Julian Assange, the co-founder of WikiLeaks, arrested in London
WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the BBC reported Thursday.
According to London's Met Police, Assange was arrested for failing to surrender to the court. The BBC reports that Ecuador's president Lenin Moreno said the country withdrew Assange's asylum for repeatedly violating international conventions.
UPDATE: April 11, 2019, 3:21 p.m. CEST Shortly after Assange's arrest, the U.S. Department of Justice formally charged him of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer.
The indictment focuses on the trove of documents leaked by whistleblower Chelsea Manning in 2010, which included classified videos of U.S. air strikes, U.S. diplomatic cables and army reports from Iraq and Afghanistan.
A video of the arrest shows Assange being carried into a van, saying "UK must resist," and mentioning "the Trump administration."
Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012, and he has resided at the London embassy since. He sought asylum to avoid being extradited to Sweden on charges of sexual assault (the charges have since been dropped). He feared that Sweden would extradite him to the U.S., which is investigating him and WikiLeaks over the publishing of secret U.S. documents.
Assange's relationship with Ecuador soured in recent years, and just a week ago, WikiLeaks tweeted that Assange is likely to be expelled from the embassy within "hours to days."
Shortly after the arrest, WikiLeaks tweeted that the Ecuadorian ambassador invited the British police into the embassy in order to arrest Assange.
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The organization also tweeted that Assange's political asylum was terminated "in violation of international law."
The Met Police said Assange has been taken into custody at a central London police station, and that he would be presented before Westminster Magistrates' Court as soon as possible.
Founded in 2006, WikiLeaks specializes in publishing "censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption." The site claims it has published more than 10 million documents since its inception.
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Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
