London's cash-strapped police will no longer keep officers stationed outside the Ecuadorean embassy to catch WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up inside for over three years, the force said.
The UK is to make a formal protest to the government of Ecuador over the country's decision to harbor Julian Assange, the Foreign Office has said. The Wikileaks co-founder sought asylum at London's Ecuadorean embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden.
Julian Assange, founder of the anti-secrecy organisation Wikileaks, has said the conviction of US Army Private Bradley Manning on spying charges is a dangerous precedent.
Ecuador has asked the UK to help an investigation over alleged spying at its embassy in London where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is living. Ecuador named a British company it claimed planted a listening device in their ambassador's office but this was denied.
Nine people who put up bail for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, including two members of the British aristocracy and a Nobel Prize winner, were ordered to pay 93,000 pounds on Monday after Assange took refuge in Ecuador's embassy.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange currently holed in the Ecuadorean embassy in London said that “Argentina's support is very important, because Argentina has experience with facing the UK”.
Ecuador proposed on Friday transferring Wikileaks founder Julian Assange from its embassy in London where he has taken refuge to that in Sweden where he is a suspect of sex related crimes. However this depends on Britain and there has been no official reaction to the proposal.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said that any suggestion of a risk of breach for Julian Assange’s human rights on extradition to Sweden is completely unfounded and recalled that international, EU and UK law fully address the concerns raised by Assange and by the Government of Ecuador.
A newspaper columnist who fled Ecuador after he was sentenced to jail and ordered to pay millions of dollars in a libel case pushed by President Rafael Correa has been granted asylum in the United States, his lawyer said on Thursday.
The Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange are “two of a kind” because of the multiple abuses to freedom of expression committed by both, wrote Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa in one of his weekly columns on current affairs.