The Ecuadorian authorities have not yet received an official request for the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th November, 2018) The Ecuadorian authorities have not yet received an official request for the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said.
"At the moment there is no official request for the extradition of Julian Assange," Valencia said Wednesday, as quoted by the Publica FM radio station.
He noted that Quito had spent over $6 million on Assange, mostly on security.
In October, Assange's lawyer Carlos Poveda told Sputnik that the WikiLeaks founder was ready to turn himself in to the UK authories if he received a written guarantee that he would not be extradited to the United States or to any other country. Later, Assange accused Ecuador of planning to hand him over to the United States and looking for an excuse to end his asylum, after conditions of his stay at the diplomatic mission were leaked to the media.
The long list of rules regulates Assange's communication with the outside world. Among other things, it bans the WikiLeaks founder from expressing any political opinions that can be deemed as interference in the affairs of other countries.
Assange was questioned by the UK police over his alleged involvement in a sexual assault case in Sweden and released on bail. The whistleblower breached the terms of his bail by taking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012.
Sweden dropped the investigation in 2017, but the UK arrest warrant for Assange, issued over the violations of his bail, remained in place.
Assange fears potential extradition to the United States, where he might face espionage charges over WikiLeaks releasing a great number of what it claimed were US government documents.
