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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the welcome-to-Ecuador dept.

Ecuador has granted citizenship to Julian Assange as its government attempts to find creative ways of getting Assange out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London:

Ecuador says it has granted citizenship to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, as officials try to find a way for him to leave the Ecuadorean embassy in London without risking legal action.

Assange, who is Australian, first sought refuge at the embassy more than five years ago to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced an investigation over rape allegations. He was granted asylum, and has been holed up in the embassy ever since.

The original case against him has been dropped, but Assange remains inside the embassy. "He is still subject to arrest in Britain for jumping bail," The Associated Press notes. "He also fears a possible U.S. extradition request based on his leaking of classified State Department documents."

"Earlier this week, Ecuador said the situation was unsustainable and requested diplomatic status for Assange in hopes of springing him," NPR's Frank Langfitt reports from London. "A British government spokesman responded: 'Ecuador knows that the way to resolve this issue is for Julian Assange to leave the embassy to face justice.'"

Also at The Guardian.


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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:45AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:45AM (#622076)

    ISIS formed in the aftermath of the second US invasion of Iraq. They were a mere annoyance, not on the verge of being a country.

    Bradley Manning comes along, leaks out diplomatic cables via wikileaks, and all Hell breaks loose all across the Middle East. Normal people got to see our unflattering descriptions of corrupt leaders. Numerous countries had riots, some of those turned into civil war or revolution, some of those resulted in new governments, and out of that... one country managed to get a clearly better government. Lots of people died.

    One of the places with a failed revolution is Syria. The resulting mess gave ISIS room to grow. ISIS filled a power vacuum. ISIS started to take on attributes of a country. They probably would have become a full-fledged country if they hadn't threatened Saudi Arabia and others.

    Without the leak, Syria wouldn't have collapsed. Without the available territory, ISIS would have remained a small group of annoying rebels running around in Iraq.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:45AM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:45AM (#622104)

    Bradley Manning comes along, leaks out diplomatic cables via wikileaks, and all Hell breaks loose all across the Middle East.

    The post hoc fallacy, huh?

    You can't even make a probability argument because you don't have enough data to even reach a conclusion about how probable this claiming being true actually is.

    Without the leak, Syria wouldn't have collapsed.

    Once again, no evidence. Can you look into alternate dimensions or something?

    And again, the government should not take actions that necessitate whistleblowing if it does not want people to blow the whistle on them. Not attacking civilians, not conducting mass surveillance on the populace, not fighting preemptive wars in the first place, etc. are all decent ways of avoiding this. Blaming the messengers is foolish, even generously assuming you're correct. Which, again, you have no evidence of.