Ecuador’s
President Lenin Moreno traveled to London on Friday for the
ostensible purpose of speaking at the 2018 Global Disabilities Summit
(Moreno has been using a wheelchair since being shot in a 1998
robbery attempt). The concealed, actual purpose of the President’s
trip is to meet with British officials to finalize an agreement under
which Ecuador will withdraw its asylum protection of Julian Assange,
in place since 2012, eject him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London,
and then hand over the WikiLeaks founder to British authorities.
Moreno’s
itinerary also notably includes a trip to Madrid, where he will meet
with Spanish officials still seething over Assange’s denunciation
of human rights abuses perpetrated by Spain’s central government
against protesters marching for Catalonia independence. Almost three
months ago, Ecuador blocked Assange from accessing the internet, and
Assange has not been able to communicate with the outside world ever
since. The primary factor in Ecuador’s decision to silence him was
Spanish anger over Assange’s tweets about Catalonia.
A source
close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the President’s
office, unauthorized to speak publicly, has confirmed to the
Intercept that Moreno is close to finalizing, if he has not already
finalized, an agreement to hand over Assange to the UK within the
next several weeks. The withdrawal of asylum and physical ejection of
Assange could come as early as this week. On Friday, RT reported that
Ecuador was preparing to enter into such an agreement.
The
consequences of such an agreement depend in part on the concessions
Ecuador extracts in exchange for withdrawing Assange’s asylum. But
as former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told the Intercept in an
interview in May, Moreno’s government has returned Ecuador to a
highly “subservient” and “submissive” posture toward western
governments.
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