WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in central London, police have said.
Mr Assange, sporting a long white beard, was carried out by police officers from the embassy and moved into a police van, Sky News Reports.
“It is absolutely right that Assange will face justice in the proper way in the UK,” said Minister of State for Europe and the Americas, Sir Alan Duncan, after Mr Assange’s arrest. “It is for the courts to decide what happens next.”
Sir Alan said they grateful to Ecuador’s government under President Lenín Moreno for the action they have taken.
Moreno said on Twitter: “In a sovereign decision Ecuador withdrew the asylum status to Julian Assange after his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols.”
The WikiLeaks founder has been living in Ecuador’s London embassy since 2012 after he sought refuge there following a British judge ruling he should be extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations.
Sweden dropped the case in 2017 but Mr Assange remained in the London embassy as he feared being extradited to the US to face charges over the WikiLeaks website’s release of sensitive US government files.
Last Thursday, WikiLeaks claimed that a senior source in Ecuador’s state department had said that Mr Assange would be expelled. But Ecuador’s minister of foreign affairs Jose Valencia said the claims were “unfounded” at the time.
