THE UNWELCOME GUEST
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been cooped up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for six years – and his hosts are getting fed up
BY ALL accounts he’s not the easiest guy to live with. He leaves the bathroom in a mess, doesn’t clean up after his cat and hogs the Wi-Fi – little wonder officials at the Embassy of Ecuador in London are fed up with Julian Assange.
Back in 2012 when the small South American country agreed to offer the WikiLeaks whistleblower sanctuary to help him avoid deportation, they were imagining it would be for just a few months to allow things to blow over. But six years on he’s still there and showing no signs of leaving.
And instead of being grateful for the great lengths to which his benefactors have gone to protect him Assange (47) is now suing them for violating his human rights. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
It all came to a head recently when Ecuadorian officials decided it was time to lay down a few ground rules for their famous guest. Seems their biggest bugbears are that he has too many visitors and leaves his living area in a mess. Basically they’ve told the Australian to clean up his act and stop being such a slob. They’ve also let him know it’s time he starts paying for his own medical treatment, phone calls and food.
In addition they’ve warned that unless he starts taking better care of his cat they’re going to re-home the feline, which has lived in the embassy since 2016. It’s thought that the animal, named Michi, was given to Assange by one of his children (he has four from various relationships) to help relieve the boredom of being cooped up in the embassy.
Although Assange initially had great fun setting up a Twitter profile, @EmbassyCat, for the tabby, the Ecuadorians have accused him of neglecting her “wellbeing, food and hygiene”.
But Assange is having none of it and has launched a legal suit in Ecuador, saying that “a prison regime is being imposed on him”.
“He’s been held in inhuman conditions for more than six years,” his lawyer Baltasar Garzón says. “Even people who are imprisoned have phone calls paid for by the state.”
IJulian Assange addresses the media from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London last year.
Garzón adds that the stipulations put in place regarding the cat – that Assange feeds her and cleans her litter box – are particularly “denigrating”.
It’s come to light that at one point earlier this year the Ecuadorians were so annoyed with their live-in guest they cut off his Wi-Fi access. Now, as hostilities between Assange and his hosts continue to escalate, commentators are predicting it’s probably just a matter of time before he walks out of the embassy door. But will it be because his hosts evict him or because they make life so unbearable for him that he finally leaves?
‘A prison regime is being imposed on him’
N JUNE 2012 a tall blond man walked into the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge, London, and asked for political asylum. It was Julian Assange’s last roll of the dice after he’d lost a long legal battle against extradition to Sweden, where he was accused of rape and sexual molestation.
Assange claimed he was reluctant to return to Sweden because he feared there was a big risk he’d be deported from there to the United States where he could face severe penalties, possibly even the death sentence, for leaking explosive