as a system in which even the powerful are subject to the procedures of courts. It has had a universalizing influence ever since then. In the thirteenth century, English judges were allowing serfs to plead in court that they should be free. It was the English judges who gradually began to extinguish the right of local lords to try people in their private courts and execute them. The English judges imagined principles of law beyond mere personal power, and accordingly they began to hold that, even if a king by degree nullified customary English rights, those rights were not extinguished but merely held in abeyance during the king's lifetime and were fully restored at the king's death
Whatever one may think of Assange, he has had his full day in the UK courts. He was granted bail, with his admirers posting sureties for him. The arguments he wished to make against extradition to Sweden was heard in the Westminster Magistrates' Court, which ruled for Sweden. His appeal against the decision was heard by the High Court, which ruled against him. The Supreme Court allowed an appeal, which he also lost. The Supreme Court then allowed him to argue that the appeal should be re-opened, whereupon he lost again. He then decided against an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, jumped bail (so that his admirers largely lost their sureties), and fled to hide in Ecuador's embassy
The purpose of a diplomatic mission is not to provide a safe haven for fugitives from the law: countries maintain diplomatic relations to smooth and improve their interactions. Sweden is a modern country, with a rather enlightened criminal justice system, and UK's diplomatic relations with Sweden involve extradition agreements, which are subject to European standards. There is no question whether Assange would receive a fair trial if extradited and prosecuted: he would. Nor is there any question about what treatment he would receive if tried and convicted: it would be humane and exemplary by the standards of every country in the world
Why, then, is Ecuador interfering in a legal extradition from the UK to Sweden? The answer has nothing whatsoever to do with Sweden or the UK but rather with the history of US interference in Latin America and the internal politics of Ecuador
Latin Americans have good reason to be wary of the US, and the Bush years did nothing to reduce their anxieties, since Bush brought back to power many of those who had engineered Reagan's slaughter in Central America. Assange's hallucinatory fantasy (of being sent from Sweden to Guantanamo and there being tortured) ignores the realities of European extradition law, but it resonates with enough Latin Americans who remember how Nixon installed Allende and how Bush kidnapped Aristide -- so a sector of Ecuadorian society will support anyone who claims to support Assange. The Assange-in-embassy story has exhibited this internal political struggle clearly, as when (for example) a "safe passage to Ecuador" document issued from the embassy, only to be immediately repudiated by the country's President
In reality, of course, Obama is not Bush; and Assange's legal issues in Sweden arose from his own misogyny and resulting boorish treatment of his sex partners there. Whether his poor behavior could produce successful prosecution is a matter for the Swedish courts to decide
At this point, it matters little what Assange might have accomplished, because he has managed to discredit himself completely, by portraying the unattractive outcome of his sexist attitudes as the result of a grandiose international plot. I have no idea whether there has been any covert scheme against him; but if there has been, I would suspect it involved carefully reinforcing his megalomania and paranoia until his obsessions undermined his ability to function rationally. Today he seems to have become agoraphobic, seeking any excuse not to leave the small embassy, where he has now been encamped three years
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