{"id":111402,"date":"2018-05-21T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-05-21T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=111402"},"modified":"2018-05-28T09:44:30","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T08:44:30","slug":"ecuadors-ex-president-rafael-correa-denounces-treatment-of-julian-assange-as-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/05\/ecuadors-ex-president-rafael-correa-denounces-treatment-of-julian-assange-as-torture\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecuador\u2019s Ex-President Rafael Correa Denounces Treatment of Julian Assange as \u201cTorture\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

16 May 2018 – <\/em>Former Ecuadorian President\u00a0Rafael Correa, in an exclusive interview with The Intercept on\u00a0Wednesday\u00a0morning, denounced his country\u2019s current government for blocking Julian Assange from receiving visitors in its embassy in London as a form of \u201ctorture\u201d and a violation of\u00a0Ecuador\u2019s\u00a0duties to protect Assange\u2019s safety and well-being. Correa said this took place in the context of Ecuador no longer maintaining \u201cnormal sovereign relations with the American government \u2014 just submission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Correa\u00a0also responded to a\u00a0widely discussed Guardian article<\/a>\u00a0yesterday, which claimed that \u201cEcuador bankrolled a multimillion-dollar spy operation to protect and support\u00a0Julian Assange\u00a0in its central London embassy.\u201d\u00a0The former president mocked the story\u00a0as highly \u201csensationalistic,\u201d\u00a0accusing The Guardian of\u00a0seeking to depict routine and\u00a0modest embassy security measures as something scandalous or unusual.<\/p>\n

On March 27, Assange\u2019s internet access at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London\u00a0was cut off<\/a>\u00a0by Ecuadorian officials, who also installed jamming\u00a0devices to prevent Assange from accessing the internet using other means of connection. Assange\u2019s previously active Twitter account has\u00a0had no activity since then, nor have any journalists been able to communicate with him.\u00a0All visitors to the embassy have also been denied access to Assange, who was formally made a citizen of Ecuador<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Rafeal Correa celebrates his overwhelming re-election win as Ecuador\u2019s president in 2013, with his Vice President Jorge Glas.
Photo: Martin Jaramillo\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

Assange has been confined to the embassy for almost six years,\u00a0when Ecuador\u00a0granted him asylum<\/a>\u00a0in August 2012. The grant of asylum was made\u00a0on the grounds that Assange\u2019s extradition to Sweden for a sexual assault investigation would likely result in being sent to the U.S. for prosecution, where he could face the death penalty.<\/p>\n

From the start, Ecuador told both the U.K. and Swedish governments that it would immediately send Assange to Stockholm in exchange for a pledge from Sweden not to use that as a pretext to extradite him to the U.S., something the Swedish government had the power to do<\/a> but refused.<\/p>\n

Correa also emphasized that Ecuador, from the start, told Swedish investigators that they were welcome to interrogate Assange in their embassy, but almost five years elapsed before Swedish prosecutors \u2014 in 2016 \u2014\u00a0finally did so<\/a>. Citing those facts, a United Nations panel ruled in 2016<\/a> that the actions of the U.K. government constituted \u201carbitrary detention\u201d and a violation of Assange\u2019s fundamental human rights, a decision British officials quickly said they intended to ignore.<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that Swedish prosecutors\u00a0dropped its sex crimes investigation<\/a>\u00a0last May (not because they concluded Assange was innocent, but because they believed further efforts to bring him to Sweden were futile), U.K. authorities have vowed to arrest him on what it claims are bail violations.<\/p>\n

The danger for Assange thus remains high if were to leave the embassy, particularly in light of a highly threatening speech<\/a> given last year by Mike Pompeo, then U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s CIA director and now his secretary of state, in which he labeled WikiLeaks a \u201cnon-state hostile intelligence service,\u201d denied that\u00a0its publication of documents is protected by the First Amendment, and vowed that \u201cto give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.\u201d<\/p>\n

In January, doctors who examined Assange inside the embassy warned that continued confinement<\/a> posed grave threats to both his physical and mental health. Assange\u2019s mother said earlier this week<\/a> that his health was \u201crapidly deteriorating\u201d\u00a0and had become \u201cextremely dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Correa cited<\/u> those facts, as well as Ecuador\u2019s legal obligations under international law to asylees, to denounce\u00a0Ecuador\u2019s\u00a0denial of visitors to Assange as \u201cbasically torture.\u201d Denial of visitors is, Correa said, \u201ca clear\u00a0violation of his rights. Once we give asylum\u00a0to someone, we are responsible for his safety, for ensuring humane living conditions.\u201d But \u201cwithout communications to the outside world and visits from anyone, the government is basically attacking Julian\u2019s mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ex-president said he believed it could be appropriate to limit Assange\u2019s communications if he were acting \u201cirresponsibly\u201d by interfering in another country\u2019s politics. During the 2016 U.S. election, Correa said, his own government told Assange that\u00a0it thought his attacks on Hillary Clinton were becoming excessive and briefly suspended his internet connection to underline\u00a0its concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that was just temporary,\u201d said Correa. \u201cWe never intended to take away his internet\u00a0for an extended period of time. That is going way too far.\u201d Correa\u2019s Foreign Affairs Minister Guillaume Long similarly said in an interview<\/a> with The Guardian earlier this morning that he, too, believed that the denial of visitors to Assange and the blocking of his internet access for this long \u2014 believed to be due to Assange\u2019s frequent tweeting over the Catalan independence movement in Spain \u2014 was unjust.<\/p>\n

