LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was forcibly bundled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and into a waiting British police van on Thursday, setting up a potential court battle over attempts to extradite him to the U.S. to face charges related to the publication of tens of thousands of secret government documents.
British police arrested Assange after the South American nation decided to revoke the political asylum that had given Assange sanctuary for almost seven years. Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno said he took the action due to “repeated violations to international conventions and daily life.”
“The discourteous and aggressive behavior of Mr. Julian Assange, the hostile and threatening declarations of its allied organization, against Ecuador, and especially the transgression of international treaties, have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Mr. Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable,” Moreno said in a video released on Twitter.
Assange took refuge in the embassy in 2012 after he was released on bail in Britain while facing extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations that have since been dropped.
But he has been under U.S. Justice Department scrutiny for years for WikiLeaks’ role in publishing thousands of government secrets. He was an important figure in the special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe as investigators examined how WikiLeaks obtained emails that were stolen from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Democratic groups.
Assange had not come out of the embassy for almost seven years because he feared arrest and extradition to the United States for publishing classified military and diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks. Although Sweden has dropped the sexual assault case that first led to Assange’s arrest in Britain, U.K. authorities said he would be rearrested if he ever left the embassy because he skipped bail in the original case.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia have also inadvertently disclosed the existence of a sealed criminal complaint against Assange, although no details have been publicly announced.
Video posted online by Ruptly, a news service of Russia Today, showed several men in suits around Assange, pulling him out of the embassy building and loading him into a police van while uniformed British police officers formed a passageway. Assange sported a full beard and slicked-back grey hair.
Police said Assange had been arrested for breaching his bail conditions in Britain and in relation to a U.S. request.
WikiLeaks quickly drew attention to U.S. interest in Assange and said that Ecuador illegally terminated Assange’s political asylum “in violation of international law.”
“Powerful actors, including CIA, are engaged in a sophisticated effort to de-humanise, de-legitimize and imprison him,” the group said in a tweet over a photo of Assange’s smiling face.
But Moreno appeared to suggest that a swift extradition to America was not likely.
“In line with our strong commitment to human rights and international law, I requested Great Britain to guarantee that Mr. Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty,” Moreno said. “The British government has confirmed it in writing, in accordance with its own rules.”
Assange’s arrest came a day after WikiLeaks accused the Ecuador’s government of an “extensive spying operation” against him. WikiLeaks claims that meetings with lawyers and a doctor inside the embassy over the past year were secretly filmed.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt thanked Moreno for breaking the impasse over the WikiLeaks founder, saying on Twitter that Assange “is no hero and no one is above the law.”
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Gregory Katz in London and Eric Tucker in Washington D.C. contributed
