Ecuador Bowed to US Pressure, Violated Law – Assange's Associate

Sputnik: How legal is Julian Assange's arrest?

Randy Credico: How illegal?

Sputnik: How legal is this move?

Randy Credico: It's not legal, not legal because the president of Ecuador [Lenin Moreno] is bowing to US pressure has violated Ecuadorian law and international law. He [Assange] is a political refugee and under their Constitution once they have given asylum they cannot rescind that asylum and so what he [Moreno] has done is he has put Ecuador in the category of a rogue nation, a nation of men and not of laws. And it's a sad day for the people of Ecuador because a lot of people are going to look at that country as a country that does not protect its citizens, which Julian Assange was a citizen, they granted him citizenship. So, it's a dangerous country to go. I would never visit Ecuador now because there's no guarantee that the Constitution and the statutory laws in that country will be followed by its leaders.

READ MORE: World Reacts to Assange Arrest in UK: From Dark Moment for Freedom to 'No Hero'

Sputnik: Why has Ecuador terminated his political asylum?

Randy Credico: They've bowed to US pressure. I think Mr Moreno was caught in a huge scandal and he's embarrassed and it's the biggest scandal to rock that country in a long time and so he's looking for a scapegoat and Assange is a scapegoat. Also there's pressure from various international monetary fund guarantees, loans from the US. He basically was bribed, this is a very corrupt man, not a man of principle, Lenin Moreno, and so the pressure… I mean he was bribed, that's all. He was bribed to do something. He did the bidding. And the Brits, they are complicit in all of this. They got him on a trumped up charge of bail jumping. Bail jumping, there are tens of thousands of people in the United Kingdom who have been on the loose for not satisfying their bail obligations.

READ MORE: Assange's Arrest 'New Reminder That Only Moscow' Can Give Asylum — Journo

The problem here is that there's no reason for him to even have posted bail because there were phony charges that were instigated by the Brits coming in from Sweden. They were never really charges, they were allegations and the Brits, the British government instigated and put pressure on Marianne Ny who was the prosecutor to keep the case investigation going so they had an excuse to keep him locked up, to keep him locked up inside that embassy. They did not want him operating.

They did not want the British government's dirty laundry to be aired, whether their torture in Uzbekistan, all the crimes that have been committed by the British government in Libya and elsewhere. You know, all of these crimes in Iraq, in Afghanistan that were exposed, they did not want that type of thing to continue. Even with these bogus charges of this novichok in the Skripal case. He was talking about that at that time, I recall, exposing the farce that the Russians had something to do with this guy in Salisbury. The Brits do a lot of dirty things. They don't want it to get out. So this is not in the long run, this is only going to make matters worse now. It will make matters worse for the Brits and the US government because everybody is going to do what Assange did they are going test it now. They are not going to put the genie back into the bottle. The genie is out of the bottle and more people going to be inspired by this. This is a very bad day for press freedom.

READ MORE: Assange's Lawyer Suspects US May Be 'Playing its Cards Secretly'

Sputnik: Moreno claims Assange violated international law. How justified is this accusation?

Randy Credico: No, that's a complete lie. And this is a desperate man who is a corrupt individual, one of the most corrupted. He goes back to the days of US-installed dictators of Central and South America — Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua — so he's a throwback to that generation of corrupt US-controlled dictators who have absolutely… He's looking for an excuse here to justify a crime. He committed a crime, another crime on top of the economic crimes that Mr Moreno has committed. He violated the country's Constitution. You cannot do what he did, you can't rescind asylum, he is a citizen of that country.

And so the problem is that he was looking for, he has made the conditions so bad, cause I've been in that embassy, they were bad enough when I was there and then he tightened it up and then they cut off his ability to communicate with the world. What are they afraid of? What are they afraid of? One man, one man with a pen they were afraid of. Can you believe that? He [Moreno] must have a lot to hide. And so he is doing the bidding, he is going to take the responsibility and take the US and the Brits off of the surface of it, but they are the ones who really put the pressure on him. And now he has the excuse saying that he was the guy. He cannot even write a letter, so how could he violate the terms of conditions for asylum? Asylum is asylum.

READ MORE: Clockwatching: Timeline of Assange's 2,487 Days in Ecuador's Embassy in London

Sputnik:  What could be done to help Mr Assange now?

Randy Credico: I think they should just go to the WikiLeaks website, the people need to go to the British Embassy, to the Ecuadorian Embassy, start mobilising demonstrations. The same thing they did with Nelson Mandela, what they did with other persecuted individuals that were being held without real charges. This is Kafkaesque and so people just need to mobilise, they have to show their support and like I say they should visit the WikiLeaks website as they have to visit the defend Assange website out there, I can't give you the exact URL. They can protest at the British Embassy. And while they are out there they can post Britain's crimes against humanity elsewhere, because they don't want BAE [Systems] and British Petroleum, they don't want to… You know how they could stop Assange? By not committing crimes. They could stop, they could put him… They want to quiet him? Then stop doing illegal things. The British government does illegal things. The MI6 with the MI5 [should] stop these illegal, immoral things that they perpetrated for centuries. Just stop with it.  

 

The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.