Relevant text from Vienna Convention on Consular Relations:
1. The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
2. The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.
3. The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.
Could Ecuador have a boat waiting in international waters and take him via Helicopter to the boat?
Otherwise could they hide him in some kind of cargo? I heard that they can't pull over and search a diplomats car but the transition from car to plane is when they could get him.
They'd have to get across the pavement from the embassy into the bus. The British have every right to arrest him there (either for violating the conditions of bail or on grounds there is an outstanding European warrant for him).
The UK's already "suggested" that they're willing to revoke Ecuador's diplomatic privilege. Discarding the question of if they can legally or politically do so for the moment, what difference would it make to them if Assange is in Ecuador's embassy or a crate with their flag stamped on it?
Embassy roof? Or drop a ladder down from the helicopter? I think the bigger question is how to get him out of the helicopter (since it can't fly to Ecuador.)
Not how, where: international waters. London, IIRC, is not very distant from those. (Of course, London being a helicopter no-flight zone - for decades now - complicates things somewhat)
Edit: Helicopters specifically; but with the ground-to-air missile sites installed around the Greater London area (ostensibly for protecting the Sporting-Event-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named; a WTF in and of itself), I'd be very careful in mucking around the British airspace: http://everything2.com/title/crashing+a+helicopter+in+Centra...
In general getting permission from ATC for flights over London is non-trivial (primarily because it is sufficiently densely populated that any emergency, especially at low altitude, is likely going to end badly).
London's definitely not a no-helicopter zone - I see police and media helicopters over my house all the time. You can get what's known as SVFR clearance (generally below 1000ft), see http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-68430.html
The problem with that approach is that he expects be extradited to the US as soon as he gets to Sweden. Oh and you might call it nitpicking, but he's not convicted of rape yet, let alone charged with it.
In the UK an judge may make an independent determination that his 'crimes' are of a political nature and therefore not extraditable. In Sweden, there is a newish form of extradition, temporary surrender, where it is thought the decision can effectively be made by politicians instead of judges. Is he better off with a judge or a politician?
Sweden has recent form for taking legal shortcuts in this area.
There's a lot of speculation about this but I haven't seen actual evidence. Our extradition laws with the UK are actually stronger than with Sweden so why wait for him to be in Sweden?
And, on exactly what charges would he receive the death penalty? The death penalty under Federal charges is not exactly something that's handed out like candy. Since 1963 only three people have been given the death penalty at the federal level, and all were murderers.
He doesn't need to get a death penalty, it's enough if they'll give him the same treatment they gave Manning prior to his trial [1]. Enough to make any sane person go mad.
Well they are trying to hit Assange with the Espionage Act, though the exact punishment for that hasn't readily turned up in my searches. If they could nail him with treason, he would certainly be up for the death penalty, however, since Assange is not a US citizen and therefore doesn't owe allegiance to the US, I don't think he would be able to be charged with it (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381)
Show me one example, post 1960, of such a punishment being sought.
Further, no such charges have been brought in the US, and more importantly, even several prosecutors have claimed such a charge will be difficult to produce, given the protections we provide the press here.
Finally, this whole "fear of death," is completely manufactured. He will get a much fairer shake than all of the Chinese dissidents whose names he released unredacted.
Yeh, to be honest life imprisonment probably wouldn't be all that more pleasant than a death sentence.
Also the US has, in recent years, demonstrated that its protections are primarily intended for their own citizens. Apparently it's OK to strip foreigners of any such rights, if they are perceived as enemies and this is deemed convenient.
