Britain is in high-level talks with Ecuador in an attempt to remove Julian Assange from its London embassy, where he has been sheltering for more than six years.
Ministers and senior Foreign Office officials are locked in discussions over the fate of Assange, the founder and editor of WikiLeaks, who claimed political asylum from Ecuador in 2012 and who believes he will be extradited to the United States if he leaves the embassy in Knightsbridge, central London.
Sir Alan Duncan, the Foreign Office minister, is understood to be involved in the diplomatic effort, which comes weeks before a visit to the UK by Lenin Moreno, the new Ecuadorean president, who has called Assange a “hacker”, an “inherited problem” and a “stone in the shoe”.
Sources close to the Australian-born Assange said he was not aware of the talks but believed that America was exerting “significant pressure” on Ecuador, including threatening to block a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if the Latin American state did not evict him from the embassy.
The news comes after 12 Russian spies were charged with hacking the emails of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in America during her campaign to become president in 2016.
According to the US Department of Justice, the embarrassing emails were then passed to WikiLeaks, which published them “to heighten their impact” during the electoral race, which was ultimately won by Donald Trump.
Under Moreno’s predecessor, Rafael Correa, Ecuador granted Assange political asylum when he fled to its London embassy soon after being accused of sexual assault and rape in Sweden.
Assange managed to convince Ecuador that it was an elaborate plot orchestrated by the US government, which has been embarrassed by the disclosures on WikiLeaks.
Since then, however, Assange has fallen out with the new Moreno administration, which has cut off his internet access, installed jammers and banned visitors to the embassy apart from his lawyers.
Last month two officials from the Australian High Commission paid a first visit in six years to the Ecuadorean embassy in London in a signal that there may be a breakthrough in the stalemate. Assange’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, said she could not reveal details about the meeting “given the delicate diplomatic situation”.
She has recently lobbied the United Nations about the “severe” impact the confinement has had on Assange’s physical and mental health and claims he is being denied proper medical attention.
Sources close to Assange believe his right to political asylum cannot be revoked under international law.
The news could not come at a more awkward time for Assange, whose lawyers are understood to be studying the indictments filed last week by Robert Mueller, the US special counsel who is investigating alleged Russian support for Trump during the 2016 US presidential election.
The charges filed by Mueller allege that members of Russia’s GRU foreign military intelligence agency started hacking Clinton’s personal email server on the very day that Trump urged the Russian government to find emails that his rival had deleted.
At an event in Florida on July 27, 2016, Trump had invited the Russian state to search for about 30,000 emails that Clinton had erased from her private server. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump had said.
The indictment says that some of the stolen documents, which disclosed the machinations of the DNC against Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders, were then passed to a group it referred to as Organisation 1, which is known to be WikiLeaks.
“If you have anything Hillary-related we want it in the next two days preferably because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify Bernie supporters behind her after,” Organisation 1 wrote.
“We think Trump has only a 25% chance of winning against Hillary so conflict between Bernie and Hillary is interesting.”
Roger Stone, a long-time adviser to Trump, has previously acknowledged exchanging messages with one of the online contacts accused by Mueller of being a front for Russian intelligence, although he denied knowing their true identity.
Trump, who has repeatedly downplayed the consensus among US intelligence agencies that Russia had meddled in the election, is due to meet Vladimir Putin in Helsinki tomorrow.
Yesterday he tweeted from his Scottish golf course: “The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama administration, not the Trump administration. Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the election?”
Rick Wilson is great.
If you don't want to answer, that's fine. I'll move on.
