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When Ecuador Elects a New President, Will Julian Assange Still Have a Safe Haven at its London Embassy?

By Chris Kraul and Pablo Jaramillo Viteri

"It’s pretty clear that Assange’s fate rides on the election returns. Ecuador has paid a price internationally for supporting Assange," comments AS/COA's Eric Farnsworth.

There’s more at stake in Ecuador’s presidential election on Sunday than whether the leftist legacy of outgoing President Rafael Correa will be extended with a victory by his former vice president.

If pro-business candidate Guillermo Lasso upsets former Vice President Lenin Moreno, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy for five years, is likely to lose his safe haven.

Correa granted Assange asylum after accepting his argument that a Swedish arrest warrant on sexual assault charges was politically motivated....

If Assange were forced to leave the embassy, which technically is Ecuadorean soil, he would almost certainly be arrested, said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas in Washington and a former Latin America specialist in the Clinton administration. “I think it’s pretty clear that Assange’s fate rides on Ecuador’s election returns,” Farnsworth said.

Ecuador has paid a price internationally for supporting Assange, Farnsworth added. WikiLeaks’ publishing of what U.S. law enforcement officials insist were Russia-backed hacks of Clinton’s emails possibly affected the election outcome and has hurt its standing as a champion of free speech, he said.

Ecuador’s hosting of Assange has hurt its relations with the United States, Farnsworth said, “but only a bit because the reality is that relations were already sour due to Quito’s intentional anti-U.S. posture….”

Read the full article here.

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