In an Op Ed in last weekend’s Ottawa Citizen, I commented on the Catch 22 situation the UK government now finds itself in with respect to Julian Assange. Earlier this week, the Foreign Minister of Ecuador, Ricardo Patino, announced his government’s decision to provide ‘diplomatic asylum’ to the founder of the Wikileaks website, who took up residence in the embassy in mid June to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning related to alleged sexual offences. In one sense, nothing has changed. British Foreign Secretary William Hague maintained yesterday that despite the decision of officials in Quito (the Ecuadorean capitol) to grant asylum, the UK will not allow Mr. Assange safe passage to Ecuador. He also rightly pointed out that the …

  Ecuador has announced that it is granting asylum to Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, who has taken refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London. Assange sought refuge in the Embassy after the UK Supreme Court ruled a few weeks ago that he may be extradited to Sweden where he is wanted for trial on allegation of committing sexual offences. In this dispute there are some points in the UK’s favour. It is fairly clear that Assange is not covered by Refugee Convention and is therefore not entitled to asylum as a matter of international law. That Convention does not apply to persons in respect of which there are serious reasons to believe they have committed a serious non-political crime (Art. 1(F)(ii)). Furthermore, as Matthew Happold pointed out in …