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Preliminary report indicates Assange naturalization violates Ecuadorian law
Posted On 21 May 2019
Ecuadornews:
The grant in 2017 of the letter of naturalization to the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, violates the Organic Law of Human Mobility of Ecuador, revealed on Monday the General Comptroller of the Ecuadorian State based on inquiries into the case.
In the reading session of the preliminary findings of this investigation, the Comptroller General’s office also revealed an irregular behavior of the activist, which led some of the Embassy’s staff in London – where Assange resided from 2012 until last April – to demand insurance. life to continue carrying out their work.
The partial results of the investigation opened by the governing body were met on Monday at a hearing in which some of the parties involved participated, including Luis Falconí, former ambassador in London between September 2013 and June 2015.
Falconí told the media that he considers the process of naturalization “totally questionable” because it violates Ecuadorian and international regulations and that, as the Comptroller General’s Office also pointed out, the grounds provided in the law were not met.
The report makes it clear that naturalization did not meet at least three requirements, including having resided in the country for at least three years.
In addition, there is no record of the document with which the Australian requested the start of the process to be granted nationality, which was not paid the fees stipulated by national regulations, amounting to about $ 800.
Nor was the usual questionnaire applied to this type of case, in which the applicant must prove his knowledge of the traditions, history, norms and general Ecuadorian culture.
Assange was naturalized Ecuadorian in December of 2017 by disposition of the former Foreign Minister María Fernanda Espinosa, who with it wanted to introduce him into the diplomatic staff of the embassy and thus put an end to his asylum.
The initiative failed because Great Britain claimed that he would be arrested anyway if he left the legation.
Assange was asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy for almost seven years, and was arrested on April 11 by the British police after Ecuador ended the diplomatic asylum unilaterally, after a year of confrontation with the current government of Lenin Moreno , who came to sue for violating their rights by imposing a protocol of coexistence.
The case came to the Comptroller’s Office following complaints from a group of right-wing deputies who considered the entire naturalization process irregular.
In that sense, in the presentation of the draft, the Comptroller General’s Office also questioned the behavior of the Ecuadorian foreign ministers of the last six years, above all for not having tried to correct bad behavior on the part of the activist.
According to the institution, several incidents were noted during that period without the Ministry of Foreign Affairs giving an appropriate response to put an end to the problem.
In that sense, Falconí admitted that there was a “belligerent attitude” on the part of Assange, but that this did not mean, at least under his mandate in the Embassy, physical or verbal assaults.
The former ambassador also mentioned other types of incidents such as “bomb threats” that required police intervention.
The Comptroller’s Office said it had received reports from the legation’s staff insisting that they be given life insurance because of the insecurity they felt.
Even the security company criticized, in a letter to the ambassador, that the legation “put before the interests of Assange and his team – who came to integrate 17 people – to those of the diplomatic mission itself,” according to the report.
The report could be key to the political trial that the National Assembly of Ecuador (Parliament) began a few days ago against former Foreign Minister María Fernanda Espinosa, current president of the UN General Assembly, for her role in the process of naturalization of the Australian. (I)
