The Reuters report comes a day after Paola Vintimilla, a member of the Ecuadorian parliament, started raising public questions about Julian Assange’s status inside the country’s London embassy and about the citizenship Assange was granted last year.
Vintimillia said at a press conference (Spanish) in Quito on Thursday that Assange’s citizenship should be rescinded. She also said that it is not clear precisely what legal status Assange has, as he appears to have withdrawn his asylum claim as of December 4, 2017, just eight days prior to his being granted citizenship.
"At this moment, what is Assange’s status?" she said. "He’s an Ecuadorian living in the London embassy and we’re paying for this?"
Vintimilla also noted that Assange’s naturalization documents "mysteriously" lack the signature of then-Foreign Minister María Espinosa.
As Reuters reported, the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office told Ecuador on December 21, 2017 that it would not accept Assange as a diplomat. Had the UK accepted his diplomatic status, he likely would have been allowed to leave the embassy and travel to Moscow.
Once Ecuador learned of the UK’s perspective on Assange’s status, the country abandoned the plan to make him a diplomat.
Were Assange to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has lived since 2012, he would almost certainly be arrested by British authorities. Assange has said he is concerned that he would be extradited to the United States.
In July 2016, WikiLeaks published 20,000 internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, a hack that likely originated from Russia.
"We assess with high confidence that the GRU relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks," the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wrote in a January 7, 2017 report. "Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries."
