Ecuador says it is reassessing its asylum for Julian Assange after WikiLeaks warned last week that the organization's controversial founder faced imminent expulsion from Quito's London embassy and arrest by the British authorities.
Foreign Minister Jose Valencia has remained coy about what Ecuador will decide, and when -- amid repeated signs that Assange has worn out his welcome.
"The Ecuadoran state will determine what it should determine when it considers it appropriate," Valencia told reporters in Quito.
So what's next for Julian Assange, who has spent more than six years cooped up inside the Ecuadoran embassy in London.
Assange took refuge in the embassy in June 2012 having lost his appeal in Britain's Supreme Court against extradition to Sweden over accusations of sexual assault.
The Australian fought extradition on the grounds that it was part of a Washington plan to extradite him to the US and try him over WikiLeaks' release of thousands of classified documents into the public domain.
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Quito's then-president Rafael Correa said Assange's human rights could be at risk and granted him asylum in August.
However, Britain refused to give him safe conduct out of the embassy, given that he faced charges in London over violating his bail conditions.
Sweden's state prosecutor finally abandoned the sexual assault case in 2017.
Ecuador's attitude toward its guest in London changed with the arrival in power of Lenin Moreno. He has accused Assange of meddling in Ecuador's internal and external affairs.
Assange is accused of trying to influence the 2016 US elections as well as the Catalan independence process in Spain.
Moreno temporarily cut his communications with the outside world in 2018.
But what could cost him his stay in the embassy is the government's suspicion WikiLeaks hacked into Moreno and his family's communications and leaked videos and private conversations, giving ammunition to his political foes.
Assange has wanted to remain a relevant "actor on the world stage," said Katalina Barreiro of the Institute of Higher Studies in Quito, but he ended up breaking "the minimum code that an asylee must have -- to not comment or involve himself in any type of political process."
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