Wikileaks founder Julian Assange 'buoyed by support' [View all]

[reorg]

Source: BBC News UK

... Five countries are now involved in a complex diplomatic saga but Mrs Assange said: "It's not complicated. It's a very simple issue.

"A legitimate, registered, multi award-winning media organisation and its editor have legally published the truth about the biggest superpower in the world and embarrassed them and exposed them for wrongdoing - war crimes, corruption and fraud.

"The case against him in Sweden coincided with the release of these documents and has no basis in fact, if you look at the evidence and the way the Swedish prosecution has run the case.

"The whole exercise has been set up to smear and silence the truth and those countries with their snouts in the trough with America have fallen into line. Ecuador, whose snout isn't in the trough, has not fallen into line." ...

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18577345

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As far as I know, someone who is granted political asylum receives a passport and the same treatment as any national of that state.

Ecuador apparently does not extradite Ecuadorian nationals:

[div class="excerpt"]LEY DE EXTRADICION

...
Art. 4 - En ningún caso se concederá la extradición de un ecuatoriano, su
juzgamiento se sujetará a las leyes del Ecuador. ...

http://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/sp/ecu/sp_ecu-ext-law-leyext.pdf

There are other, strong protections in that law, such as unequivocally ruling out extradition to countries that don't offer guarantees against imposing the death penalty, torture and inhuman treatment. A life sentence without possibiliy of parole is widely considered inhuman, for instance, except in the US.

The Ecuadorian law also explicitly and unambiguously rules out extradition in political cases. Whereas such characterizations may be a matter of interpretation, anyway, the Swedish extradition law allows for the following exceptions:

[div class="excerpt"]Section 6
Extradition may not be granted for a political offence.
If the act also constitutes a non-political offence, extradition may be granted for that offence, provided, in the particular case, the act is predominantly of a non-political nature.
The first paragraph does not apply where rejection on this ground would be contrary to an international agreement applying between Sweden and the requesting state.

http://www.sweden.gov.se/download/77809ec6.pdf?major=1&minor=15435&cn=attachmentDuplicator_0_attachment