A prominent diplomat of the country offering asylum to the founder of WikiLeaks, has said that it is time Ecuador ends its asylum for Julian Assange.
The diplomat, José Ayala Lasso, was a three-time foreign minister for Ecuador, as well as the first United Nations Human Rights Commissioner.
Mr Lasso wrote an opinion piece in El Comerico that the recent leak of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails by Assange shows that the WikiLeaks founder wants to meddle in the internal politics of a country, and therefore should not be granted asylum by Ecuador.
In July 2016, WikiLeaks published emails of the DNC, revealing that the Democratic Party ‘s top officials were pro-Hillary Clinton, giving the former first lady an undue advantage over Bernie Sanders who was also contesting for the nomination of the party. The leak led to the resignation of the then chairperson of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman. Many supporters of Mr Sanders have said they would not vote for Clinton in the presidential election because she cheated to become the nominee of the party.
Lasso said Ecuador is granting asylum to “time bomb” Assange in a bid to achieve some international notoriety rather than the humanitarian reasons it claims.
Mr Assange has been in the embassy of Ecuador in London for four years now. He fears that when he leaves the embassy, the United Kingdom will extradite him to Sweden, where he is wanted for sexual assault allegations. Assange also fears that the Swedish authorities will further extradite him to the United States, where he is wanted for leaking top secret information to the rest of the world.
Mr Lasso insisted that allowing Assange to influence political activities under the protection of Ecuador, is very detrimental to the South American country’s image. He said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin would be more satisfied with the victory of Trump in the United States presidential elections in November, adding that it was Russia who hacked the DNC emails and gave it to Assange.
Responding to Lasso’s claims, Wikileaks said his opinion has confirmed that the government of Ecuador is under serious pressure to hand Assange to Sweden and the United States.
In February 2016, a United Nations human rights panel said Mr Assange has been arbitrarily detained by the United Kingdom and Sweden. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention then ruled that Assange’s detention should end with immediate effect, and that he should also be entitled to compensation.
Ecuador govt under serious pressure to censor Assange over #DNCLeak & criticism of Clinton https://t.co/GYrYbdHyhd & https://t.co/x9zN4NKdof
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 8, 2016
“The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention considers that the various forms of deprivation of liberty to which Julian Assange has been subjected constitute a form of arbitrary detention. The Working Group maintains that the arbitrary detention of Mr Assange should be brought to an end, that his physical integrity and freedom of movement be respected, and that he should be entitled to an enforceable right to compensation,” the panel said.
Meanwhile, Ecuadorian authorities have announced that they have reached an agreement with Swedish prosecutors, who want to question Assange over his alleged sexual crimes, inside its London embassy.
The Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry said that they have been encouraging Sweden to interrogate Assange in their London embassy since 2012.
According to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry, in December 2015, Ecuador and Sweden signed an agreement of mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, which has provide the legal framework for the questioning of the WikiLeaks founder in their London embassy.
“In the coming weeks, a date will be set for the proceedings to be held at the embassy of Ecuador in the United Kingdom, in reference to the open legal case in Sweden against Citizen Julian Assange. For more than four years, the government of Ecuador has offered to cooperate in facilitating the questioning of Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, as well as proposing other political and legal measures, in order to reach a satisfactory solution for all parties involved in the legal case against Julian Assange,” the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry said in an official statement on Wednesday August 11 2016.
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