I liked the letter from the UK government:

"You need to be aware that there is a legal base in the UK, the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, that would allow us to take actions in order to arrest Mr Assange in the current premises of the embassy.

We need to reiterate that we consider the continued use of the diplomatic premises in this way incompatible with the Vienna convention and unsustainable and we have made clear the serious implications that this has for our diplomatic relations."'

Diplomatese for "Look, there are laws about this sort of thing, and you're on the wrong side of them. Hand him over or we'll start to get pissed off, you tinpoint banana republic bunch of twats"

And this is the letter that Ecuador said was Britain threatening to attack the nation’s London Embassy if it did not hand over WikiLeaker Julian Assange...

Didn't they refer to some UK legislation though, which I thought was directly incompatible with the Vienna doodah?

The Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act, yes. I'm not sure it's incompatible with the Vienna Convention, tho.
The Vienna Convention says a lot less than most people assume it does.

The Vienna Convention says a lot less than most people assume it does.

FUCK YOU, FUCKFACE.

The Vienna Convention says a lot less than most people assume it does.

1.The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter
them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises
of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the
mission or impairment of its dignity.
3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of
transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.

Article 22 seems pretty clear:



ETA: Mr Kissyfur wins!

ETA: Mr Kissyfur wins!

HOWEVER, on further research it seems the Act allows the government to at will declare the embassy to no longer be an embassy, which is a fairly neat way around the problem of the inviolability of the embassy premises.

o/

If the UK government can do this, what's to stop any foreign government from doing it to UK embassies overseas? The entire diplomatic service is based on the central agreement that 'if you don't fuck with our embassies/diplomats we won't fuck with yours', so if one country unilaterally violates that agreement doesn't the whole thing fall apart?

Article 22 seems pretty clear:



ETA: Mr Kissyfur wins!

The validity of the charges is of course a separate point to quite how cynically cold he appears in the emails (and quite how badly he writes). I still approve of the leaks, but I wouldn't want the fellow sniffing around the daughters I don't have.

Nor would I want him sniffing round my daughters, if I had any.

I think Mr Assange will be sobered to learn that if something which isn't the case, were the case, I would still have the same attitude that I do actually have with respect to that which isn't the case (I mean, the attitude is the case, in that it does exist, but it relates to the hypothetical positing of an ontology which does not exist). As I say, the man just can't write.

I'm always wary about reading something in to Article X without reading the other Articles A - Z. We don't know, for example, that Article 23 doesn't say that Article 22 doesn't apply if you're harbouring someone against whom the state has valid grievances who has no other connection with your state.

You really are quite the ugly fuckling, yes.

Wise words. However, Article 43 adds, in effect, "we really really mean article 22, even if the ambassador has got a sex slave factory in there.". I do this work so you don't have to.

However, bear in mind that here we're talking about a dispute between the UK and Ecuador. I fancy our chances. We completely beat them at the Olympics.

To be honest I'm not worried about Ecuador specifically, more the fact that a move like this might devalue our diplomatic standing to the point that the next time some banana republic explodes into a military coup or whatever that the aggressors in question just storm our embassy with an attitude of 'fuck the UK, they demonstrably don't give a shit about diplomatic agreements anyway so why should we care about their rights here' rather than stopping to think about it for a while (which might end up saving lives). Or, to make a slightly less hysterically dramatic example, someone seeking refuge in a UK embassy overseas gets pulled out of there by the local government because we've undermined our own ability to claim that privilege with this nonsense.

From what little I know about diplomatic immunity (hey I have watched lots of American TV), its the Diplomatic Pouch that is unstoppable, so all they have to do is get a nice big 6ft pouch for him to climb into before transport?

I am a fricking genius

The answer must therefore be to promote kangaroos to be your nation's ambassadors.

I see your point, and agere with it to an extent. Bear in mind, though, that our embassies don't even give refuge to UK citizens in local trouble.

Good summary, here.

http://pme200.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/assange.html

Excellent blog post.

Galloway's an idiot.

This is news, how?

I feel the need to reaffirm my views.

Vote for MaliA.

There's the usual grumpy leftwing twat Milne's defence of Assange and Ecuador in the Graun today. That man would support any regime as long as it hated the West.

Vote for MaliA.

There's the usual grumpy leftwing twat Milne's defence of Assange and Ecuador in the Graun today. That man would support any regime as long as it hated the West.

Vote for MaliA.

There's the usual grumpy leftwing twat Milne's defence of Assange and Ecuador in the Graun today. That man would support any regime as long as it hated the West.

wha...?

That man would support any regime as long as it hated the West.

We should really have stopped using 'The East' and 'The West' once we realised that the world was round.

Cover of this week's 'Private Eye' really goes for Assange (and I felt slightly bad about laughing once I worked out the joke)

(No spoilers)