MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th April, 2019) Moscow regards the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the United Kingdom as a blow to the rights of journalists, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman said on Thursday.
Assange was arrested in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London earlier in the day. The UK police confirmed that the arrest had been made "on behalf of the United States authorities." Ecuador had withdrawn asylum it had earlier granted to Assange.
"The whole story with Assange is not a matter of today, but in general, the whole story of his persecution, harassment, creation of inhuman conditions of existence - it all paves way to the oblivion of the freedom of speech and rights to disseminate information, it is a blow to the rights of a journalist. There can be no other assessments," Maria Zakharova said at a briefing.
Assange gained fame after WikiLeaks published a large number of leaked files, including some referring to US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and conditions in the Guantanamo detention camp.
Since 2012, Assange had been residing in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced a probe over allegations of sexual offenses. Assange denied those allegations and called them politically motivated. While the Swedish police dropped the investigation in 2017, Assange was still wary of being extradited to the United States.
