No, the US does not recognize the notion of diplomatic asylum, nor does Britain.
The US has granted political asylum to people, but only when they were on US soil.
Julian didn't run.
You two are on a first-name basis...?
In fact, Assange did run: he had an interview with the police and prosecutors scheduled in Sweden for September 28th. He left the country on September 27th. When the authorities informed his lawyer that they planned to file a warrant for his arrest, they were told Assange would be back in Sweden by October 8th, and he'd be willing to meet with them then. He never showed up, at which point Sweden ordered him "arrested in absentia" and began the extradition process.
In fact, Assange's lawyer Hurtig was accused by the British High Court of deliberately trying to mislead the court over this sequence of events.
Second is that all available evidence points to him not having committed sexual assault (as any anglo-saxon would understand it).
Funny that every court in Britain, up to and including the High Court, found that the acts of which he'd been accused would constitute "rape" in the UK, huh...?
He's charged with a variety of crimes, the most serious of which are sexual assault — he allegedly pinned one woman down and tried to force her legs apart so that he wouldn't have to wear the condom she insisted he wear — and rape — he allegedly initiated sex, without a condom, with a sleeping woman who had insisted that he not have unprotected sex with him.
The British High Court agreed that these accusation would certainly constitute crimes in the UK.
That's actually the rape charge.
The sexual assault charge relates to him allegedly pinning a second woman down on her bed, holding her hands down, and attempting to force her legs apart in an effort to keep her from getting the condom she insisted he wear as a condition of having sex.
The Swedish phrase which gets translated as "surprise sex" is apparently a euphemism for rape. Interestingly, they have the same euphemism in Japanese.
"What is "normal," though not in Sweden obviously, is that any interview prior to charges being laid be voluntary."
Except that he's already been ordered arrested in Sweden. His interview is no longer voluntary at this point, and his attendance is required. It's required on Swedish soil, since this formal questioning is — as the British High Court noted — the equivalent of an arraignment, and the next step is that he'd be charged and arrested if the prosecutors agree that the charge is warranted. The court explicitly said that a) the acts he's accused of would indeed be crimes in the UK, and b) that were this case being tried in the UK, he'd be charged if it had progressed to the point the Swedish case has.
So, let's say they (in this one very special case) allow an accused criminal to dictate the terms of his own questioning, and question him by telephone in his hidey-hole in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Based on that, they indeed decide to charge him.
What then? They can't arrest him if he's outside of Swedish jurisdiction (like Britain; or Ecuador). Are they supposed to extradite him a second time?
Let's suppose that you had maintained a presence on a domain for a number of years, call it "stonemirror.net".
Let's further suppose that a "troll" (more accurately, an online stalker and harasser) purchases the domain "stonemirror.org" and puts up a pro-NAMBLA web site with your name on it.
That happened to me, and the person who's harassing Rachel Marone — Jason Christopher Hughes aka Michael Rudra Nath — is the person who did it to me.
Suppose that someone set up a Facebook profile impersonating you, and attempted to get your friends and family to add it. Suppose further that he preemptively blocked your real profile, so you could neither see nor report it yourself.
That also happened to me, and Jason Christopher Hughes aka Michael Rudra Nath is also the person who did that.
What's the collective wisdom of Slashdot on dealing with such things?
Man must shape his tools lest they shape him. -- Arthur R. Miller