Ecuador and the Assange Affair

From Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

A bit of recent history; Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, was accused in Sweden of sexual abuse of a minor. Britain agreed to his extradition and gave him a deadline to post bail, which he did not do, thus Britain gave an order for his imprisonment. To avoid justice he escaped and managed to get “political asylum” by the government of Ecuador, arguing that if he were caught he would be extradited to the United States, where he was in danger of the death penalty for having revealed highly classified documents. Since then, 16 August 2012, Assange has been living at the Embassy of Ecuador in London. His initial dwelling was a narrow room next to the balcony, then he occupied half of the kitchen and a room at the back of the quarters as his bedroom, where he had installed a system of computers away from the CCTV cameras, a room that Ecuadorian diplomats could enter accessible only through special codes, says the London newspaper The Guardian and reported jointly by the digital newspaper Focus Ecuador.

Ricardo Patiño, then Foreign Minister, confirming the political asylum of Assange

A comedy of errors

The Ecuadorian government tried on more than one occasion to extract Assange via a helicopter from the roof of the building, also tried to take him in a limousine with diplomatic seals; alas, none of these ways were feasible because there were British police around the clock ready to capture him if he were to put a foot outside the Embassy. It is unbelievable that he was granted Ecuadorian citizenship and appointed him as representative of the Ecuador before a meeting of officials of the United Nations! Such a ruse shamed Ecuadorian diplomacy and, in particular, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, María Fernanda Espinosa. Of course, the British government immediately rejected the claim to give him diplomatic immunity.

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Maria Fernanda Espinosa, minister of foreing affairs of Ecuador and Julian Assange

The dance of five million dollars

It is a story for Ripley’s Believe or Not that the Ecuadorian government spent about five million dollars, not to protect Assange (as it was planned initially) but to spy on him! According to documents reviewed by the British newspaper, the government of Rafael Correa, over more than five years, spent at least five million dollars into a secret intelligence budget that spied the WikiLeaks founder while he had visits from Nigel Farage, members of European nationalist groups and individuals linked to the Kremlin. Other guests included hackers, activists, lawyers and journalists.

The documents show that this intelligence scheme, called "Guest operation" later changed to "Operation Hotel," spent around 66 thousand dollars a month in rent for an apartment in an upscale neighborhood of London, in the salaries of three operators (ten thousand dollars a month each), CCTV cameras, radio equipment, etc. but not in recorders, because Assange had some sort of white (or other) noise generator that prevented the recording of conversations. Meanwhile Assange had hacked the computer system of the Embassy, of its staff and of visitors to the embassy, shamelessly violating the "sovereignty" of Ecuador. Supposedly, the Ecuadorian government had cut his internet access though he had a sophisticated communications system.

This affair would have been no more significant than the result of a soccer match, if it wasn't because Assange is at the center of the investigations carried out by special prosecutor Robert Mueller in the United States with regard to the Russian intervention in the last presidential elections and to the existence of a conspiracy involving a number of countries and leaders of the world.

Conspiracy

Anyway, our purpose is to denounce socialist leaders in Ecuador, such as Rafael Correa, Raúl Patiño and Maria Fernanda Espinosa, have no qualms about wasting millions of dollars on trivialities while his rhetoric is the defense of the poor. As it is turning out the socialism of the 21st century has been the most corrupt, the most insatiable, the most ineffective, the most perverse in the history of Ecuador.

Leer la versión en español

Franklin Lopez, Ph.D.

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Published on Policy of Liberty
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