WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London after 7 years of asylum
Thursday, April 11, 2019
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VietPress USA (April 11, 2019): WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has been arrested today on Thursday, April 11, 2019 at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, ending his seven-year asylum spell there. Assange was dragged out of the embassy and then sent to the court.
He appeared on Thursday afternoon at Westminster Magistrates Court, where he was found guilty of skipping bail. He will be sentenced at a later date.
According to Wikipedia, Julian Paul Assange (/əˈsɑːnʒ/;[ born Julian Paul Hawkins; 3 July 1971) is an Australian computer programmer and the founder and director of WikiLeaks.[2] He is currently in police custody in London after having been arrested on 11 April 2019 by the Metropolitan Police Service for breaching his bail conditions in December 2010. Immediately before his arrest, he had been under the protection of Ecuador as an asylum seeker, and had been living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012.
Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and came to international attention in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks provided by Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley Manning). These leaks included the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), and CableGate(November 2010). Following the 2010 leaks, the federal government of the United States launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and asked allied nations for assistance.
In November 2010, Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for Assange. He had been questioned there months earlier over allegations of sexual assault and rape.
Assange denied the allegations, and said that he would be extradited from Sweden to the United States because of his role in publishing secret American documents.. Assange surrendered to UK police on 7 December 2010 but was released on bail within 10 days. Having been unsuccessful in his challenge to the extradition proceedings, he breached his bail in June 2012 and absconded..
He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012 and remained in the Embassy of Ecuador in London until his arrest in April 2019. Assange has held Ecuadorian citizenship since 12 December 2017. Swedish prosecutors later dropped their investigation into the rape accusation against Assange; they applied to revoke the European arrest warrant in May 2017. The London Metropolitan Police indicated that an arrest warrant was in force for Assange's failure to surrender himself to his bail.
During the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, WikiLeaks hosted emails sent or received by candidate Hillary Clinton from her private email server when she was Secretary of State. The Democratic Party, along with cybersecurity experts, claimed that Russian intelligence had hacked the emails and leaked them to WikiLeaks; Assange consistently denied any connection to or cooperation with Russia in relation to the leaks, and stated the Clinton campaign was stoking "a neo-McCarthy hysteria".
Ecuadorian president Lenín Moreno said on 27 July 2018 that he had begun talks with British authorities to withdraw the asylum for Assange. UK police entered the London embassy at the invitation of the Ecuadorian ambassador and arrested Assange on 11 April 2019.
Assange is wanted in the US over an investigation into WikiLeaks' release of classified documents concerning the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) said the charge related specifically over conspiracy to commit computer intrusion "by cracking a password" with US whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who served 7 years in prison for the huge data leak. She was sent back to prison last month after refusing to testify against WikiLeaks.
Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno said the decision to remove Assange's asylum was made over "repeated violations" to international conventions and "daily life protocols."
In a brief video statement, Moreno described Assange's behaviour as "discourteous and aggressive," claiming the 47-year-old had made "hostile and threatening declarations" against his country.
The patience of Ecuador has reached its limit," Moreno said.
he Ecuadorian leader specifically cited WikiLeaks' release of a batch of Vatican documents earlier this year, before listing a number of activities at the embassy in London that he did not agree with.
Assange had installed electronic distortion equipment, blocked security cameras, accessed security files "without permission", and had "confronted and mistreated" embassy staff, he alleged.
Stressing the importance of human rights, Moreno requested the UK do not extradite Assange to a country where he could face the death penalty, such as the US.
Ecuador has reminded WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange once again that he cannot stay indefinitely in the nation’s London embassy.
The country’s foreign minister Jose Valencia told Teleamazonas that a permanent stay would not be good for Mr Assange’s “state of mind, his health”.
He said that if Mr Assange were to appear before the British justice system he would be guaranteed a fair trial and right to a defence.
London’s Metropolitan Police force said last week that officers would be obliged to execute an active warrant for Mr Assange’s arrest if he were to leave.
Mr Assange also fears the possibility of extradition to the US for publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks.
Mr Assange has lived in Ecuador’s embassy for over six years and relations with his host country have grown increasingly tense.
President Trump, who repeatedly touted WikiLeaks on the campaign trail in 2016, on Thursday denied knowing anything about the whistleblower website or its founder, Julian Assange, who was arrested in London earlier in the day.
Now Trump denied; “I know nothing about Wikileaks. It’s not my thing,” Trump told reporters inside the Oval Office when asked if he still loves WikiLeaks.
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Police arrest Julian Assange at Ecuadorian Embassy in London
London (CNN) British police entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Thursday, forcibly removing the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on a US extradition warrant and bringing his seven-year stint there to a dramatic close.
Video showed a heavily bearded Assange shouting and gesticulating as multiple officers hustled him into a waiting police van. He was arrested on charges that he skipped bail in the UK in 2012 and at the request of US authorities, London's Metropolitan police said.
Officers moved in after Ecuador withdrew his asylum and invited authorities into the embassy, citing Assange's bad behavior.
