According
to El Universo, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been issued an
Ecuadorian passport and a citizenship card that corresponds to the
province of Pichincha.
Per
the outlet, Assange was given the passport on December 21, 2017. The
report has yet to be confirmed by officials from Ecuador.
The
Australian tweeted an image of himself wearing Ecuador's national
soccer jersey an hour before news regarding the passport broke
Wednesday.
This
follows recent reports that suggested Assange was going to be evicted
from the Ecuadorian embassy in London after pushing President Lenin
Moreno "over the edge."
Ecuador's
Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa told teleSUR Thursday that
officials were seeking a third-party negotiator to mediate Assange's
safe passage from their UK embassy. Espinosa called Assange's living
arrangements "untenable."
Though
it is unclear, talk of Assange's eviction is speculated to have been
sparked by his criticism of Moreno's allies and his support of the
Catalan independence movement.
Assange
later responded to Moreno by saying that "if President Moreno
wants to gag my reporting of human rights abuses in Spain he should
say so explicitly — together with the legal basis."
The
46-year-old founder has been a tenant at Ecuador's embassy since 2012
when he was granted asylum by Ecuador following sexual assault
allegations. Though the charges were ultimately dropped, Assange
continued to stay at the embassy over fears he would be extradited to
the US in connection with WikiLeaks' release of military files on the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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