Ecuador’s president says Julian Assange ‘repeatedly violated’ asylum terms at London embassy, protests leak of private family photos
- Lenin Moreno said ‘photos of my bedroom’ and his family were circulated online but did not directly accuse WikiLeaks founder
- WikiLeaks said that Moreno’s remarks were in retribution for WikiLeaks having reported on corruption accusations against Moreno
Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had “repeatedly violated” the conditions of his asylum in the country’s London embassy, where he has lived for close to seven years.
Speaking to the Ecuadorean radio broadcasters association, Moreno said under the terms of his asylum “Assange cannot lie or, much less, hack into private accounts or private phones” and he could not “intervene in the politics of countries, or worse friendly countries”.
Moreno fulminated that “photos of my bedroom, what I eat and how my wife and daughters and friends dance” had been circulated on social media but stopped short of directly accusing WikiLeaks of circulating hacked photos of his family and wiretapping his phone calls and private conversations.
The Ecuadorean government, however, has said it believes the whistle-blowing organisation shared the photos, which date back several years to when Moreno and his family lived in Geneva.
Moreno’s outburst was yet another sign of the Ecuadorean president’s waning tolerance for Assange’s prolonged occupancy of the country’s London embassy since mid-2012.