Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been cut off access to the Internet. The Embassy of Ecuador in London, where Assange has been stuck in asylum for almost six years, cut off all communications. The reason given in a statement by the government in Quito was that Assange had broken his commitment not to interfere publicly with the affairs of other states. Assange's statements about social media threatened Ecuador's relations with the EU states.
Assange had criticized on Twitter the arrest of former Catalan Prime Minister Carles Puigdemont in Germany and called him a "political prisoner".
Assange fears being arrested after leaving the building and being extradited to the United States. The United States blames Assange for releasing explosive US documents from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through its Wikileaks platform.
The WikiLeaks founder in pictures
WikiLeaks founder: Julian Assange in December 2010 in front of a police station in Suffolk, UK. After seven years of investigation, the Swedish Public Prosecutor's Office closed its investigations against Assange in May 2017.
In October 2011, the WikiLeaks founder participated in an anti-war demonstration in London.
Assange in February 2012 at the Frontline Club. The Londoner Club for Media Creators temporarily sheltered him from the police.
Finally, in the summer of 2012, Julian Assange fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He talked to the press several times from a balcony there. Background is the allegation of a sexual crime in Sweden. Assange always described the allegations as politically motivated.
In June 2013 Assange presented itself in a room of the Embassy of the Press.
Also in 2014 there were meetings of Assange with the press in the premises of the Embassy of Ecuador. Despite the current announcement of Sweden, Assange will probably not leave the embassy. The British authorities have already announced that they will arrest him otherwise.
At public events, Julian Assange was in the past regularly connect via video transmission. As in 2015, in a speech to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Assange in February 2016 on the balcony of the embassy in London. In November of the same year Assange had been questioned after a long back and forth in the embassy by the Swedish Attorney Ingrid Isgren and her team to the allegations.
Also in autumn 2016, Assange had spoken by video live on a press conference in Berlin for the tenth anniversary of its platform WikiLeaks.
When Assange fled to the embassy, he was the subject of a European arrest warrant for rape allegations in Sweden. He was afraid of being extradited to Scandinavia and eventually to the United States. In May 2017, however, the prosecutor's office surprisingly stopped its investigation. Scotland Yard nevertheless announced that he would arrest Assange as soon as he left the embassy. The British authorities accused him of violating his bail obligations when he fled to the embassy.