WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was taken into custody early Thursday morning after his asylum status at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London was revoked and U.K. Police marched in and removed him by force.
Assange’s arrest comes on the grounds of a extradition warrant filed by the United States stemming from his alleged role to hack a U.S. government computer that ended up exposing numerous atrocities committed by the American military in the Middle East.
Here’s a statement from Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson outside a London court today:
“Since 2010 we’ve warned that Julian Assange would face prosecution and extradition to the United States for his publishing activities with Wikileaks. Unfortunately today we’ve been proven right …
“We’ve today received a warrant and a provisional extradition request from the United States alleging that he has conspired with Chelsea Manning in relation to the materials published by Wikileaks in 2010. This sets a dangerous precedent for all media organisations and journalists in Europe and elsewhere around the world. This precedent means that any journalist can be extradited for prosecution in the United States for having published truthful information about the United States.”
The 47-year-old Assange can fight the extradition request in a U.K. court however if he loses is assumed that the United States will bring up further charges than just conspiracy against the WikiLeaks founder. In addition to the 2010 leak of those U.S. Military documents, Assange and WikiLeaks had been involved in the hack of DNC computers during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election that exposed and embarrassed the Hillary Clinton campaign. Meanwhile, the intelligence community in the United States concluded that the systems itself were hacked by Russian agents.
Assange originally entered the Ecuadorean Embassy back in 2012 as he looked to escape extradition to Sweden over sexual misconduct allegations. Sweden eventually dropped the sexual misconduct allegations however there was still an active warrant for him in Britain over a violation of bail terms.
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