WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he is seeking asylum.
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino says his country “is studying and analyzing the request.”
The WikiLeaks founder is currently awaiting extradition to Sweden on charges of sexual assault.
Assange – who denies the accusations – is concerned that extradition to Sweden could ultimately lead to his eventual transfer to the United States.
“The big risk, the risk we have always been concerned about, is onwards extradition to the United States. And that seems to be increasingly likely,” the WikiLeaks founder told the BBC back in 2010. “A lot of face has been lost by some people and some… have careers to make by pursuing a famous case.”
Indeed, author-activist David Swanson recently told Russia Today that Assange will ultimately be handed over to the United States – where he is likely to be tried for espionage. According to Swanson, the American government “has issued a secret closed indictment and pressured other governments in Britain and Sweden to ship Julian Assange to the US.”
Swanson also claimed the WikiLeaks founder could face conditions amounting to torture or even murder, as the the US has “very much blurred the line between law enforcement and war.”
Julian Assange became a household name in 2010 after WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified US documents, including a video that showed American forces firing at Iraqi civilians and journalists whom they had mistaken for armed insurgents.
