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USA avoids clarifying if it seeks to prosecute Assange for his leaks
Posted On 12 Jan 2018
Ecuadornews:
The United States avoided today to clarify if it will present charges against the founder of Wikileaks, the Australian Julian Assange, for filtering classified information and declined to comment on Ecuador’s decision to naturalize him.
“It is a decision of Ecuador. And we will not talk about whether we are considering bringing him to the United States for a trial. We do not talk about what our actions are about it, it is something that we will not discuss at this time, “said Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Steve Goldstein. Goldstein settled this matter after being asked at a press conference for the naturalization that Ecuador today confirmed to have granted to Assange, a refugee in the Andean country’s embassy in London since June 19, 2012.
The journalist, aged 46, was required by the Swedish authorities since 2010 for a case of rape and other sexual harassment that he denies, but finally Sweden filed the case last May when he could not advance the investigation.
However, the London Police has made it clear that they will stop him if he leaves the embassy of Ecuador for not having complied with the conditions of conditional release imposed by the British Justice in 2012. The Government of Lenin Moreno is now looking for ways to solve the situation of the Australian, once the United Kingdom refused to grant Assange diplomatic status, which would give immunity to leave the building of the embassy without being stopped and leave the British territory.
The founder of WikiLeaks, whose website revealed a few years ago thousands of confidential and compromising cables from the US Government, fears that, if he is arrested by British agents, he will then be extradited to the North American country to be judged by the leaks. Consulted by Efe, a spokesman of the Department of Justice refused to confirm if the general prosecutor, Jeff Sessions, prepares charges against Assange.
That source limited himself to remember a speech of Sessions of the past month of August in which promised hard hand against leaks of confidential information of the Government. “We will investigate and seek to bring criminals to justice. We will not allow more than corrupt sources with security authorizations to sell our country, “the Secretary of Justice indicated in that speech.
Last April, to journalists’ questions about whether it would make Assange’s incarceration a priority, Sessions merely said that his department was “redoubling” efforts to investigate the leak of classified information.
On November 28, 2010, WikiLeaks began to disseminate thousands of documents with compromising information about the actions of Washington in the armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq or the communications of its diplomatic service throughout the world, which caused serious problems for the United States in its relations with several countries. (I)
