QUITO: Ecuador’s government said late on Friday that it rejected reports that it would imminently expel Wikileaks founder Julian Assange from its London embassy, where he has lived in asylum for nearly seven years.
Assange was “prepared” for expulsion from the building, a British friend of his said on Tuesday, after Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno said he had “repeatedly violated” the terms of his asylum.
Moreno accused Assange of harming Ecuador’s relations with other countries by intervening in their politics and said he did not have the right to “hack private accounts or phones.” WikiLeaks said Moreno’s remarks were in retribution for WikiLeaks having reported on corruption accusations against Moreno, who denies wrongdoing.
In a statement, Ecuador’s foreign ministry denied it had reached an agreement with the British government to jail Assange if he left the embassy.
Ecuador “categorically rejects the fake news that have circulated recently on social networks, many spread by an organization linked to Mr.Julian Assange, about an imminent termination of the diplomatic aslyum granted to him since 2012,” it said.
The ministry said it reserved the right to terminate asylum when it considered it justified.
“By releasing information that distorts the truth, (Assange) and his associates express once again their ingratitude and disrespect to Ecuador,” it said.
Assange took refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where authorities wanted to question him as part of a sexual assault investigation.
That probe was later dropped, but Assange fears he could be extradited to face charges in the United States, where federal prosecutors are investigating WikiLeaks.
Ecuador last year established new rules for Assange’s behavior while in the embassy, which required him to pay his medical bills and clean up after his pet cat. He challenged the rules in local and international tribunals, arguing they violated his human rights. Both courts ruled against him.
Last month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is linked to the Organization of American States, rejected Assange’s request that Ecuador ease the conditions it has imposed on his residence in the London embassy.
Assange says Ecuador is seeking to end his asylum and is putting pressure on him by isolating him from visitors and spying on him. Ecuador has said its treatment of Assange was in line with international law, but that his situation “cannot be extended indefinitely.”
Ecuador denies it will imminently expel Assange from embassy
Ecuador denies it will imminently expel Assange from embassy
- Ecuador last year established new rules for Assange’s behavior while in the embassy, which required him to pay his medical bills and clean up after his pet cat
- Assange says Ecuador is seeking to end his asylum and is putting pressure on him by isolating him from visitors and spying on him
Italian suspect questioned over Bosnia ‘weekend sniper’ killings
- The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA
ROME: An 80-year-old man suspected of being a “weekend sniper” who paid the Bosnian Serb army to shoot civilians during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo was questioned Monday in Milan, media reported.
The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA.
Lawyer Giovanni Menegon told journalists that his client had answered questions from prosecutors and police and “reaffirmed his complete innocence.”
In October, prosecutors opened an investigation into what Italian media dubbed “weekend snipers” or “war tourists“: mostly wealthy, gun-loving, far-right sympathizers who allegedly gathered in Trieste and were taken to the hills surrounding Sarajevo where they fired on civilians for sport.
During the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo that began in April 1992 some 11,541 men, women and children were killed and more than 50,000 people wounded by Bosnian Serb forces, according to official figures.
Il Giornale newspaper reported last year that the would-be snipers paid Bosnian Serb forces up to the equivalent of €100,000 ($115,000) per day to shoot at civilians below them.
The suspect — described by the Italian press as a hunting enthusiast who is nostalgic for Fascism — is said to have boasted publicly about having gone “man hunting.”
Witness statements, particularly from residents of his village, helped investigators to track the suspect, freelance journalist Marianna Maiorino said.
“According to the testimonies, he would tell his friends at the village bar about what he did during the war in the Balkans,” said Maiorino, who researched the allegations and was herself questioned as part of the investigation.
The suspect is “described as a sniper, someone
who enjoyed going to Sarajevo to kill people,” she added.
The suspect told local newspaper Messaggero Veneto Sunday he had been to Bosnia during the war, but “for work, not for hunting.” He added that his public statements had been exaggerated and he was “not worried.”
The investigation opened last year followed a complaint filed by Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavanezzi, based on allegations revealed in the documentary “Sarajevo Safari” by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic in 2022.
Gavanezzi was contacted in August 2025 by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karic, who filed a complaint in Bosnia in 2022 after the same documentary was broadcast.
The Bosnia and Herzegovina prosecutor’s office confirmed on Friday that a special war crimes department was investigating alleged foreign snipers during the siege of Sarajevo.
Bosnian prosecutors requested information from Italian counterparts at the end of last year, while also contacting the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, it said. That body performs some of the functions previously carried out by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Sarajevo City Council adopted a decision last month authorizing the current mayor, Samir Avdic, to “join the criminal proceedings” before the Italian
courts, in order to support Italian prosecutors.
