Ecuador president says Julian Assange must eventually leave London embassy

Published time: 27 Jul, 2018 09:23Edited time: 27 Jul, 2018 10:30

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FILE PHOTO: The Ecadorian embassy in central London © Toby Melville / Reuters

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a step closer to being evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy in London after President Lenin Moreno said the whistleblower must "eventually" leave the facility.

Assange will eventually need to leave the diplomatic mission in London, where he has been living for six years since 2012, Moreno said at an event in Madrid on Friday.However, there is no word on when exactly this might happen. Yet, Ecuador has already contacted the British government over the WikiLeaks founder's situation, Reuters says. 

The news came on the heels of earlier reports that the founder of the whistleblowing portal would be handed over to British authorities.

Assange’s relationship with Ecuadorian officials had appeared increasingly fraught, with the country, which provided him with asylum and citizenship, cutting off his internet connection in March.

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Prosecuting Assange for journalism a move towards ‘dark ages of ignorance’, say whistleblowers

The official reason behind the move was to stop Assange from “interfering in the affairs of other sovereign states,” Ecuador said at the time. Efforts to have an arrest warrant against Assange dropped by the UK failed earlier this year.

The whistleblower is feared to be facing extradition to the US over troves of leaked documents.

In 2010, WikiLeaks published classified US military footage entitled ‘Collateral Murder.’ It featured a US Apache helicopter gunship opening fire on a number of people killing 12, including two Reuters staff, and injuring two children.

The US prosecution of Assange has also been blasted by various rights groups and activists. Former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley said that evicting the whistleblower would send the world into “the dark ages of ignorance.” She told RT America that any media currently drumming up anti-Assange rhetoric could become “the next Julian Assanges, as soon as they try to expose any serious wrongdoing.”

The WikiLeaks founder assumed the role that the mainstream press failed to exercise, and “he should be rewarded rather than vilified” for that, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern said on RT America’s Debate Week news special.