If I were Prime Minister (“Dios guarde a todos nosotros “:), Julian Assange would be a job for the men in balaclavas. Forget the diplomatic niceties. Give Ecuador five minutes to hand him over or we send in the SAS.
Britain is being turned into an international laughing stock by an alleged rapist and a llama republic. I’ve heard of a Mexican stand-off, but this is ridiculous.
When the Vienna Convention was drawn up in 1961 it wasn’t designed to allow an Australian computer hacker accused of sex crimes in Sweden to escape justice by seeking asylum in the London embassy of a small South American country. The allegations against WikiLeaks founder Assange have got nothing to do with Ecuador — and nothing to do with Britain, either.
After the murder of WPC Fletcher, the rules were changed to allow the government to strip embassies of their diplomatic status where it was clear the right to immunity was being abused. But ministers are reluctant to use that power in this case.
Ecuador sought this confrontation, not Britain. They could have told Assange to get lost. The reason they have taken him in is not to prevent him being tried for rape in Sweden, but to thumb their noses at the United States.
Hatred of America is what motivates all those who have rallied to Assange’s defence. The U.S. wants to extradite him so he can be prosecuted for publishing secret intelligence information obtained by hacking into Pentagon emails. His supporters fear that once he’s had his day in court in Sweden, he will be handed over to the U.S. And to that end, they are prepared to overlook the allegations against him.
They are at a loss to explain why the rights of liberal Sweden to try a man accused of rape are outweighed by the rights of Ecuador to give him sanctuary.
In Britain, the Guardianistas have tied themselves in knots over Assange (he’s in a room without windows in the Ecuadorian Embassy). In normal circumstances, they would be howling for the public castration of a man accused of rape, not standing bail for him. The Guardian newspaper has been leading the charge in exposing phone hacking by the News of the World. But it defends computer hacking by Assange and his associates.
So what’s the difference? Politics, not justice. That’s the difference. On the Left, the end always justifies the means. And speaking of phone hacking, a couple of miles away from the embassy stand-off, former News of the World editor Andy Coulson and six others were yesterday being sent for trial on charges of intercepting the voicemails of up to 600 people. Maybe Coulson and company should ask Ecuador for asylum and see how far it gets them.
The only good news here is that Assange’s useful idiots, such as the spoilt socialite Jemima Khan, stand to lose the £240,000 bail they put up for him.
At least Jemima Puddleduck has recanted and now says Assange should be extradited to Sweden. Even some of his old comrades-in-arms at the Guardian have washed their hands of him.
Since he first landed in Britain, Assange has been exposed as a hypocritical, soap-dodging, sex-obsessed narcissist. Yet he has been indulged by everyone from the usual Left-wing suspects to the courts.
Why couldn’t we just send Assange back to Australia and let them pick the bones out of it?
Most sensible countries would have taken one look at his baggage and sent him packing, not turned him into a cause célèbre.
