No. I remember a situation, though no longer the details, where someone was accused of spying during the Cold War and fled to an embassy. He was effectively trapped there, just like Assange, but whoever was after him didn't violate the embassy. Like I said, I can't remember the details, not even the country involved, but I think he ended up spending several years confined to the embassy.
Well the victim of espionage is the state, and the state has nothing to gain by imprisoning the spy themselves rather than letting the spy imprison himself in a foreign embassy. With rape, there's an actual victim.
If Britain does this, then from now on every Chinese dissident that seeks refuge in a Western embassy will somehow magically find themselves charged with rape, and Chinese police will stand ready to enter to arrest him for said rape.
(Substitute China for any other dictatorship as you please)
It is an incredibly bad precedent to set, and I very much doubt they will go there.
Leaving police posted outside until people get bored of the whole thing, sure. Sending stern letters, sure. Calling the Ecuadorian embassy in to explain himself, sure. Maybe a few more things. Maybe even expelling some low level staff if things get really nasty.
But if they enter the embassy, then either someone is a complete idiot and haven't thought through consequences, or Assanges suspicions about US involvement suddenly becomes a lot more credible.
Let me get this straight--a citizen of Australia is a "dissident" against the United States, so the US government arranges for him to be accused of rape in Sweden, leading him to refuse to surrender to British police and hide in the Ecuadorian embassy.
If the British enter the Ecuadorian embassy to extradite Assange to Sweden, this sets a precedent for the Chinese government to enter embassies in China to arrest Chinese dissidents accused of rape in China? No, because in the case of Assange, the idea that he's some kind of political prisoner subject to a CIA plot lies somewhere between conspiracy theory and delusion of grandeur, while in the case of Chinese dissidents, it would be plainly transparent what China was trying to do.
Plus, it turns out that China gets their dissidents to stop hiding out in western embassies by threatening to beat their wives to death. Dictatorships are much more direct than you give them credit for: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/world/asia/chen-guangcheng...
Facts: he has NOT been accused of rape. He has not been charged with rape. The two women in question have not accused him of rape or described the incidents in question as rape. There is no trial. There are no charges. And at best this is a case of he-said/she-said, with no other witnesses or evidence --- which is a situation that can be physically consistent with a framing, and thus, especially the surrounding context, needs to be treated with extreme skepticism.
To throw out just a few data points of context: the US government has a history of violating international law, violating the sovereignty of other nations, and, most recently, of violating it's own Constitution. Also consider Gitmo. And consider how Bradley Manning was treated while in custody, before/without trial, before/without even charges.
