Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been living in the Ecuadoran embassy to the United Kingdom in London for more than 5 years, believing that if he were taken into custody by the UK police, he would face extradition to the USA where he would be tried for publishing details of war crimes committed by the US military.
Assange has feuded sporadically with his Ecuadoran hosts over the past few years, and both parties have repeatedly expressed their desire that Assange could leave the embassy. The UN has recognized that the UK government has subjected Assange to unlawful detention by not allowing him to go free.
Assange fled to the Ecuadoran embassy to avoid an order to go to Sweden to be questioned in connection with sexual assault allegations. Both he and the government of Ecuador repeatedly offered to make him available for questioning in the embassy, but the Swedish prosecutors refused this offer and eventually ran out the statute of limitations for the crimes that Assange was accused of.
After granting citizenship to Assange, Ecuador asked the UK to extend diplomatic immunity to him. The UK refused, stranding Assange with an extra passport but no path to freedom.
Britain's Foreign Office said Thursday it had rejected Ecuador's request to grant diplomatic status to Assange, who was born in Australia.
"The granting of Ecuadorean nationality does not in any way change Julian Assange's legal status in the U.K.," a government spokesman said. "The Government of Ecuador knows that the way to resolve the situation is for Julian Assange to leave the embassy to face justice. Nobody should pretend that granting him Ecuadorean citizenship is a route to solving this longstanding issue."
Ecuador grants nationality to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange [CBS]
(Image: Snapperjack, CC-BY-SA)
Gavin Chait is an "economist, engineer, data scientist and author" who created a website called Pikhaya where UK entrepreneurs can get lists of vacant commercial properties, their advertised rents, and the history of the businesses that had previously been located in those spaces -- whether they thrived, grew and moved on, or went bust (maybe […]
Official UK government statistics reveal that on 30 days in July the Border Force agency at Heathrow failed to meet its target of processing visitors within 45 minutes; on July 5, visitors had to wait 2.5 hours.
The UK Committees of Advertising Practice changed the rules for ISP advertising: where once the ISPs could advertise speeds of "Up to" some incredibly high number so long as 10% of customers ever achieved that speed, now ISPs can only advertise a speed promise if 51% of their customers attain that speed at all times.
The Adobe Creative Cloud suite is the foundation on which many creatives build their careers, but some of its programs, like Photoshop and InDesign, are notoriously complex, making it difficult for aspiring designers, photographers, and the like to break into their field. But, don’t get discouraged. The Pay What You Want: Adobe CC A-Z Lifetime Bundle […]
From self-driving cars to Siri, we’ve already gotten a taste of what AI can do, and now this groundbreaking technology is making its way to education and revolutionizing the way we learn new languages. Mondly uses state-of-the-art speech recognition to help you speak foreign languages like a true local. Lifetime subscriptions are on sale for […]
We’ve all used Excel at some point in our careers, but chances are most of us have only scratched the surface of what this ubiquitous program can do. From automating simple tasks to presenting data through beautiful charts and PivotTables, Excel brings a ton of utility to the table that can make a huge impact […]
