Michael Ratner, a member of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s legal team, reacts to the breaking news that Ecuador has approved Assange’s request for political asylum two months after Assange took refuge in its London embassy. Britain says it still plans to extradite Assange to Sweden, where he faces questioning for alleged sexual misconduct. "The British ought to just back off, and the U.S. ought to just back off," Ratner says. "For the British to say that they’re going to go into the embassy and get out someone who’s been granted asylum would turn the refugee convention and asylum completely on its head. … [Assange] has a right to leave that embassy, get on a plane and go to Ecuador. … That’s the law." 


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Michael Ratner (June 13, 1943 – May 11, 2016) was an American attorney. For much of his career, he was president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit human rights litigation organization based in New York City, and president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) based in Berlin. Ratner "will be most remembered for filing Rasul v. Bush, the first lawsuit challenging President Bush's wartime detentions." He was co-counsel in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States Supreme Court, which ruled for the detainees' right to test the legality of their detentions in US courts, saying that the Guantanamo base was effectively an extension of US territory and covered by US law.

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