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| Caribbean-Latin America | |
| Ecuador offers refuge to Assange | |
| 2010-12-01 | |
[Al Jazeera] An Ecuadorean minister has offered residence in his country to Julian Assange, the reclusive founder of WikiLeaks, without conditions.
"We are going to invite him to come to Ecuador so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the internet but in a variety of public forums." Assange has enraged the US, and many other countries, by releasing masses of classified US documents, including a dump of embarrassing diplomatic cables and documents related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq earlier this year. After the latest leak, Australian police said they had begun investigating whether any of the country's laws were broken by the release. Assange is an Australian national. Kevin Rudd, the Australian foreign minister, said the unauthorised release of diplomatic communications had been a major problem for every nation state in the world. "We, the Australian government, condemn it because it helps nobody," he told Al Jizz on Tuesday. "The reason we have diplomacy is that it remains private. This [leak] has fundamentally undermined that and I believe those responsible for it should be held accountable." Arrest warrant An international arrest warrant was issued in mid-November against Assange on suspicion of rape and sexual molestation of two women in Sweden. The 39-year-old claims the crime allegations are part of a smear campaign. | |
| Posted by:Fred |