It has been over two weeks since the Ecuadorian government silenced award-winning WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, and former President Rafael Correa is now warning that his days inside the embassy are numbered.
According to a report from ABC International, Correa told reporters during a meeting with the media at the International Press Club of Madrid that current Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno is caving to pressure from the United States.
Correa claimed that at the first sign of pressure from the United States, Lenin will throw the heroic publisher out of the embassy where he was granted political asylum in 2012.
Assange has been residing at the embassy for nearly six years, over concerns that the UK government will arrest him and extradite him to the US for the apparent crime of committing journalism.
Ecuador attempted to give Assange diplomatic status last year after making him an official citizen, but the UK rejected it.
On the same day that Correa shared his beliefs about Assange’s future, the Gateway Pundit published an open letter from over 50 prominent members of the entertainment industry, media and politics calling for Assange’s freedom.
Approximately 60,000 people from all across the globe have also signed a petition urging Ecuador to end Assange’s isolation.
In 2015, Google handed over all of investigations editor Sarah Harrison, Section Editor Joseph Farrell and senior journalist and spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson’s emails and metadata to the United States government on the back of alleged ‘conspiracy’ and ‘espionage’ warrants.
The alleged offenses in the warrants included espionage: 18 U.S.C. § 793(d), conspiracy to commit espionage: 18 U.S.C. § 793(g), the theft or conversion of property belonging to the United States government: 18 U.S.C. § 641, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: 18 U.S.C. § 1030, and (general) conspiracy. These offenses alone carry a sentence of up to a total of 45 years of imprisonment, and this was before the DNC leaks.
As we have previously reported, President Donald Trump’s attorneys have been quietly making a case in defense of WikiLeaks throughout legal filings responding to a lawsuit filed by Democrat Party donors who allege that the campaign and former advisor Roger Stone conspired with Russians to publish the leaked Democratic National Committee emails.
Buried within hundreds of pages of case filings, in a motion filed in October, lawyer Michael A. Carvin argued that under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230), “a website that provides a forum where ‘third parties can post information’ is not liable for the third party’s posted information.”
“That is so even when even when the website performs ‘editorial functions’ ‘such as deciding whether to publish,’” the filing contends. “Since WikiLeaks provided a forum for a third party (the unnamed ‘Russian actors’) to publish content developed by that third party (the hacked emails), it cannot be held liable for the publication.”
In a later filing, which we have also previously reported on, Carvin argued that WikiLeaks is protected under the Bartnicki First Amendment Test.
The motion, filed on December 29, argued that a defendant may not be held liable for a disclosure of stolen information if the disclosure deals with “a matter of public concern” and provided that the speaker was not “involved” in the theft.
In 2016, after 16 months of investigation, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) concluded that Julian Assange is the victim of arbitrary detention. Not only did the group made up of lawyers and human rights professionals release an opinion that Assange should be released, they reported that he should be compensated by the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom for “deprivation of liberty.”
