they don't want the American public to know.

[bradkt1]

This guy did a whole lot of posturing and declared his confidence in his legal position against both the UK and US Governments. Well guess what? It was all a pose for the news cameras.

In the end, this guy is a coward who doesn't have the courage of his own convictions. Principles? He has none.

He is just another rat who got called out and is now scurrying for cover.