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QUITO (Reuters) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has filed a lawsuit in Ecuador against new asylum conditions in the London embassy in the Andean country, obliging him to pay medical expenses and phone calls, as well as cleaning up after her cat.
Ecuador created this month the new protocol governing his stay at the embassy. Attorney Baltasar Garzon told a press conference in Quito that the rules had been established without consulting the Australian national, who had sued Foreign Minister Jose Valencia in a court in Quito to have them changed. .
Assange has not had internet access since it closed in March, Garzon added, despite a WikiLeaks statement this week that it had been restored.
"He has been held in inhumane conditions for over six years," Garzon said. "Even imprisoned people receive phone calls paid by the state," he added, calling obligations to the cat "disparaging".
Garzon said that Valencia had been named in the lawsuit because he served as an intermediary between Assange and the Ecuadorian government.
Valencia said the government "will respond appropriately".
"The protocol is in line with international standards and Ecuadorian legislation," he told reporters Friday in the Ecuadorian city of Daule.
Assange's stay has become a growing embarrassment for Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, who said the asylum could not be eternal, but hesitated to expel him from the embassy for reasons related to his fundamental rights.
Assange thinks he would be handed over to the US to be sued for WikiLeaks' publication of hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents.
In 2012, the former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa granted asylum to Assange while he was trying to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning on alleged crimes of aggression sexual.
Sweden later dropped its investigation on Assange, but Britain announced that it would be arrested for violating the terms of his bail when he left the embassy.
In 2017, Ecuador granted citizenship to Assange and appointed him to a diplomatic post in Russia, but dismissed him after Britain refused to grant him diplomatic immunity , according to a document of the Ecuadorian government consulted by Reuters.
Written by Brian Ellsworth; Edited by Dan Grebler and Susan Thomas
