Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks from the balcony of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in February 2015.
Advertisement
Last year, Assange gave consent to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange suggested on Dutch television that if Rich is the source of the 20,000 emails exposing the party’s sabotage of the Bernie Sanders campaign in favor of Hillary Clinton, he may have been killed over it.
Swedish prosecutors had demanded that Assange be extradited for questioning, but a year ago changed their position and said they would question him in London.
Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange over allegations of rape stemming from a work visit he made to the country in 2010 when WikiLeaks was attracting global attention for a trove of documents leaked by US Army Private Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley).
Quito’s foreign ministry said in a statement late Wednesday that a letter has been sent by the Ecuadoran government to set up the meeting.
However, the more serious allegations of rape will not expire until 2020 – meaning that if Swedish prosecutors do not ultimately drop their investigation, or if Ecuador does not surrender Assange willingly, he could remain in the embassy for another four years.
It added that the interrogation would be conducted “at the Embassy of Ecuador to the United Kingdom… in the coming weeks”.
She said however that the exact date of the interview has not yet been pinned down.
Assange is the only public figure to claim there is a link between the leak and Rich’s death – even though he said in July he had no idea who the hacker was.
What do you think about Julian Assange’s statements regarding Seth Rich’s death and subsequent reward offering?
He continues to challenge extradition to Sweden to be questioned by prosecutors.
He believes the potential extradition to Sweden could be a ploy to then take him to the United States, where he is wanted over the release of thousands of classified U.S. documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on his website.
For years, WikiLeaks has released sensitive government documents. He denies all the accusations against him made by two women. The date of questioning has not yet been announced, but it will be in regards to an alleged rape Assange committed in Stockholm in 2010.
Assange has compared living inside the embassy – which has no garden but is in London’s plush Knightsbridge district, near Harrods department store – to life on a space station.
Advertisement
“These proceedings.do not affect the recent opinions and recommendations of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions of the United Nations (opinion 54/2015), which found that Julian Assange is being arbitrarily detained”.
