Wikileaks' 12th anniversary: Assange spends 2858 days in Ecuador embassy

London, Oct 4: Twelve years ago Wikileaks, a non-profit organisation that publishes secret information, launched on October 4. Wikileaks is specialized in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses.

Julian Assange, the founder is reportedly under isolation at Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom. As per Wikileaks, since 28 March 2018, the government of Ecuador has imposed a regime of isolation on Assange, which means that he may receive no visitors other than his lawyers, and is kept incommunicado from friends and family through the government's installation of signal jammers which interfere with wifi and phone signals. The government has also imposed a gag on any public statements and interviews.

Assange's defence attorney Jennifer Robinson health is at risk after being held without medical attention in the Ecuadorean Embassy in the U.K. since 2012.

"We are very concerned about his health: he has been locked up in the embassy for more than six years, without proper access to medical care," said Robinson during an interview with the Catalan publication, Nacio Digital.

Wikileaks alleged that US aligned political parties in Ecuador push to strip Julian Assange of citizenship in the plenary session of parliament. His citizenship is a barrier to transfer to US or UK as section 79 of Ecuadorian constitution expressly forbids extradition of nationals.

US efforts to get Assange back:

A US grand jury investigation has been ongoing since May 2010 with the purpose of bringing a case against Julain Assange over WikiLeaks publications. Efforts to prosecute Assange have expanded under the Trump administration to include WikiLeaks groundbreaking series on the CIA published last year. Assange faces up to life imprisonment for multiple charges including conspiracy, theft, and electronic espionage-a terrorism offence.

In 2010, Donald Trump called WikiLeaks "disgraceful" and suggested that the "death penalty" should be a punishment for WikiLeaks' releases of information. Following the dump of e-mails hacked from the Hillary Clinton campaign, Donald Trump told voters, "I love WikiLeaks!" Trump made many references to WikiLeaks during the course of the campaign; by one estimate, he referenced disclosures by WikiLeaks over 160 times in speeches during the last 30 days of the campaign.

In April 2017, CIA Director Mike Pompeo stated: "It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is - a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia."