His release by Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill triggered an international controversy, sparking outrage among the relatives of US victims.
In response, companies like Amazon and PayPal cut off their digital services to Wikileaks, prompting outrage from supporters of that organization and consternation from those of us worried about the reliance on private companies for public information.
This "tradition" is not something you will find in the US. What many would see as a fairly innocuous picture of John Boehner received a fair bit of outrage from readers of the Plain Dealer in Ohio, yet the reason for publication was simply one of meeting a deadline.