<nettime> Michael Sontheimer: Ecuador sours on Assange (Financial Review, Australia)

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

A nice round-up of julian A's current preddicament. Does not look very 
positive. My hunch is still that Assange has fallen into the purview of 
Mueller's investigation.


Original to:

https://www.afr.com/news/world/europe/a-wornout-welcome-ecuadorian-embassy-sours-on-julian-assange-20181202-h18mbh


Ecuadorian embassy sours on Julian Assange as he wears out his welcome
By Michael Sontheimer, 06 Dec 2018 —


Even public attorneys make mistakes. Take, for instance, Kellen Dwyer, a 
US prosecutor from Alexandria, Virginia, who suffered a particularly 
embarrassing mishap in August. While assembling an official document, 
Dwyer copied and pasted blocks of text from another document he had 
previously produced – and twice forgot to remove the name Assange. As in 
Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks.

The document in question was a government motion to keep a criminal 
indictment sealed. Such secrecy, the document notes, is the only way to 
"keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged". It goes on 
to say that "the complaint, supporting affidavit, and arrest warrant, as 
well as this motion and the proposed order, would need to remain sealed 
until Assange is arrested" and can no longer evade arrest and 
extradition.

This is something that Assange has always suspected but could never 
prove, namely that US prosecutors have already filed or are close to 
filing charges against him and will soon issue a warrant for his arrest.

For the past six-and-a-half years, Assange has essentially been stuck in 
London, living in the Ecuadorian embassy, a dignified brick building 
just a few steps from the world-famous department store Harrods in 
Knightsbridge. He doesn't get much sun and his hair has turned white as 
snow, as has his skin.

Bump in the night

In early November, the 47-year-old Australian was awoken in the middle 
of the night by the sound of a fire extinguisher tipping over. He had 
placed the object in front of the open window of his raised-ground-floor 
bedroom. Was it just another bout of psychological warfare against 
Assange on the part of the Ecuadorian government?

The government in Quito has been providing Assange with political asylum 
since August 2012, but the relationship has recently soured and the 
Ecuadorian President would now like to see the Australian journalist 
leave the embassy sooner rather than later. In late March, Ecuadorian 
diplomats cut off Assange's internet connection and installed a jammer 
designed to prevent him from communicating with the outside world. Last 
month, the government issued new rules for dealing with their famous yet 
difficult guest.

When the fire extinguisher fell over that night, Assange bolted upright 
in bed and didn't know if the wind had pushed open the window or whether 
someone was trying to enter his room from outside. Was it mere paranoia? 
Assange has reason to fear intelligence agents kidnapping him and taking 
him to the US. In spring 2017, Mike Pompeo – who has since been 
appointed Secretary of State by US President Donald Trump – described 
WikiLeaks as a "non-state hostile intelligence service".

Even since it has been confirmed that at least a draft of an indictment 
against Assange exists, indications have also been mounting that a 
secret extradition request may already have been prepared and delivered 
to the US Embassy in London. The British authorities, for their part, 
would likely arrest him immediately as soon as he set foot outside the 
Ecuadorian embassy. Scotland Yard accuses him of having skipped bail, a 
violation that carries the possibility of up to a year in prison.

'Don't cross the US government'

Assange has said on multiple occasions that he would turn himself in to 
the British police and go to prison if the government in London promised 
to allow him to travel to Ecuador afterwards. But such an assurance from 
the Brits has not been forthcoming. They would rather hand Assange over 
to the US. The British and American intelligence agencies, after all, 
are close partners.

In 2010, WikiLeaks published documents in conjunction with The Guardian, 
The New York Times and Der Spiegel pertaining to US war crimes committed 
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since then, the US government has been after 
Assange and a grand jury in Virginia is investigating several people in 
connection with WikiLeaks, including Assange himself, the former 
WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison of Britain and Jacob Appelbaum, a US 
citizen who lives in Berlin. The basis of those investigations could be 
the Espionage Act of 1917, which allows for penalties of up to life in 
prison. The message is clear: potential copycats should think twice 
about taking on the US government and its intelligence services.

Assange's interactions with the judiciary are myriad and complex, 
starting with an investigation launched by Swedish prosecutors for a 
"minor case of rape". This began in August 2010 after two Swedish women 
who had slept with Assange asked police whether it would be possible to 
force him to undergo an HIV test.

British police arrested Assange in early December 2010 with the 
intention of extraditing him to Sweden. Film director Ken Loach, Jemima 
Khan, the former wife of the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, the 
journalist John Pilger and others joined forces to pay Assange's 
£200,000 bail and he was subsequently released.

Once he had exhausted all legal channels for fighting extradition to 
Sweden, Assange cut off the electronic ankle bracelet he had been 
required to wear as a condition of his bail, marched into the Ecuadorian 
embassy in London and requested asylum on June 19, 2012. Not quite two 
months later, then-Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patiño announced 
in Quito that Assange's asylum application had been approved. Assange 
could not expect a fair trial in the United States, Patiño said. British 
politicians then began publicly discussing whether they could simply 
send police into the embassy and kidnap the Australian, even though such 
a move would clearly violate international law and the special 
protections enjoyed by embassies.

