WikiLeaks said the Ecuadorian government refused to allow Assange's lawyers, Aitor Martinez and Jen Robinson, to meet with their client this week, which is a huge problem for the whistleblower, because Assange is facing a US court hearing Tuesday, and needs to meet with his legal team to prepare.
The hearing is being called to remove the secrecy order on the charges against Assange (which were only publicly revealed because of a copy and paste error).
"The hearing is on Tuesday in the national security court complex at Alexandria, Virginia," WikiLeaks tweeted, adding it is to "remove the secrecy order on the US charges against him."Visitors to Assange were only recently readmitted after being cut off by the Ecuadorian government. The government also restored Assange's communications in October. But this was accompanied by restrictions on Assange's communications.
In another sign that Moreno is preparing to oust Assange, the Ecuadorian government recently terminated the credentials of Ecuador's London ambassador Abad Ortiz without explanation. As Wikileaks explained:
"Now all diplomats known to Assange have now been transferred away from the embassy."Assange has been living in the embassy since June 2012 after seeking protection from Swedish prosecutors who had been trying to arrest him on sex crime charges. Those have since been dropped, but Assange has long feared extradition to the US over Wikileaks' publication of thousands of government cables leaked by Chelsea Manning.
While the left has largely cheered Assange's misfortune, journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi have spoken out in his defense, and warned about the dangerous precedent that Assange's prosecution could set for all journalists.
SOTT Focus:The US Deep State vs Julian Assange
On Friday November 16th 2018, the US deep state's #2 "paper of record", The New York Times (second only to The Washington Post), announced that the US Department of Justice had secretly filed...