Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has few places to hide
Everyone, in this case, is the US - where government lawyers are hoping to prosecute on espionage charges - and the European Union, where he is wanted for questioning in connection with a Swedish rape investigation.
As of Tuesday, Mr Assange has also been liable to arrest in any of the 188 member countries of Interpol - from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe - and to be extradited from there to Sweden.
Last seen in London, he is widely assumed to be in the UK now, though remaining continuously on the move.
If he appeared in public, British police would be obliged to arrest him under a European Arrest Warrant issued by the Swedish authorities - though it's not clear that anyone is going to go out of their way to find him.
"If there is no indication that the accused is in a particular region, you won't expect a police force to investigate," said a spokesman for the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).
So, supposing Mr Assange is still in the UK, and he lies low, he may be able to avoid arrest. In spring, however, his six-month visa will run out, creating additional problems for him.
WhispersIt would not be safe for him to appear in person at a news conference, but he has shown this week that he can continue to communicate with journalists virtually - via video recorded on a mobile phone or via Skype.
According to New York Times reporter John F Burns, who interviewed Mr Assange in October, he changes mobile phones "the way other men change shirts", uses cash instead of credit cards and stays either with friends, or in hotels under false names.
When the two men met in a London Ethiopian restaurant, Mr Assange spoke in a whisper, for fear of eavesdropping by Western intelligence agencies.
A journalist who met Mr Assange earlier this year told the BBC his "over-suspicious" behaviour made the meeting unnecessarily awkward.
"You ask him a harmless question - and he looks at you as if to ask 'Why do you want to know?'" the journalist said.
At that point, Mr Assange was not a wanted man. It's only recently that has freedom of movement has been seriously curtailed.
In April he travelled to the National Press Club in Washington to show a video of a US military helicopter killing 12 people in Baghdad in 2007, including two Reuters journalists.
His position became more precarious in July, after Wikileaks made public 77,000 US military documents on the Afghan conflict in July, and even more so after the publication of nearly 400,000 secret papers on the Iraq war in October.
Espionage chargeHe was still able to unveil the Iraq documents to the media at a news conference in London, though US officials were already muttering then about a possible espionage prosecution.
A senior Pentagon official told the Associated Press this week that lawyers from the Justice, State and Defense departments were now actively discussing whether or not some kind of charge could be made to stick.
A possible obstacle to a prosecution under the Espionage Act could be the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech and freedom of the press.
But experts quoted by the Associated Press also raised the possibility of other charges, such as theft of government property, receipt of stolen government property, mishandling of classified documents, or aiding and abetting illegal leaks of documents by government employees.
It has also been suggested that the First Amendment might not prevent Mr Assange being charged under the Espionage Act with wilfully withholding information in defiance of an official demand for its return. Just such a demand was made by the State Department on Saturday, before the latest release of US diplomatic cables.
Rape allegation
After the Afghan document release, Mr Assange travelled to Sweden and applied for residence and a work permit.
With its strong traditions of press freedom, the country could have become a safe haven. However, he soon faced allegations of rape and sexual molestation from two Swedish women, which now represent the most immediate threat to his liberty.
He denies any wrongdoing, saying he had consensual sex with both women.
IIn November a warrant was issued for his arrest, to enable Swedish prosecutors to question him, followed by the European Arrest Warrant. One appeal against the Swedish warrant has failed; a second is pending.
Mr Assange's London lawyer, Mark Stephens, has argued that the European Arrest Warrant is invalid, because his client has not been charged. However, SOCA says no charge is necessary - it is sufficient that the individual is "facing prosecution".
In the midst of these legal proceedings, in October, Sweden rejected his request for residency.
Subsequently, Mr Assange is said to have raised the possibility of taking refuge in Switzerland or Iceland.
'Red notice'
While both are members of Interpol and both have extradition treaties with the US, this does not automatically make them hostile territory for him.
A "red notice" issued by Interpol on Tuesday informing all of its 188 member countries that he is wanted in Sweden does not legally oblige any of them to hand Mr Assange over - though a spokesman said told the BBC that "usually they feel duty bound to do so".
Equally, while a country that has signed an extradition treaty with the US might usually be expected to give him up, it might not if the crime was regarded as a political one.
Ecuador briefly appeared a promising haven earlier this week, when deputy foreign minister Kintto Lucas said he would be welcome to take up residence there - but President Rafael Correa subsequently dismissed the idea.
Another possible destination might in theory have been Australia, as Mr Assange was born there and holds an Australian passport. However, this does not in practice look like a good choice for the Wikileaks founder.
Like Iceland and Switzerland, Australia is also a member of Interpol and has an extradition treaty with the US. In addition, Australia's Attorney General, Robert McClelland, said this week that police were investigating whether the latest round of Wikileaks disclosures had broken Australian law.
Furthermore, a senior Australian official once warned Mr Assange that since he played "outside the rules", he would be dealt with outside the rules - or so he told the New York Times.
Whichever country Mr Assange aims for next, his biggest problem could be getting there.
If he is currently in a European Union member state, he risks arrest as soon as he presents his passport at the border.
