No more asylum: Julian Assange is arrested in London

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On Thursday, April 11, the controversial founder of Wikileaks was arrested in London

Since June 2012, Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, resided in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was sheltering after his fear of being extradited to the United States due to the leakage of thousands of classified documents. Assange was also requested by Sweden, when he was accused of two sexual crimes, which he always denied "and that he saw as an excuse for his extradition," according to the BBC.

Leer en español: ¡Adiós al asilo! Julian Assange es arrestado en Londres

However, Ecuador "decided to withdraw political asylum for violating international agreements," according to the statement of Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno.

This is how, after almost 7 years, on April 11, Assange was arrested by the London police. However, according to Alan Duncan, who is part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Assange will not be extradited to the United States, "if the decision would involve the death penalty," as reported by Reuters. However, according to ABC, the United States "has already asked the British Police for their wish that the WikiLeaks founder be extradited."

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Treason?

In 2012, when Assange requested asylum before the Ecuadorian government, Rafael Correa was president. For that reason, Correa strongly criticized Moreno's decision, calling him a traitor. Thus, he stated that "the greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenin Moreno, allowed the British Police to enter our Embassy in London to arrest Assange. "One of the most atrocious acts fruit of servility, vileness and revenge. History will be implacable with the guilty of something so atrocious", he said in his Twitter account.

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After his arrest, a British judge declared Assange guilty "for breaking the terms of his probation." The founder of Wikileaks would receive a sentence of up to 12 months in prison in the United Kingdom, according to La Sexta. In addition, the United States accused him of "criminal conspiracy to commit hacking", explains El Espectador. Assange could face up to 5 years in prison.

According to the US government, El Espectador reports, Assange would have conspired with Chelsea Manning, "to decipher a password on the Defense Department's computers connected to the so-called SIPRNet, a US government network used to classified documents".

Wikileaks: the headache of the United States

The WikiLeaks page was created in 2006, but began to operate officially between 2007 and 2008. Its main feature was to publish confidential reports of countries, companies, governments, and even people.

As highlighted by the BBC, for many, it was an investigative journalism that went hand in hand with press freedom. But for others, such as the United States, Wikileaks "crossed red lines by publishing sensitive data that could pose a threat to national security."

Throughout the different publications, one of the most important happened in 2010. According to FayerWayer, "Chelsea Manning leaked more than 700,000 classified documents from the United States about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." Videos and photographs were also leaked showing the rapes and torture of hundreds of civilians, who were killed but their deaths were not reported.

LatinAmerican Post | Laura Viviana Guevara Muñoz
Translated from "¡Adiós al asilo! Julian Assange es capturado en Londres"