UK judge upholds Assange's arrest warrant, rejects his bid to leave embassy

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had his hopes of freedom dashed on Tuesday when a judge in London upheld a warrant for his arrest on a charge of skipping bail.

The 46-year-old Australian has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 fearing arrest if he leaves the building, potentially paving the way for him to be extradited to the US, reports Xinhua news agency.

Senior District Judge Emma Arbuthnot delivered her ruling on Tuesday at Westminster magistrates court in London stating it is in the public interest to pursue him for failing to surrender to his bail.

"I find arrest is a proportionate response even though Assange has restricted his own freedom for a number of years," she was quoted as saying.

Julian Assange a free man now? Ecuador grants WikiLeaks founder citizenship

Ecuador has granted citizenship to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been sheltering at its London embassy for five years to avoid arrest, Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa announced on Friday.
Espinosa told a press conference in Quito that Assange, an Australian, became an Ecuadoran citizen on December 12.

As a result, she said Ecuador had asked London to recognise Assange as a diplomat, which would give him immunity from arrest, a request Britain has refused.
"The Ecuadoran government is empowered to grant nationality to the protected person and thus facilitate... his inclusion in the host state," Espinosa told reporters.

She said the request to Britain to accept diplomatic status for Assange was made on December 20, and denied a day later.
The foreign minister said Quito would not insist further on the issue because of the "good relations we have with the United Kingdom".

The British foreign ministry said in a statement that Ecuador had "recently requested diplomatic status for Mr Assange here in the UK.

The UK did not grant that request, nor are we in talks with Ecuador on this matter."
Ecuador's attempt to obtain diplomatic status for Assange comes as part of the country's broader efforts to resolve the case of their long-term lodger, who moved into the embassy in 2012 to avoid arrest over a Swedish probe into rape allegations.

Assange says WikiLeaks rejected request by data firm tied to Donald Trump

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Wednesday that he had rebuffed a request for help last year from the head of a data firm that worked for Donald J. Trump and is now facing congressional scrutiny.

On Twitter, Mr Assange said he had been approached before the 2016 election by Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Mr Trump during the final months of the campaign. Mr Assange did not disclose what kind of help Mr Nix sought, only that he had declined the request.

“I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica,” Mr Assange wrote, “and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks.”

But The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday that Mr Nix had emailed Mr Assange looking for copies of more than 30,000 emails that were deleted from Hillary Clinton’s private server and never publicly released. Mrs. Clinton has said that the emails were personal in nature.

A spokesman for Cambridge Analytica did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday evening.

It is not clear precisely when the two men corresponded. CNN reported on Wednesday that the emails were exchanged in the summer of 2016. Cambridge Analytica was being paid by a rival campaign — that of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — through early June, according to Federal Election Commission records. By early summer, Cambridge Analytica had also begun wooing the Trump campaign, which hired the firm in June. The firm’s principal owner is the conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, who backed Mr Cruz during the campaign before switching his allegiance to Mr Trump.
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