In August 2012, a Metropolitan Police officer stationed outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London was photographed carrying a clipboard with handwritten notes that inadvertently revealed the official arrest strategy for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The Clipboard: Arrest Under All Circumstances

The document, marked “restricted,” contained a summary of the Met’s current position on Assange’s asylum inside the embassy in Knightsbridge. The key directive was unambiguous: “Action required: Assange to be arrested under all circumstances.”

The notes outlined specific scenarios police were prepared for, including the possibility that Assange might attempt to leave the embassy disguised as or accompanied by a diplomat, concealed inside a diplomatic bag (which could range in size from a suitcase to a shipping container under diplomatic immunity rules), or transported in a diplomatic vehicle. Each scenario carried the same instruction: arrest.

Counter-Terrorism Units Involved

Two details in the notes raised particular concern among Assange’s supporters. The document referenced “SS10 to liaise,” which observers speculated was a misspelling of SO10 — the Met’s covert operations group. More alarmingly, it mentioned SO20, the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism protective security command.

The involvement of counter-terrorism units suggested that British authorities may have been treating the WikiLeaks case with the same operational seriousness typically reserved for terrorism suspects, lending weight to claims by Assange and his legal team that Western governments viewed him not merely as a fugitive from a Swedish arrest warrant but as a security threat.

Context: Asylum and the European Arrest Warrant

Assange had entered the Ecuadorean embassy seeking political asylum to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced allegations of rape and sexual assault. He and his supporters maintained that the Swedish case was a pretext for eventual extradition to the United States, where he could face prosecution for WikiLeaks’ publication of classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents.

Police officers were positioned immediately outside both the front and rear exits of the embassy, and Assange reported hearing officers “swarming” behind the fire escape. The accidental exposure of the arrest strategy document illustrated the intensity of the surveillance operation and the determination of British authorities to prevent any escape, regardless of what diplomatic protections Ecuador might attempt to extend.

The incident became one of the more memorable security blunders in the years-long standoff that would keep Assange inside the embassy until April 2019.