As for reports that Ecuador is negotiating with the U.K. government to turn over Assange, Correa said that he had no knowledge of those discussions, but said it would be \u201cunthinkable\u201d for Ecuador to do so without first obtaining enforceable protections for Assange\u2019s rights, including not having the U.K. government use the bail violations as a pretext to hand over Assange to the U.S.<\/p>\n

Emphasizing that the U.S. government has made clear that\u00a0it wants to prosecute Assange for publishing newsworthy material under statutes that allow for the death penalty, Correa said any such deal that did not include protections against extradition to the U.S. would be \u201ca terrible betrayal, a violation of the rules of asylum, and a breach of Ecuador\u2019s responsibility to protect the safety and welfare of Julian Assange.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his presidency, Correa was particularly assertive about defending the\u00a0sovereignty of his country from intrusions by more powerful states, particularly the U.S. In 2007, he ordered a U.S. military base<\/a> on Ecuadorian soil closed unless the U.S. was willing to allow Ecuador the reciprocal right to establish a military base in Miami.<\/p>\n

But earlier this month, Correa\u2019s successor, the current Ecuadorian President\u00a0Len\u00edn Moreno, announced that<\/a> it had \u201crecently signed an agreement focused on security cooperation [with the U.S.] which implies sharing information, intelligence topics and experiences in the fight against illegal drug trafficking and fighting transnational organized crime.\u201d Many in Ecuador viewed that as a prelude to a return to the days when the U.S. dominated Ecuador, including with new military bases, a suspicion Moreno\u2019s government denies.<\/p>\n

But to Correa,\u00a0Moreno is returning Ecuador to the days when it was subservient to the dictates of the U.S. government. \u201cEveryone in Latin America knows what this agreement with the U.S. means control, intervention, spying,\u201d he said. Given the submissive posture of the current Ecuadorian president, Correa said it would not shock him if they submitted to American and British demands regarding Assange. Correa also cited the Moreno government\u2019s recent decision to terminate peace talks<\/a>\u00a0between the Colombian government and rebels on Ecuadorian soil, which the ex-president believes was done at the behest of the U.S.<\/p>\n

As for the \u201cspying\u201d allegations in the Guardian article, Correa said that the newspaper took a customary and standard security arrangement, and tried to make it appear sinister and scandalous. \u201cOf course we provided security to Assange in the embassy,\u201d Correa said. \u201cIt was our duty under the law to do so. We had the U.K. government threatening to break into the embassy<\/a>. We spent what amounts to a small amount of money to provide security.\u201d<\/p>\n

Correa said that unlike the U.S., which surrounds its embassies with massive military protection, Ecuador does not have the means to do that. \u201cSo, when we have special security needs, we hire private firms to provide it. There is nothing unusual about this. It would have been a violation of our duties if we did not.\u201d Correa said his government hired a well-known security firm based in Spain, UC Global<\/a>, to provide those services, but the current government replaced it with an Israeli firm. \u201cBut those services are still being provided by the current government,\u201d Correa said.<\/p>\n

As for The Guardian\u2019s claim that Assange himself breached Ecuadorian cybersecurity systems to read emails and documents from Ecuadorian officials, Correa said the claim seemed \u201cabsurd,\u201d adding that The Guardian \u201cpresented no evidence for this, just an anonymous source.\u201d Conceding that it was possible that Assange had managed to hack into various government systems, he emphasized that he had no knowledge that any such spying by Assange had taken place nor has he seen any evidence for this claim.<\/p>\n

The former president stressed that he had been given virtually no chance to respond to The Guardian\u2019s allegations before publication of its article. \u201cThey sent it to some email address in Ecuador very shortly before they published the story,\u201d said Correa, who is currently in Belgium. \u201cI did not see\u00a0the email until after the story was published. They seemed to want to make a sensationalized story, not any serious report to find out the truth.\u201d Correa said he would provide The Intercept with the email sent by The Guardian; upon receipt from Correa, this article will be updated to include it.<\/p>\n

Correa continues to believe that asylum for Assange is not only legally valid, but also obligatory. \u201cWe don\u2019t agree with everything\u00a0Assange has done or what he says,\u201d Correa said. \u201cAnd we never wanted to\u00a0impede\u00a0the Swedish investigation. We said all along that he would go to Sweden immediately in exchange for a promise not to extradite him to the U.S., but they would never give that.\u00a0And we knew they could have questioned him in our embassy, but they refused for years to do so.\u201d The fault for the investigation not proceeding lies, he insists, with the Swedish and British governments.<\/p>\n

But now that Assange\u00a0has asylum, Correa is adamant that the current government is bound by domestic and international law to protect\u00a0his well-being and safety. Correa was scathing in his denunciation of the treatment Assange is currently receiving, viewing it as a byproduct of Moreno\u2019s inability or unwillingness to have Ecuador act like a sovereign and independent country.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Glenn Greenwald<\/a> – glenn.greenwald@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16 May 2018 – In an exclusive interview, the former Ecuadorian leader speaks about Assange, allegations from The Guardian, and the \u201csubmissive\u201d posture of his successor to the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":111405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224,48,65,62,51,53,139,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights","category-in-focus","category-anglo-america","category-media","category-europe","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean","category-justice","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}