'Unlawful detainment'

For quite some time, British investigators were able to dissuade their 
Swedish counterparts from discarding the investigation into Assange. 
These efforts were revealed in emails from Britain's "Crown Prosecution 
Service" that have since been made public. But in May 2017, the Swedes 
closed the case and applied for the international arrest warrant against 
Assange to be suspended.

Even prior to that, in February 2016, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary 
Detention issued a statement in which it argued that Assange's stay in 
the embassy was a case of "unlawful detainment". The British government, 
reflecting its own unique brand of arrogance, blasted the statement as 
"ridiculous".

For years, the Ecuadorian embassy placed very few restrictions on 
Assange when it came to receiving guests. They were simply asked to 
register with the embassy's security personnel at least one day prior to 
their visit, leave their passports at the entrance, enter their names in 
a registry and sometimes relinquish their telephones and cameras. But 
they were allowed to meet with Assange undisturbed in at least two rooms 
inside the building. At the same time, it was clear to everyone involved 
that such visits were monitored by the Ecuadorians and, especially, the 
British. Agents in London even set up surveillance cameras in the street 
in front of the embassy. When discussing sensitive information, Assange 
and his visitors would write notes back and forth that were subsequently 
destroyed in a shredder.

Vivienne Westwood, Lady Gaga and Pamela Anderson all visited Assange, as 
did the left-wing guru Noam Chomsky and well-known journalists such as 
John Pilger and Seymour Hersh. The authors of this article have also 
visited Assange several times in the Ecuadorian embassy for interviews 
and off-the-record discussions. By welcoming a constant stream of 
visitors, he hoped to be able to counteract the increasingly noticeable 
consequences of his isolation: six-and-a-half years without sunlight, 
six-and-a-half years in prison, albeit a rather luxurious one.

Assange also began suffering from chronic shoulder pain. A doctor from 
Boston who regularly looks after him has been worried about his mental 
health for some time. She is concerned he could sink into a depression 
given the rather dim prospects facing him.

Until last December, Assange continued to manage document releases on 
WikiLeaks in addition to the platform's Twitter account. The most 
consequential publications for Assange were the releases of hacked 
emails from Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party leadership, which began 
in July 2016. They revealed Clinton's tight relationship with Wall 
Street, the fact that she was rooting for Trump to be her opponent 
because she thought he didn't stand a chance, as well as the tricks she 
used to outmanoeuvre Bernie Sanders, her rival for the Democratic 
nomination.

Vault 7

Once Donald Trump was elected to the White House, though, support for 
WikiLeaks began to crumble. Left-wing and liberal backers of the 
whistleblowing platform accused Assange of having indirectly supported 
the populist Trump by lambasting Clinton. And Democrats accused him of 
publishing information on WikiLeaks that had been stolen from the 
Democratic National Committee by Russian intelligence.

Early on, Assange harboured a vague hope that with Trump in the White 
House, he might finally be able to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy. But the 
right-wing hardliners that Trump installed in his cabinet wanted to make 
an example of the WikiLeaks founder to discourage other possible 
whistleblowers.

Then, starting in March 2017, WikiLeaks began publishing the CIA's 
arsenal of cyberweapons under the title "Vault 7". Prior to the 
publications, the agency had negotiated with Assange in the hopes that 
he would refrain from publication in exchange for safe passage out of 
the embassy. Ultimately, though, the CIA broke off the discussions after 
then-FBI director James Comey intervened and following additional 
publication of CIA material by WikiLeaks.

It isn't difficult to understand, of course, that Assange remains eager 
to avoid spending decades in a high-security prison in the US. More than 
anything, though, that hope now depends on political developments in 
Ecuador.

Originally, Assange was granted political asylum by President Rafael 
Correa, a leftist who was eager to counter outsized US influence on the 
South American continent. But term limitations prevented Correa from 
running again by the time new elections rolled around in spring 2017. 
Despite this, Assange still thought he had luck on his side. The 
neo-liberal candidate who had promised to throw Assange out of the 
embassy had lost. Instead, Ecuadorians tapped Correa's vice-president to 
run their country, a man named Lenín Moreno.

But President Moreno was no anti-imperialist. Instead, he proved keen to 
improve relations with the US – and fast. He assigned Foreign Minister 
Fernanda Espinosa to find a solution to the thorny Assange problem.

To that end, Espinosa devised a rather clever trick. In December of last 
year, she granted Assange Ecuadorian citizenship, made him a diplomat 
and put him on the list of accredited emissaries in Britain, which would 
have given him immunity and the freedom to travel.

Would have – if the British Foreign Office had recognised him as an 
official representative of Ecuador. But it didn't. Further attempts by 
Assange's friends to find a country whose government would accept his 
diplomatic status proved difficult as well. Only one government seemed 
willing, but Assange did not want to make his fate dependent on that 
country's president.

