Ecuador Grants Citizenship To WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange (cbsnews.com)

hcs_$reboot writes: Ecuador has granted citizenship to Julian Assange, who has been holed up inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London for over five years. Quito, Ecuador, has said naturalization should provide Assange with another layer of protection. However, naturalization appeared to do little to help the Australian-born WikiLeaks founder's case, with the British foreign ministry stressing that the only way to resolve the issue was for "Assange to leave the embassy to face justice." Earlier on Thursday, Britain said that it had refused a request by Ecuador to grant Assange diplomatic status, which would have granted him special legal immunity and the right to safe passage under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Comments

Re:Good

[drinkypoo]

This would have set an uncomfortable precedent of granting a wanted criminal the freedom to roam around the country he is wanted in.

Assange is only wanted for avoiding prosecution for an alleged crime for which the charges have been withdrawn.

Diplomatic immunity status shouldn't be able to be granted after a crime has been committed.

Former, withdrawn charges shouldn't be grounds for arrest. The British Empire is quite upset that Assange didn't respect their authority, and would like to make an example of him even though there are currently no other charges filed against him.

The supposed victims of his alleged crimes did not believe that he should be charged. The charges filed have been dropped, and the prosecutors who filed them passed up numerous opportunities to question him before doing so. But keep calling him a criminal. That's exactly what three governments want, and you wouldn't want to let them down, would you?