Julian Assange Will Be Granted Asylum, Says Ecuadorean Official

[msanthrope]

53. Correa will sell him out if the price is right.

He's a corrupt thug, who really doesn't give a crap about freedom of the press...as evidenced by the journalists he JAILED for accurately reporting on the millions of dollars his brother got in government contracts. So right now, Correa has a pet journalist.

Mr. Correa is seeking to destroy or silence the remaining independent media, which to his distress have taken on topics such as the hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts awarded to his brother. The president has filed one lawsuit against the authors of a book about his brother and a second against the editorial page editor and three directors of one of Ecuador’s most influential newspapers, El Universo.

Employing an archaic law that criminalizes expression “to discredit, dishonor or disparage” an “authority,” Mr. Correa demanded prison sentences and $80 million in compensation for a column in which the editor, Emilio Palacio, referred to the president as a dictator and faulted his behavior during a controversial episode in which soldiers clashed with striking police officers last year. Last week the president personally attended the trial while thuggish supporters threw eggs and bottles at the defendants outside the courthouse.

To no one’s surprise, the provisional judge hearing the case quickly ruled in the president’s favor, sentencing Mr. Palacio and the three El Universo directors to three years in prison and awarding $40 million in damages to Mr. Correa — an amount that exceeds the total value of the newspaper. The defendants are appealing to higher courts, but as the media rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights noted, the decision “constitutes a grave warning to any citizen or media outlet that has opinions or information about public officials that could be considered offensive, thus obstructing processes that are natural and necessary in any democracy.”

Such criticism is unlikely to deter Mr. Correa, who recently won approval of a constitutional amendment setting up a media oversight panel he could use to censor and fine journalists without bothering to go to court. The conclusion offered by Inter-American Press Association President Gonzalo Marroquin was grim but appropriate: This is a “systematic and hostile campaign to do away with the independent press and establish, by law or through the courts, ownership of the truth that all the Ecuadoran people must swallow.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ecuadors-autocrat-cracks-down-on-media-freedom/2011/07/27/gIQA5BRtfI_story.html?wpisrc=nl_cuzheads

That this is who Assange has allied himself with is a rough justice.