WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange marks six months holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London on Wednesday, with no end in sight to a diplomatic stand-off that has even dragged in pop icon Lady Gaga.
The Australian is due on Thursday to give what the anti-secrecy website billed as a “Christmas speech” in front of the South American nation’s diplomatic mission, next door to the famed Harrods department store.
It will be only his second public outing since he fled to the embassy on June 19 after losing his battle in the British courts against extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning over allegations of rape and sexual assault.
Ecuador granted Assange asylum on August 16 but Britain has refused to allow him safe passage, despite Quito’s claims that the 41-year-old needs urgent medical treatment for a lung problem.
For most of the last half year the former hacker has been stuck in a tiny room inside the embassy, which is itself just an apartment inside a Victorian red-brick building in the posh Knightsbridge district.
Assange has nothing but a laptop, a running machine, a sunlamp and a microwave for company, friends have said, while he has described the conditions as like living in a “space station”.