JUST IN - Court revokes the Ecuadorian citizenship of #Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (El Comercio).
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1420410962314768384?s=21
Ecuador Tells Julian Assange His Citizenship Has Been Revoked
Assange's onetime hosts have now severed any remaining ties with the WikiLeaks founder, who is fighting extradition to the U.S.
Julian Assange’s long, contentious relationship with Ecuador is officially over: According to Associated Press, the nation has chosen to revoke his citizenship effective immediately.
The WikiLeaks founder famously took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 after Swedish prosecutors issued an international arrest warrant (later dropped) on counts of rape and sexual misconduct, saying that the case was a pretext to extradite him to the U.S. on espionage charges. Ecuador granted Assange—who had leaked troves of U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic secrets via WikiLeaks—political asylum and later citizenship. Official Ecuadorian citizenship was intended to pave the way for Assange to assume a diplomatic role with immunity to prosecution, but the relationship reportedly soured as Assange proved a frustrating, expensive, and politically inconvenient guest over the course of his seven-year stretch in the embassy.
Ecuadorian officials enraged that Assange was continuing to operate WikiLeaks from within the embassy (including leaking files stemming from a hack of Democratic Party servers during the U.S. presidential election in 2016) cut off his internet access in 2018 and stripped him of asylum status in 2019, allowing police to enter and take him into custody. Since then, Assange has been convicted of bail evasion in the UK and spent much of his time desperately trying to avoid extradition to the U.S., which is seeking revenge for the humiliating leaks by slapping him with a slew of hacking and espionage charges.
Assange won the initial round, citing the near certainty he would be tortured by solitary confinement in U.S. custody like WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning, but the U.S. government is appealing the decision. Assange’s case has raised serious issues about freedom of the press and whether his activities should be protected by the First Amendment. But don’t worry, the U.S. has pinky sworn not to do the whole torture thing so long as nothing happens that causes it to change its mind and has issued assurances that he could potentially serve his sentence in Australia that are full of legal caveats.
https://gizmodo.com/ecuador-tells-julian-assange-his-citizenship-has-been-r-1847379150