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According to a news report, Ecuador could return the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, to the country's embbady in London and hand it over to the British authorities. President Lenin Moreno plans to negotiate a similar agreement with the United Kingdom in the near future and to remove the asylum in Assange, Rev. journalist Glenn Greenwald reported Saturday on the website "The Intercept".
Assange has been living at the Embbady of Ecuador for six good years. He had fled there to escape arrest and extradition to Sweden for alleged rape. Swedish justice closed its investigations in May of last year. However, the British authorities said that they would always stop him when leaving the embbady – because he had violated the law by fleeing to the country's representation.
The decision to include Assange at the Embbady was taken in 2012 by President Rafael Correa, Lenin Moreno has been in power since 2017. He described Assange as a "hacker," but pointed out that Assange was not expelled from the embbady. In the past, he had often called Assange "stone in the shoe" of his country.
Assange had always said that he feared to be extradited to the United States should he leave the embbady. Washington blames him for publishing explosive US documents of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq via the WikiLeaks platform. In the past, WikiLeaks also released stolen e-mails from the Democratic Party, allegedly stealing Russian pirates, damaging Hillary Clinton, who was eventually defeated by Donald Trump
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently reiterated his allegations against Assange. However, it is not clear whether the United States would require the surrender of WikiLeaks' founder – and how the chances of success in this case would be at all.
Greenwald referred in his report to circles of the environment of the Ecuadorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Presidential Office. At the time, the journalist "Intercept" played a key role in handling the informant document Edward Snowden, who revealed a huge amount of surveillance on the Internet by the US intelligence agency NSA.
A few days ago, the editor-in-chief of the Russian channel "Russia Today", Margarita Simonjan, writes on Twitter that even the days are set UK. Assange had for a while a program on the channel, which is considered in the West as a propaganda tool of the Russian government.
Costly protection for the permanent guest
There were tensions between Assange and the authorities of Ecuador. He lost access to the Internet after criticizing the Spanish government in its dispute with the province of Catalonia, violating his host's request to withhold political messages.
In May, Ecuador suspended additional guarantees for Assange. The building will also be protected from other embbadies in the South American country, the government said. The protection program, which has been recording all Australian activities 24 hours a day for more than five years, is costing its hosts about $ 66,000 a month, according to media reports. The program is intended to protect Assange against dangers. A source of danger would be the British police, who apparently would be able to invade the embbady under a medical pretext and arrest Assange
On the other side of the fence, the British government also costs part of the surveillance. Police are posted 24 hours a day in front of the Embbady of Ecuador. They should be careful that the co-founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, does not leave the message unnoticed. The 24-hour check costs the equivalent of € 11,000 a day, police said on request.
Assange had announced that he would give up his exile and voluntarily surrender to the United States if Chelsea Manning were to be released. It is considered a source for some of the most famous revelations of WikiLeaks. When Manning left the prison after US President Barack Obama's appeal last May, the founder of WikiLeaks celebrated it as a victory, but did not follow his announcement.
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