Chavez Warns UK against Storming Ecuador Embassy to Get Assange

Venezuelan President and reelection candidate Hugo Chavez gestures as he leads an electoral event in front of El Valle church in Caracas (Venezuela), 26 July 2012. EPA/BGNES

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has threatened the UK with radical measures in case British authorities attempt to storm the Embassy of Ecuador in order to arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Assange has been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London for two months as he fights extradition to Sweden on sex crime charges, which he denies.

Last Thursday Assange was granted asylum in Ecuador but he still faces arrest the minute he steps out of the building of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

"If Britain decides to violate the sovereignty of Ecuador, our response will be radical. We advise the British government to think well over this since the epoch, when empires did whatever they wanted to, is long over," Chavez told a Venezuelan national TV, as cited by RIA Novosti.

The Venezuelan leader did not specify the nature of the measures that would be taken in response, but said they were already being prepared.

The world's most famous whistleblower is suspected of sexual assault against two women that allegedly took place in August 2010. He claims the sex was consensual and the accusations against him are politically motivated.

Assange fears that his arrest in the UK and extradition to Sweden might end up leading to his extradition to the USA where he might face a death penalty on espionage charges for leaking hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables on WikiLeaks since 2010.

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