Guardian says Assange will get asylum

The UK Gaurdian says Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has agreed to grant asylum to Julian Assange asylum. The WikiLeaks founder has been holed up at Ecuador's London embassy for 56 days (since 19 June 2012). Before that, he had been under house arrest for a year and a half in England.

(Some media outlets such as RT, the Washington Post, MSNBC, Australia’s ABC News, etc claim that president Correa announced on Twitter that he has not given asylum. Twitter, however, is a gossip forum, not an official government channel. Anyone can post any message he cares to, using a false name. Since people tweet back and forth without verifying anything, rumors are easy to create. Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says Twitter is a tool for self exhibitionism only. White House staff members are prohibited from communicating by Twitter.)

It remains unclear if Assange will be allowed to fly to Ecuador, or if this amounts to little more than a symbolic gesture. The British government vows to arrest him as soon as he leaves the embassy.

Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, said, “For Mr Assange to leave England, he wouold need a safe oassage from the British government. Will that be possible? That's an issue we have to take into account.”

Government sources in Quito say they had offered asylum to Assange several months ago, well before he sought refuge in the embassy.
 
Two weeks ago Assange's mother Christine visited Ecuador at the invitation of the foreign ministry. She met with Correa, Patiño, and other top politicians, including Fernando Cordero, head of Ecuador's legislature. Both Patiño and Ms Assange appeared visibly touched during a press conference, which had to be briefly suspended when Ms Assange started crying.

Ms. Assange held several public meetings in government buildings, and in one instance she was accompanied by the head of her son's defense team, Baltasar Garzón, the former Spanish judge who ordered the London arrest of Chile's General Pinochet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/14/julian-assange-asylum-ecuador-wikileaks

RT interviewed Assange’s mother Christine in Ecuador, who says, “‘If America can do it to Bradley Manning, what will they do to my son?”

“Australia’s prime minister is a US puppet. Her approval rating is 27 per cent. The people are not happy with her at all. And from the beginning the prime minister condemned my son in the media, speaking ahead of the case, which was unheard of in Australia. She passed judgment prior to any trial. Even before the USA did."

http://www.rt.com/news/christine-assange-interview-julian-659/