{"id":16991,"date":"2012-08-16T13:35:13","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T19:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=16991"},"modified":"2012-08-16T13:35:13","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T19:35:13","slug":"ecuador-grants-asylum-to-assange-defying-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=16991","title":{"rendered":"Ecuador Grants Asylum to Assange, Defying Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By WILLIAM NEUMAN and MAGGY AYALA<\/p>\n<p>CARACAS, Venezuela<\/strong> \u2014 Ecuador forcefully rejected pressure from Britain and announced Thursday that it was granting political asylum to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who has been holed up for two months in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London trying to avoid extradition to Sweden.<\/p>\n<p>The decision, citing the possibility that Mr. Assange could face \u201cpolitical persecution\u201d or be sent to the United States to face the death penalty, escalated the unusually sharp strains between Ecuador and Britain, and drew an angry rebuttal from Sweden. The Ecuadorean move protects Mr. Assange from British arrest, but only on Ecuadorean territory, leaving him vulnerable if he tries to leave the embassy to head to an airport or train station.<\/p>\n<p>Ecuador\u2019s foreign minister, Ricardo Pati\u00f1o, made the announcement at a news conference in the Ecuadorean capital, Quito.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe government of Ecuador, faithful to its tradition of protecting those who seek refuge in its territory or in its diplomatic missions, has decided to grant diplomatic asylum to Julian Assange,\u201d he said, reading from a government communiqu\u00e9. He added, \u201cThere are indications to presume that there could be political persecution,\u201d and that Mr. Assange would not get a fair trial in the United States and could face the death penalty there. <\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/08\/17\/world\/americas\/ecuador-to-let-assange-stay-in-its-embassy.html\">Click here to continue reading, &#8216;Ecuador Grants Asylum to Assange, Defying Britain&#8217;<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By WILLIAM NEUMAN and MAGGY AYALA CARACAS, Venezuela \u2014 Ecuador forcefully rejected pressure from Britain and announced Thursday that it was granting political asylum to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who has been holed up for two months in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=16991\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-4q3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16992,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16991\/revisions\/16992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}