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WikiLeaks founder stays underground as servers booted
Shane MacLeod reported this story on Thursday, December 2, 2010 12:20:00
SHANE MCLEOD: Wikileaks says its founder Julian Assange is going to stay in hiding because he may be at risk of being assassinated.
A spokeswoman for the website says the Australian citizen will maintain a low profile amidst calls by some for his arrest and prosecution for releasing sensitive diplomatic cables.
The self-styled whistleblower is starting to suffer setbacks on another front.
It has been kicked off its servers in the United States run by web-host Amazon.Com.
Amazon hasn't made any comment - but the decision has been applauded by the US Senator Joe Lieberman -- who heads the Homeland Security Committee.
He says Amazon made the 'right decision' and has set a standard for other companies that WikiLeaks is using to distribute its material.
WikiLeaks says it'll move its data to servers in Europe.
Earlier I spoke to Professor Scott Silliman, an expert on national security law at Duke University.
I asked him what options the US had to try to force WikiLeaks offline.
SCOTT SILLIMAN: The options as far as trying to take the site down are very, very limited. As best we know, the site is licensed in Iceland, that's where the server is and there is very little that the United States can do legally to shut down the site.
It has certainly a right operate on the Internet so there is not a really good legal option for the United States with regard to WikiLeaks itself.
SHANE MCLEOD: What about Julian Assange?
SCOTT SILLIMAN: Well as your listeners may have been hearing, the United States is at least proposing to bring a criminal investigation and a criminal prosecution against Assange. That is going to be difficult because that statute that is being looked at, what we call a part of our Espionage Act in the United States, that dates back to 1917, has very rarely been used against people who claim to be journalists or part of the media.
And therefore it is not really an appropriate statute in order to assure any kind of conviction against him.
SHANE MCLEOD: And part of the problem assumedly would be that he's not the only person using this information, you have reporters from The New York Times, from The Guardian, who are accessing these cables and writing stories about them.
SCOTT SILLIMAN: You're exactly correct Shane, and that's the problem. As well, some of the information is not classified and will the government be able to show that there is grave damage to the United States because of that information?
And there is a further issue, Shane, that even if the statute would be amenable to a criminal case against Assange, how does the United States get him here for trial?
Presumably he's somewhere is Europe. There is an INTERPOL red notice out so that anyone who locates him or knows about where he is is supposed to notify the authorities so he could be brought back to Sweden where he is under charges involving rape and sexual molestation.
But if he's found in one of these countries and the United States tries to get him brought to the United States for trial, that country will possibly say it's a political offence, it's not one that we recognise and we're prepared to send him to Sweden but not to the United States.
SHANE MCLEOD: What role does Australia have to play in this given that he is an Australian citizen?
SCOTT SILLIMAN: Well if in fact, Shane, there is a law in Australia that Julian Assange actually violated then in theory if he could be found or brought to Australia he could be criminally prosecuted.
I'm not aware of your legal system and your criminal laws but my suspicion is that releasing classified information, classified in the United States under our rules for classification, may not necessarily be an offence in Australia.
SHANE MCLEOD: Going back to the website itself, in the last few hours WikiLeaks has had to move the servers that it uses to host this material and it seems that this has happened because Amazon, the web service company, the bookseller, has asked them to remove it or has insisted that they remove it from their servers.
And this seems to have been applauded by Senator Joe Lieberman from the Homeland Security Committee. How is it that Amazon has been compelled or persuaded to take that action against WikiLeaks?
SCOTT SILLIMAN: Well I don't think it's necessarily an action against WikiLeaks Shane. My understanding is that WikiLeaks the site was subject to a very great denial of service attack and that WikiLeaks in order to protect its site basically requested Amazon to temporarily host the site on Amazon facilities.
Amazon obviously then made the decision that it no longer wanted to host WikiLeaks. So I'm not sure that the United States Government was directly involved in forcing Amazon com to change its mind. It could have been but Amazon com has had a problem in the past with regard to some of the books that it has been marketing and it may be sensitive to public pressure.
But Congress could not have made Amazon make the decision to deny WikiLeaks the opportunity to operate off its website. It was decision probably made by corporate management and nothing more than that.
SHANE MCLEOD: Is this going to be the most effective tool then against WikiLeaks, to target the companies that host this material and I guess politically pressure them into taking the information offline?
SCOTT SILLIMAN: Well again, I don't know. The danger in that Shane is that if in fact you've got different countries that are trying to put pressure on WikiLeaks by denying them the opportunity to operate off servers in their country, you may have other countries that will respond in the other way and say we'd love to have your site on any of our host computers.
So I'm not sure it's going to be that effective. I think the real question is, there are many people, many countries that are actually applauding what Julian Assange has done. It's produced information which I think many would say is embarrassing to the United States and there are many countries that like to see that happen.
So I think trying to have a political solution to this is not going to be the answer.
SHANE MCLEOD: And you again have the problem that the material is being hosted on news organisations' websites as well as WikiLeaks.
SCOTT SILLIMAN: That's correct, The Guardian, Le Monde, The New York Times in the United States. They have received all this information so you have basically multiplied your problem as far as trying to deal with that initial and subsequent information dump.
SHANE MCLEOD: Professor Scott Silliman, from Duke University in the United States.
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