Losing the link to the outside

Upon being removed from Ecuador's list of diplomats, he authored a tweet 
that infuriated his hosts. On March 26, 2018, Assange took to Twitter 
after Carles Puigdemont was arrested in Germany. He wrote: "In 1940 the 
elected president of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, was captured by the 
Gestapo, at the request of Spain, delivered to them and executed. Today, 
German police have arrested the elected president of Catalonia, Carles 
Puigdemont, at the request of Spain, to be extradited."

Two days later, the Ecuadorian foreign minister had a jammer installed 
in the embassy to disrupt mobile phone reception and Assange's internet 
access was cut off. With that, he lost his most important link to the 
outside world.

Since then, only Assange's assistant, a legal adviser and his lawyers 
have had access to him. Friends and journalists are no longer able to 
visit the WikiLeaks founder and his mother can likewise no longer see 
him. Assange is almost completely isolated.

Assange believes that an application for his extradition has been 
prepared and is sitting in the US Embassy in London. He believes that as 
soon as he falls into British hands, he will be locked up pending 
extradition or be immediately placed on board a plane to the US.

The suspicion isn't totally unfounded. After the whistleblower Edward 
Snowden revealed the mass-surveillance practices of the National 
Security Agency (NSA) from Hong Kong, a CIA jet was standing by in 
Copenhagen to fly him back to the US upon capture. Instead, partly 
thanks to the WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison, Snowden flew to 
Moscow, where he continues to live today, having been granted temporary 
political asylum. In contrast to Assange, he can move about freely in 
Russia. And his girlfriend moved to Moscow to be with him.

The Ecuadorian government cut Assange off from the internet because he 
broke his promise to not comment on the political affairs of third 
states, though Assange claims that the pledge was contingent on him 
being an active envoy for Ecuador. He refuses to be tamed. Everything 
he's done for WikiLeaks has been, he believes, in the name of freedom of 
expression and transparency. And he refuses to make compromises when he 
sees those values at stake. Otherwise, he would no longer be Julian 
Assange, the anarchist Australian hippy, computer freak and hacker.

Tantamount to blackmail

The embassy also drafted a new set of rules to regulate everything 
pertaining to Assange's asylum. According to those rules, all of 
Assange's visitors, including his lawyers, must provide the serial 
numbers of their telephones and other electronic devices and list their 
social media accounts. The Ecuadorian government reserves the right to 
share this information with others.

Furthermore, Assange must now also pay a share of the costs the embassy 
incurs by putting him up. Surveillance of Assange alone is said to have 
cost the Ecuadorian government more than €5 million ($5.7 million) in 
the time the Australian had been living in the embassy. Now, Assange is 
to be made to pay for such things as internet, medicine, laundry and 
other expenditures.

Fidel Narváez, who worked as a diplomat in the embassy for eight years, 
told the US broadcaster ABC that the new set of rules transformed 
Ecuador "from a protector into a persecutor" of Assange, adding that 
embassy staff "will be forced to act like prison guards." The rules, he 
said, are "tantamount to blackmail and clearly part of an ongoing 
attempt to force Julian Assange to leave the embassy."

Indeed, Assange has now become a pawn in President Lenín Moreno's 
ongoing battle against his predecessor Rafael Correa, who has fled into 
exile in Belgium because the Ecuadorian judiciary is pursuing 13 
investigations against him. Correa finds his successor's treatment of 
Assange appalling.

In comments about the ban on visitors for Assange in late October, 
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister José Valencia denied that such a restriction 
had been imposed. "Absolutely not," he said. "Not at all. He has not had 
a single restriction. It is an invention. Maybe he is confused."

The Foreign Minister is lying. Since April, the journalist Stefania 
Maurizio, from the Italian daily La Repubblica, has filed nine 
applications for permission to visit Assange without receiving a single 
response. On May 14, 2008, German parliamentarian Heike Hänsel of the 
Left Party contacted the Ecuadorian embassy by email to inquire whether 
she could have a private audience with the WikiLeaks founder. In 
September, she finally received a response in which she was referred to 
the new rules that had been established for Assange. Since then, she 
hasn't heard anything more from the Ecuadorian diplomats.

'They want to destroy him'

Assange refused to sign the new protocols. He and his lawyer are 
concerned that if he or a visitor were to violate any of them, it would 
give Ecuador an excuse to withdraw his asylum status and throw him out 
of the embassy. Assange's lawyer filed a complaint in Quito arguing that 
the new rules, which the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry decided would take 
effect on November 9, violated Assange's basic asylum rights. A judge 
ruled in the government's favour at the end of October.

Some of the protocols also pertain to Assange's behaviour within the 
embassy. He was, for example, requested to take responsibility for the 
"well-being, food, hygiene and proper care" of his pet. The reference is 
to the cat that he refers to as the "embassy cat", which was given to 
him by his children. The rules note that if Assange doesn't tend to the 
cat properly, it will be given away.

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson was able to visit Assange 
last month. The Icelandic journalist brought no electronic devices with 
him and described the atmosphere in the embassy as "very hostile". He 
also said the new rules for visitors were being enforced arbitrarily and 
that evening and weekend visits were no longer permitted. "They want to 
break Julian," Hrafnsson said. "They want to destroy him."


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