Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrested by British police on Thursday after nearly seven years holed up at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Since 2012, Julian Assange has been living at Ecuador’s embassy when he took refuge there.
Assange sought refuge at the London embassy to avoid being deported to Sweden. In Sweden, he was to be questioned by the authorities, a part of a sexual assault investigation. He feared of expelling from the United States as there, federal prosecutors were investigating Wikileaks.
Julian Assange 47, is a Wikileaks founder, an international publishing organization which used to publish a huge cache of official documents. British government started a criminal investigation into Wikileaks after 2010.
In 2010, Sweden also issued an arrest warrant against Assange for sexual assault which later was dropped. He pleaded for asylum and asked Britain for an assurance that he would not be extradited to America where he could face the death penalty. He was granted asylum and was a refugee in Ecuador embassy.
Assange’s asylum was withdrawn on 11 April 2019 following a series of disputes with the Ecuadorian authorities.
He leaked information about President Lenin Moreno’s personal life violating the terms of his asylum. “Wikileaks founder had tried to set up a ‘center for spying’ in Ecuador’s London embassy”, said President Lenin Moreno.
According to the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), they were invited by the Ambassador into the Ecuadorian embassy for the government’s withdrawal of asylum status. He will soon be presented to the court of the Westminster Magistrates. He is under custody awaiting the sentence for breaching British bail conditions in 2012.
