ASSANGE MOM ARRIVES IN ECUADOR TO PLEAD HER SON'S ASYLUM CASE

Assange sees up to a year in Ecuador embassy
By Eduardo Garcia | Reuters – 3 hours ago

Article: Ecuadorean journalist granted asylum in Miami
Reuters - 9 hours ago
QUITO (Reuters) - Julian Assange expects to wait six months to a year for a deal to free him from Ecuador's embassy in London, and hopes Sweden will drop its case against him, the WikiLeaks' founder said in an interview broadcast on Thursday.
The former computer hacker has been holed up at the embassy for more than two months, seeking to avoid being sent to Sweden for questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations - and triggering a diplomatic spat with Britain.
Talks over Assange's fate resumed this week, and Ecuador's government said it was optimistic it will be able to strike a deal with Britain for Assange to receive guarantees he would not be further extradited from Sweden to the United States.
Ecuador granted him asylum earlier this month saying that it shares his fears that he could face charges in the United States over the publication in 2010 by WikiLeaks of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.
"I think the situation will be solved through diplomacy ... The Swedish government could drop the case. I think this is the most likely scenario. Maybe after a thorough investigation of what happened they could drop the case," Assange told Ecuador's Gama television network in comments dubbed into Spanish.
"I think this will be solved in between six and 12 months; that's what I estimate," he said in the interview, which was recorded earlier this week inside the embassy.
Britain says it is legally obliged to extradite Assange to Sweden, and that it will not allow the 41-year-old Australian to leave the embassy and travel to the South American country.
But Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said on Wednesday he was optimistic the British government would agree to give Assange written guarantees that he would not be extradited from Sweden to any third country.
Ecuador has said that if Assange received such assurances, he would decline its offer of asylum and hand himself over to Swedish prosecutors. Asked during the interview if he could travel to Sweden under those conditions, he was non-committal.
"At some point, if the way has been paved ... it would not be correct to hold me in prison (in Sweden) without charges."
He did not mention the allegations of rape and sexual assault made against him by two WikiLeaks supporters in 2010.
A veiled British threat to enter the embassy to arrest Assange angered Ecuador's President Rafael Correa. But the leftist leader said last weekend that the threat had later been lifted and he considered the "unfortunate incident" over.
In another sign of thawing tensions, Ecuador's Vice President Lenin Moreno met British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Wednesday, but any deal looks likely to take time.
"Given Ecuador's position on what they call diplomatic asylum and our very clear legal position, such a solution is not in sight at the moment," Hague told the BBC on Thursday.

Ecuadorean journalist granted asylum in Miami
Reuters – 9 hours ago

A newspaper columnist who fled Ecuador after he was sentenced to jail and ordered to pay millions of dollars in a libel case pushed by President Rafael Correa has been granted asylum in the United States, his lawyer said on Thursday.
Emilio Palacio, a columnist at El Universo, one of Ecuador's leading newspapers, has been living in Miami since last year. He applied for asylum claiming he was a victim of political persecution.
"It's been a long road for him and his family," said Palacio's lawyer, Sandra Grossman.
Last year, a court in Ecuador sentenced Palacio and three owners of El Universo to prison and ordered them to pay $40 million in damages, a sum that stunned global media watchdogs.
In February, Correa threw out the sentences, saying in a televised speech he had decided to "pardon the accused and grant them remission of the sentences that they rightly received."
In its case against Palacio, the government cited a 2011 opinion piece he wrote titled "No To Lies" which referred to Correa as "the Dictator" and criticized his actions during a bloody police revolt a year earlier.
News that Palacio had been granted asylum comes amid diplomatic tensions between Ecuador and Britain over the fate of WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange.
The 41-year-old Australian was granted asylum by the Correa government earlier this month on the grounds he might be a victim of political persecution.
Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for more than two months in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sexual assault and rape allegations.
Correa shares Assange's fears that from Sweden the former computer hacker could be further extradited to the United States, where he could face charges stemming from WikiLeaks' publication of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables that laid bare Washington's powerbroking across the globe.
Upon granting asylum to Assange, the Ecuadorean government argued that legal evidence showed he would not get a fair trial if eventually transferred to the United States.
State-run media have for weeks run stories portraying Assange as a champion of media freedom.
However, tensions have steadily mounted between Correa, a leftist who took office in 2007, and many of Ecuador's leading privately owned media. He faces accusations from some press freedom watchdogs that he uses the courts to muzzle the media, a charge he denies.
Correa argues that many media outlets in the Andean country are controlled by a handful of families who have ties with opposition politicians and are bent on undermining support for his government.