Ecuador rejects claims that Assange was treated unfairly

Ecuador said Monday that it was not unfairly targeting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange when it revoked his asylum last week.

Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Jose Valencia speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the residence of the ambassador of Ecuador to the U.S. in Washington, Monday April 15, 2019. [Photo: AP]

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister José Valencia said Assange's behavior was "undeserving, disrespectful" and he pointed to a video published by the newspaper El País. The short video with no audio appears to show Assange arguing with an official inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

"An image is worth a thousand words, and there are several images," Valencia said.

Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer representing Assange, has alleged that Ecuador's government spread lies about his behavior at its embassy.

Valencia spoke with The Associated Press in an interview during a five-day visit to Washington with President Lenín Moreno. Neither will be having meetings with officials from the Trump administration.

In the interview, the foreign minister said that a Swedish citizen who lived in the capital of Quito and visited Assange multiple times in London was arrested recently "because there is suspicion about his possible participation in criminal activities in Ecuador, related to information technology."

The Swedish programmer has been identified as Ola Bini.

Valencia said the Ecuadorian government has other videos of Assange recorded by security cameras in public areas of the embassy which will be released if necessary as part of a criminal investigation.

Valencia also said that Ecuador made a "sovereign decision" when it ended Assange's protected status after more than 6½ years and opened the way for his arrest last week.

He denied any influence or pressure by the United States.

After his arrest by British authorities, the Justice Department charged Assange with taking part in a computer hacking conspiracy, accusing him of scheming with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break a password for a classified government computer.

In Quito, the Ecuadorian government on Monday released three diplomatic communications from British authorities saying Assange would not be extradited to a country that imposes the death penalty.

The three communications, dated March 7, 2018; August 10, 2018; and April 3, 2019, were signed by either then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson or his replacement, Jeremy Hunt.

According to The Washington Post, the president of Ecuador has accused Julian Assange of using its embassy in London as a “center for spying.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Lenín Moreno expressed frustration with the WikiLeaks founder, who had been provided asylum by Ecuador since 2012. On Thursday, the country revoked that asylum, leading to Assange’s arrest by British police on a U.S. hacking charge. This follows Moreno’s initial public address the same day, which explained that Assange was being kicked out for his behavior and for violating the terms of his asylum.

“We cannot allow our house, the house that opened its doors, to become a center for spying,” Moreno told the Guardian. “This activity violates asylum conditions. Our decision is not arbitrary but is based on international law.”

The allegations appear to stem in part from a batch of leaked personal photos of Moreno and his family that appeared last month on an anonymous website, while the president was in the midst of a political battle at home. Moreno blamed WikiLeaks for the release of the photos, the New York Times reported.

“Any attempt to destabilize is a reprehensible act for Ecuador, because we are a sovereign nation and respectful of the politics of each country,” he told the Guardian. Before evicting Assange, Moreno said he sought assurances from Britain that Assange would not “suffer torture, ill treatment or the death penalty” were he to be taken into custody or extradited to another country.

He also claimed that Assange had taxed his hosts’ patience. Moreno said he “mistreated our officials in the Ecuadoran embassy in London” and that his “improper hygienic behavior” affected the climate at the diplomatic outpost.

Assange’s attorney, Jennifer Robinson, said in an interview on Sky News that Moreno’s claims were “not true.”

“Ecuador has been making some pretty outrageous allegations over the past few days to justify what was an unlawful and extraordinary act in allowing British police to come inside an embassy,” she said.

Robinson had previously called her client’s arrest “a dangerous precedent for all news media.”

Moreno’s predecessor, Rafael Correa, called the decision to release Assange to authorities a “crime that humanity will never forget.” Correa had granted Assange asylum in 2012.

Assange has been charged by U.S. prosecutors on suspicion of conspiring with Chelsea Manning to obtain secret military and diplomatic documents, The Washington Post reported last week. However, Assange’s extradition to the United States could take years.

It’s the latest chapter in a nearly decade-long legal saga for Assange. He brought himself and WikiLeaks to prominence in 2010, when the organization published leaks from Manning, who was convicted in 2013 for the leaks.

But that same year, Swedish authorities issued an arrest warrant for Assange over two allegations of sexual assault, which he has always denied (Swedish authorities later dropped the investigations). Assange traveled to Britain, where a court ruled in 2012 to extradite him to Sweden. But he jumped bail and entered the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, where he was granted asylum later that year.

He had been confined to the embassy until his arrest last week.

(Story includes material sourced from AP and The Washington Post.)