UK are parties to the only relevant treaty

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The final period of deprivation of liberty was, of course, the period of Mr Assange’s stay in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. But Mr Assange’s decision to take refuge there was entirely his, and neither the Swedish nor the UK authorities have ever sought to prevent him from leaving. The Working Group criticised the Swedish and UK Governments for failing to recognize the asylum granted to him by Ecuador but provided no reasons why they should have. If States were obliged to respect other buy phone number list States’ grants of diplomatic asylum, then it would follow that a refusal to allow Mr Assange to leave the embassy unmolested would violate his right to liberty and security of the person. But no such obligation exists under general international law, and neither Sweden nor the , the OAS Convention on Diplomatic Asylum (see my earlier post here).

The Working Group grounded its categorisation of Mr Assange’s embassy stay as a deprivation of liberty on the basis that: ‘Placing individuals in temporary custody in stations, ports and airports or any other facilities where they remain under constant surveillance may not only amount to restrictions to personal freedom of movement, but also constitute a de facto deprivation of liberty’. The short point, however, is that Mr Assange was not ‘placed’ in the Ecuadorian embassy; he placed himself there. Mr Tochilovsky made the point very effectively in his dissenting opinion:

Mr. Assange fled the bail in June 2012 and since then stays at the premises of the Embassy using them as a safe haven to evade arrest. Indeed, fugitives are often self-confined within the places where they evade arrest and detention.