[ad_1]
Julian Assange announced Friday that he was suing the Ecuadorian government for "violation of his fundamental rights", claiming that his longtime hosts at the country's embbady in London were limiting his contacts with the outside world and censored his speech.
His legal team in the case, headed by former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, revealed the lawsuit at a press conference in Quito, where the lawsuit was filed. The purpose of this action is to prevent new strict rules governing visitors and Assange's online activities from entering into force.
The policies in effect were set out in a nine-page memo published by a press site this month. (They include instructions to clean her bathroom and look after her cat.)
Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been living at the embbady since 2012, when he applied for asylum to avoid being extradited to Sweden because of rape charges. This case was filed last year, but remained there, fearing prosecution in the United States for publishing government documents leaked by WikiLeaks.
The new memo asks Mr. Assange to avoid any speech or activity that may be considered political or harming relations between Ecuador and other countries. . And he threatened to revoke his asylum if he did not respect the conditions.
The regulation stipulated that he had to apply for permission to greet visitors and provide them with profiles of their social networks and the serial numbers of the electronic devices they would bring with them. their. The note specified that he had to connect to the Internet using only the wireless network of the Embbady and recalled that the Embbady was not responsible for any of his communications.
It also concerned more personal matters, including the cleaning of his bathroom and the maintenance of his washroom. cat, that he had once declared to the New Yorker, he called it Michi, an Ecuadorian word for cat or cat-stro. (On Twitter, the animal is known as @EmbbadyCat .) The memo threatened to send Michi to an animal shelter if Mr. Assange did not comply with his obligations .
Noting the budget cuts, the memo indicated that in December, he could no longer afford Mr. Assange's daily expenses, including food, medical care and laundry.
Assange, 47, was born in Australia. Ecuador granted him citizenship in January, but some Ecuadorian lawmakers requested that it be canceled. Wikileaks claimed on Twitter on Thursday that the pressure exerted on him was the result of US pressure, the Ecuadorian Constitution prohibiting extradition.
Attempts to join Mr. Garzón on Friday did not succeed.
The Embbady has repeatedly suspended Mr. Assange 's Internet access, citing similar concerns regarding Ecuador' s relations with other countries. The most recent suspension began in March, after criticizing Western countries for expelling Russian diplomats as a result of the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain. Some of his supporters also speculated that Ecuador was responding to criticisms by Assange against the Spanish government of the arrests of Catalan separatists.
In an online statement, WikiLeaks also said that the embbady had refused to allow the general counsel of Human Resources. Rights Watch, Dinah PoKempner, visits Assange.
After this episode, Ms. PoKempner wrote that Mr. Assange's asylum "was becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from detention", and she called on Britain to reject extradition of Mr. Assange. In the United States
As a sign of closer ties between the United States and Ecuador, Moreno welcomed Vice President Mike Pence in June. Democratic senators urged Pence to put pressure on Moreno to Assange, saying WikiLeaks "is continuing its efforts to undermine democratic processes globally." The two men reportedly discussed the case.
[ad_2]
Source link
