Threat Management

Ecuador to boot Assange from London embassy, report

Julian Assange reportedly will be evicted from his cramped refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London that's been his home for past six years, after Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno met with U.K. officials last week allegedly to discuss the details of removing the WikiLeaks founder.

Moreno, who has referred to Assange as a “hacker” and an “inherited problem” encamped in the embassy for the last six years to avoid prosecution in Sweden and the U.S., visited the U.K. ostensibly to attend the 2018 Global Disabilities Summit, but the Intercept, citing RT, reported that the purpose of the Ecuadorian president's trip was to meet with U.K. diplomats to finalize an agreement for handing over Assange to U.K. authorities.

"My sources tell me that @JulianAssange will be handed over to the #UK in the next weeks or days,” Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan tweeted.

Ecuador has warned its London embassy's perennial houseguest about mucking around in other nation's affairs, cutting his internet in 2016 after he published emails pilfered by a hacker from members of the Hillary Clinton campaign, and again earlier this year after Assange criticized the U.K. and the U.S. for expelling a gaggle of Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of a former Russian spy living in the U.K., which Assange referred to as “an unresolved event.” The Intercept said the move reflected Spain's anger over the WikiLeaks founder's criticism of Spain's treatment of protesters seeking independence for Catalonia.

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