Ecuador’s government has cut off WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s ability to communicate with the outside world while holed up in the country’s London…
Ecuador’s government has cut off WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s ability to communicate with the outside world while holed up in the country’s London embassy.
Officials said Assange’s internet access was blocked Tuesday because of his recent activity on social media in which he slammed the arrest of a Catalonian separatist leader.
The Australian promised last year to not interfere in other countries’ affairs while in the mission, an Ecuadorian government statement said.
On Monday, Assange, 46, also used Twitter to challenge Britain’s accusation that Russia was behind the March 4 nerve agent poisoning of a Russian former double agent in the English city of Salisbury.
He also questioned the decision by Britain and more than 20 countries to retaliate against the poisoning by expelling Russian diplomats deemed spies, according to Agence France-Presse.
Assange’s posts have “put at risk” the good relations Ecuador maintains with countries across Europe, Ecuadorian officials said in a statement.
As part of an agreement between Assange and Ecuador, he is not allowed to send any messages that could interfere with the South American nation’s relations with other countries, NBC News reported .
Assange has since gone silent on social media.
He took refuge in the diplomatic mission in 2012 after a British judge ruled he should be extradited to Sweden, where he faced charges of sexual assault.
Assange claimed the allegations were politically motivated and could lead to him being extradited to the US to face imprisonment over WikiLeaks’ publication of secret US military and diplomatic materials in 2010.
Sweden dropped its probe last year, but British authorities say they still want to arrest him for breaching his bail conditions.
In December, Ecuador made Assange a citizen and unsuccessfully tried to register him as a diplomat with immunity as part of its efforts to have him leave the facility without risk of being detained.
In 2016, Ecuador briefly suspended Assange’s internet connection for posting documents online that were seen as having an impact on the US presidential election.
In May 2017, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno asked him to refrain from commenting on a separatist crisis in Spain over that country’s Catalonia region, after he tweeted that Madrid was guilty of “repression,” AFP reported.
With Post wires
