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Tuesday, 30 April
World

British police "seized" the aged founder of WikiLeaks: video of the headline-making detention

On April 11 the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange was arrested in Britain directly in the Embassy of Ecuador.

Video of the arrest was published by the tabloid The Sun.

Assange's arrest warrant was issued in 2012 when he violated his parole.

Assange has lived in the Embassy building since 2012 on the grounds that Ecuador granted him temporary asylum. Then the United States of America began to seek the issuance of Assange, and in Sweden a criminal case was opened against him.

The British police emphasized that the police were invited to the building by the Embassy staff, who tried to force Assange to leave the building in the summer of 2018: he was deprived of the Internet, all his computers and phones were disconnected from the network and he was refused to provide additional protection. But Assange refused to leave the building.

According to the Guardian, during Assange's stay at the Embassy, at least $5 million were spent on his maintenance and protection, which is a large amount for the Ecuadorian budget. Last week, Wikileaks sources announced that Ecuador could "kick" Assange out of the building, despite the fact that he faced arrest.

Now Assange is being held in a police station in London, in the near future he will appear before the British court.

Assange, an Australian citizen, founded WikiLeaks in 2006. A few years later, the portal published thousands of secret us documents on the course of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, including incidents related to the shooting of civilians. United States brought the case against Assange in connection with the leak of classified data. After the elections of 2016, the charge on Wikileaks' involvement in the leak of data about the CIA's hacking techniques and the publication of documents from the hacked servers of the us Democratic party were added to the accusations.

The USA is seeking the extradition of the Australian for several years, and in USA the founder of Wikileaks faces a long prison term on charges of espionage. But Assange and his lawyers considered the charges against him in the United States to be political.

In the summer of 2010 an investigation against Assange on criminal charges for sexual violence started in Sweden: it was after the issuance of an international warrant in this case, that the founder of Wikileaks in 2012 was detained in London. After the arrest, Assange was temporarily released on bail, but escaped and took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador. British authorities believe that the Australian violated the conditions of bail and issued a warrant for the arrest of Assange.

In 2017, the Swedish criminal investigation against the founder of Wikileaks was terminated, but the British warrant for violation of the conditions of early release is still in force. The Wikileaks founder is afraid that if he leaves the building, he may be arrested or seized by representatives of the United States.

As "Apostrophe" reported earlier, in May of 2018, a consultant to the presidential campaign of Trump Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller was summoned for questioning because of a possible connection with the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange.