Former Arizona Gov. Raul Castro, who in the 1970s served as the state's first and only Hispanic governor, and U.S. ambassador to Argentina,was detained at a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint for 30 minutes in the triple-digit desert heat just a day after he underwent heart treatment. Castro was removed from his car and taken to a sweltering tent for inspection after his pacemaker apparently set off a radiation sensor on the highway, about 24 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.* "I don’t condemn them for doing a job,” said Castro, “but once I was identified and I was 96 years of age and told them I had medical treatment the day before, I expected a little more."

He spoke further to Arizona's The Republic:

"The sun was blazing on me," he said. "Once I identified myself, who I was, and that I had been to the doctor, I was under medical care, I have a pacemaker on my heart, (I would have thought) that they would have been more considerate and said, 'Keep on going.' But that didn't happen."

Castro's wife said of the incident, "It's traumatic, to say the least, for an old man," and that the Border Patrol officials need to use "more common sense."

The checkpoint incident happened on June 12, as Castro was headed from his home in the border town of Nogales to a luncheon in Tucson to celebrate his 96th birthday. The car was driven by Anne Doan, daughter of former Nogales, Ariz., Mayor Arthur Doan and a family friend of the Castros.

Doan, who is also a professor at the University of Arizona, was a bit more critical in a column she wrote for Nogales International:

"I was embarrassed as I watched the governor being needlessly treated like a nuclear threat, especially because they knew he had just had a treatment at Tucson Heart Hospital the day before. I felt he was being disrespected as a senior citizen, much less the amazing statesman that he is."

Alessandra Soler, executive director of the American Civil Liberties of Arizona, said Castro's experience with agents was not unique.

"This happens all the time in terms of these types of indiscriminate stops of individuals not suspected of any wrongdoing," Soler said, "Agents should have used discretion instead of relying solely on technology," in deciding to detain the former Governor.

* The ACLU notes that the US Border Control does "not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a 'routine search'" on areas within 100 miles of the "external boundary" of the US, an area which the ACLU estimates includes two thirds of the US population, or 197.4 million people.

UPDATE: Salon interviewed former AZ Gov. Castro, and apparently this was not his first run-in with the border patrol...or even the second! Full story here.

British authorities have demanded that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange present himself at Belgravia police station at 11.30am on Friday. According to the Guardian, "This is standard practice in extradition cases and is the first step in the removal process," and "Failing to surrender would be a further breach of conditions and he is liable to arrest." But if he complies, police may arrest him immediately, because he has breached the terms of his bail.

Reuters reports:

On Thursday, British police summoned Assange to a London police station, demanding he leave the embassy. But Assange later told BBC television in a telephone interview: "Our advice is that asylum law both internationally and domestically in the UK takes precedence to extradition law, so the answer is almost certainly not."

On Sunday, Ecuador's ambassador to the UK left London to return home for talks on Assange's application for asylum. Assange remains under Ecuador's protection while it considers the application, and is "beyond the reach of the police" while he remains in the building.

Earlier this week, a letter signed by leading US figures in support of Assange's application for political asylum in Ecuador was delivered to the country's London embassy. Among its signatories were Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Noam Chomsky and Danny Glover. Others who put their names to it included the author Naomi Wolf, comedian Bill Maher and Daniel Ellsberg, the former US military analyst turned whistleblower, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and has been a long-standing supporter of Assange.