LONDON: Britain said on Thursday it has denied a request by Ecuador to issue diplomatic status to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been living in the country’s London embassy since 2012.
“The government of Ecuador recently requested diplomatic status for Mr.Assange here in the UK. The UK did not grant that request, nor are we in talks with Ecuador on this matter,” the British foreign ministry said in a statement.
Ecuador’s attempt to obtain diplomatic status for the 46-year-old comes as part of the country’s broader efforts to resolve the case of their long-term lodger, who moved into the embassy to avoid arrest over a Swedish probe into rape allegations.
Sweden dropped their investigation over the 2010 allegations last year, but British police have said they are still seeking to arrest him for failing to surrender to a court after violating bail terms.
“Ecuador knows that the way to resolve this issue is for Julian Assange to leave the embassy to face justice,” Britain’s foreign ministry said on Thursday.
Assange has refused to step outside the embassy and claimed he fears being extradited to the United States, for WikiLeaks’ publication of leaked secret US military documents and diplomatic cables in 2010.
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa said on Tuesday her government is looking at the possibility of a “third country or a personality” stepping in to resolve the stand-off.
“No solution will be achieved without international cooperation and the cooperation of the United Kingdom, which has also shown interest in seeking a way out,” Espinosa told foreign correspondents in Quito.
On Wednesday the Ecuadorian foreign ministry refused to comment on media reports that Assange, an Australian national, has been granted citizenship by the South American country.
UK denies Assange diplomatic status after Ecuador request
UK denies Assange diplomatic status after Ecuador request
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
