WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange repeatedly violated his asylum conditions and tried to use the Ecuadorian Embassy in London as a center for spying, Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
London police dragged Assange out of the embassy Thursday after his seven-year asylum was revoked, paving the way for his extradition to the U.S. for one of the biggest-ever leaks of classified information.
Assange’s relationship with his hosts collapsed after Ecuador accused him of leaking information about Moreno’s personal life.
Moreno denied to the Guardian that he had acted as a reprisal for the way in which documents about his family had been leaked.
He said he regretted that Assange had used the embassy to interfere in other country’s democracies.
“Any attempt to destabilise is a reprehensible act for Ecuador, because we are a sovereign nation and respectful of the politics of each country,” Moreno told the Guardian by email.
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“We cannot allow our house, the house that opened its doors, to become a centre for spying,” the Guardian quoted Moreno as saying.
Assange supporters said Ecuador had betrayed him at the behest of Washington, that the ending of his asylum was illegal and that it marked a dark moment for press freedom.
German and Spanish lawmakers protested against Assange’s detention Monday, gathering outside a London prison to urge Britain and the EU to prevent his extradition to the United States.
Two far-left German MPs, Heike Hansel and Sevim Dagdelen of Die Linke, and a Spanish Green member of the European Parliament, Ana Miranda, had been due to meet their “friend” Assange in London’s Ecuadoran Embassy later Monday.
Instead, following his expulsion and arrest last week, they protested outside the top-security Belmarsh Prison in southeast London where he is being held, carrying placards demanding his release.
“We are faced with a humanitarian imperative now that Assange is in U.K. custody and a U.S. extradition request is out for him, after high ranking officials of the U.S. - including President Donald Trump - have threatened the publisher with death,” Miranda said.
The WikiLeaks founder is in custody awaiting sentencing for breaching his British bail conditions in 2012 by seeking refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden.
The U.S. indictment charges Assange with “conspiracy” for working with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password stored on Department of Defense computers in March 2010. Extradition to the U.S. would set “a dangerous precedent” for journalists worldwide, Miranda said, adding: “This threatens to criminalize journalism globally.”
This article has been adapted from its original source.
