(LOS ANGELES TIMES) LONDON -- Ecuador said Thursday it would grant political asylum to Julian Assange, the controversial founder of the whistle-blowing WikiLeaks website who has been holed up for nearly two months inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden on allegations of sexual assault.
Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said that Assange's legal and procedural rights had been violated, and that Ecuador accepted his argument that he faced possible political persecution by the United States, which is angry over his release of secret government files.
"We believe his fears are legitimate," Patino told reporters in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, Thursday morning.