Embassy storm

Published on 18/08/2012 00:00

I have no idea about the guilt or innocence of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (your report, 17 August) but I know he deserves a fair trial.

However, I have grave misgivings about the suggestion that the British government is considering entering the ­Ecuadorian embassy to arrest ­Assange using, I believe, legislation brought in after the murder of police­woman Yvonne Fletcher, a ­British citizen killed on ­British soil.

Assange’s alleged crimes do not fall into that category. Additionally, for decades successive British governments have protested vehemently about foreign mobs storming British embassies abroad yet David Cameron’s government is reportedly ­plotting something similar to appease the Swedish or even the US government.

Why doesn’t he channel the considerable resources being used to chase Assange into deporting the hundreds of foreign criminals who pose a greater threat to the people of this country?

Civil liberties in Britain are obviously under threat as never before because of the European Union arrest warrants and it ­appears that even political asylum provides no guarantee of escaping the clutches of the ­European superstate.

Bob MacDougall

Kippen

Stirlingshire

IN AN apparent bid to rustle up developing world support over the strange case of Julian ­Assange and the Ecuadorians, the foreign minister of Ecuador has jumped on the anti-colonialist bandwagon by lecturing Britain as a post-colonial power, stating that “the days of colonialism are over”.

Not, it seems, as far as his own country is concerned. Ecuador retains sovereignty over the Galapagos Islands, an archipelago way out in the Pacific Ocean.

Ecuador has recently replaced the original English names of the islands with Spanish ones and, since the early 1950s, has increased the population of the Galapagos from under 2,000 to around 25,000.

A presidential decree of 1973 raised the status of the islands to that of an Ecuadorian province, which is a covert way of promoting colonialism.

All this could yet turn out to everyone’s advantage, however. The islands might make a ­suitable permanent residence for Julian Assange. They are, of course, some 650 miles from practically anywhere else.

Keith Halley

Newbattle Abbey Crescent

Dalkeith, Midlothian