WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s years-long stint inside London’s Ecuadorian Embassy may soon come to an end pending the results of an imminent election, The Guardian newspaper reported Thursday.
Ecuadorean presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso plans to punt the WikiLeaks chief from his current residence if he overcomes the odds and emerges victorious after voters cast their ballots on Feb. 19, he told The Guardian this week.
“The Ecuadorian people have been paying a cost that we should not have to bear,” Mr. Lasso, a member of the right-wing Creo-Suma alliance, told the newspaper. “We will cordially ask Señor Assange to leave within 30 days of assuming a mandate.”
Mr. Assange, 45, entered Ecuador’s Embassy in London in June 2012 and was granted political asylum by President Rafael Correa two months later, in turn shielding him from an arrest warrant issued by Swedish prosecutors with regards to sexual assault allegations dating back to 2010.
In light of having published classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents through his website WikiLeaks, Mr. Assange has expressed concerns that personally answering to prosecutors in Stockholm would lend to him being inevitably extradited stateside and indicted for espionage.
He has resided exclusively within the embassy for nearly five years under the relentlessly watchful eye of British authorities, notwithstanding mounting costs for the U.K. and Ecuador in addition to triggering a situation described by an United Nations working group as “arbitrary detention” in violation of international law.
Mr. Assange was interrogated on behalf of Swedish prosecutors inside the embassy in November 2016 in lieu of traveling abroad, but Stockholm has yet to decide whether it’ll continue to pursue a rape case against the Australian-born publisher. Speaking to The Guardian three months later, Ecuador’s foreign minister urged Sweden to make its decision already.
“We would like the next step to be tomorrow,” Guillaume Long told the newspaper. “We hope they are as swift as possible because this has been going on for far too long,” he said with respect to Sweden.
“Our staff have been through a lot. There is a human cost,” he added. “This is probably the most watched embassy on the planet.”
WikiLeaks referred The Washington Times to remarks attributed to Mr. Assange’s legal team when reached for comment on Thursday.
“Ecuador as a state has domestic and international legal obligations to protect its refugees from persecution which it has shown significant courage in upholding. Assange faces life-imprisonment or death in the United States over his publishing work. The U.S. Department of Justice states that its ’national security’ case against Mr. Assange remains ’active and ongoing’. The United Nations has twice found within the last year that Ecuador’s position in relation to Mr. Assange is correct,” the statement said in full.
Mr. Lasso was 7 points behind the ruling party candidate, front-runner Lenín Moreno, according to the latest poll cited by The Guardian in Thursday’s report.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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