Ecuador's president says Julian Assange has 'repeatedly violated' asylum terms

(Image credit: Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

published 2 April 2019

President Lenín Moreno of Ecuador told reporters on Tuesday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has "repeatedly violated" the terms of his asylum.

Assange has lived in Ecuador's London embassy since mid-2012, and has been told he "cannot lie, or much less hack, into private accounts or private phones," Moreno said. Assange is also prohibited from intervening "in the politics of countries."

Moreno did not name Assange, but said someone has put hacked photos online showing "my bedroom, what I eat, and how my wife and daughters and friends dance." His government believes the photos, which were taken when Moreno and his family lived in Geneva, were shared by WikiLeaks, and filed a formal complaint with the U.N. on Monday.

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Assange filed a lawsuit last year, alleging that his "fundamental rights and freedoms" have been violated due to the rules he must abide by while living in the embassy; it was rejected by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and by a judge in Ecuador.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.