WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was forcibly bundled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and into a British police van on Thursday, setting up a possible court battle over attempts to extradite him to the U.S. to face charges related to the publication of tens of thousands of secret government documents.
Police arrested Assange after the South American nation revoked the political asylum that had given him sanctuary for almost seven years. Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno said he took the action due to “repeated violations to international conventions and daily life.”
In Washington, the U.S. Justice Department accused Assange with conspiring with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break into a classified government computer at the Pentagon. The charge was announced after Assange was taken into custody.
His lawyer said Assange would fight extradition to the U.S.
Assange had been facing threat of extradition to the U.S. since 2010, and on the day of his arrest we look back at how his story unfolded over the last decade.
With files from the Associated Press.
Guest:
Jonathan Marcus, London-based defense and diplomatic correspondent for the BBC; he tweets