The US Department of Justice confirmed Assange had been indicted on a single charge of conspiring to steal military secrets with Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who supplied thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks.
The Department of Justice said that the indictment, signed on March 6 last year and unsealed Thursday, alleges Assange conspired "to assist Manning in cracking a password" on classified Department of Defense computer systems. He has not been indicted under the Espionage Act, as his supporters had feared. Such a move would likely have provoked protests from free-speech advocates.
Assange, who is from Australia, appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court in central London on Thursday afternoon, where he was charged with failing to surrender in 2012.
One of his lawyers argued that he declined to do so for fear that he would not receive a fair trial, forcing him to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
The judge, however, called Assange "a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest," finding him guilty of breaking his bail conditions. He faces up to 12 months in prison.
Assange must also appear for an extradition hearing on May 2, before which he will remain in custody.
Speaking to journalists in a scrum outside Westminster Magistrates Court on Thursday afternoon, Jennifer Robinson, a member of Assange's legal team, said they had been proven right in regards to their previous warnings that Assange would face extradition to United States for his "publishing activities" since 2010.
"I've just been with Mr. Assange in the police cell, he wants to thank all of his supporters for the ongoing support, and he said -- 'I told you so.' "
Robinson added her client was formally notified his asylum would be revoked by the Ecuadorian ambassador on Thursday morning.
Seven years in self-imposed exile
The WikiLeaks founder has been holed up at the embassy, yards from the Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, since 2012, when he was granted asylum as part of a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was facing allegations of sexual assault.
The Swedish case has since been dropped, but Assange feared US extradition due to his work with WikiLeaks and remained in the embassy. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Relations between Assange and staff became strained during his seven-year stay in the embassy. Ecuadorian officials claimed the WikiLeaks founder smeared feces of the walls of the building.
Ecuadorian authorities "tolerated things like Assange putting feces on the embassy walls and other behaviors far from the minimum respect that a guest can have," the country's Interior Minister María Paula Romo said.
Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno said in a video statement Thursday that his country withdrew Assange's asylum due to his "discourteous and aggressive behaviour," "the hostile and threatening declarations of his allied organization against Ecuador" and "the transgression of international treaties."
Assange "violated the norm of not intervening in internal affairs of other states," Moreno said. "The most recent incident occurred in January 2019, when WikiLeaks leaked Vatican documents. Key members of that organization visited Mr. Assange before and after such illegal acts," he added.
Those tense years in hiding came to an abrupt end on Thursday morning.
A lawyer for the US government said officers went to the embassy at 9:15 a.m. local time (4:15 a.m. ET). The ambassador then revoked Assange's asylum and met with him at 10 a.m. (5 a.m. ET). The lawyer said officers tried to introduce themselves, but Assange barged past them in an attempt to return to a private room.
He was eventually arrested at 10:15 a.m. (5:15 a.m. ET) but resisted and had to restrained, leading to dramatic scenes of British police hauling him by force out of the building. After being lifted into the waiting police van, he was taken directly to a police station where he was formally arrested.
Former President says charges are 'lies'
In July 2016, WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 emails from Democratic National Committee staffers that appeared to show the committee favoring presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders during the US presidential primary.
Assange then told CNN's Anderson Cooper that the email release was timed to coincide with the start of the Democratic National Convention.
A US court filing in November 2018 inadvertently revealed US government efforts to criminally charge Assange.
Ecuador's former President, Rafael Correa, told CNN that the revocation of Julian Assange's asylum is "incredible."
"It's incredible. We cannot imagine something like this. It's against international law; it's against the institution of asylum; it's against the Ecuadorian constitution, especially because since last year, Julian Assange has had Ecuadorian citizenship," Correa said.
Correa was in power when Assange requested asylum. He told CNN he agreed to shelter the WikiLeaks founder "not because we agree with what he did" but because "it was very clear that he didn't have the opportunity to have a fair lawsuit, a fair process in the US."
Responding to Assange's supposed violations, as outlined by Moreno earlier Thursday, Correa said: "They are lies. They're a justification for trying to justify this betrayal. It's the biggest betrayal perhaps in Latin-American history."
World reacts to arrest
President Donald Trump, when asked by reporters in the Oval Office whether he still "loves" WikiLeaks, said that he knows "nothing about Wikileaks."
"I know nothing really about him," Trump said of Assange, "That's not my deal in life," he added.
Trump had a history of supporting WikiLeaks before he was President, saying at one campaign rally in 2016: "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
On April 4, WikiLeaks tweeted from its verified account, "BREAKING: A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told @WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within "hours to days" using the #INAPapers offshore scandal as a pretext--and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest."
In a statement released Friday, Assange's own legal team said that expelling him from the embassy would "violate international refugee law."
"It will be a sad day for democracy if the UK and Ecuadorean governments are willing to act as accomplices to the Trump administration's determination to prosecute a publisher for publishing truthful information," the statement read.
The Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry denied the rumors in a statement, calling them "fake news" and adding that the allegation of a deal with the UK "misrepresents reality."
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