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View Full Version : Revealed: Russia’s secret plan to help Julian Assange escape from UK




Zippyjuan
09-22-2018, 12:35 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/21/julian-assange-russia-ecuador-embassy-london-secret-escape-plan


Russian diplomats held secret talks in London last year with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they could help him flee the UK, the Guardian has learned.

A tentative plan was devised that would have seen the WikiLeaks founder smuggled out of Ecuador’s London embassy in a diplomatic vehicle and transported to another country.

One ultimate destination, multiple sources have said, was Russia, where Assange would not be at risk of extradition to the US. The plan was abandoned after it was deemed too risky.

The operation to extract Assange was provisionally scheduled for Christmas Eve in 2017, one source claimed, and was linked to an unsuccessful attempt by Ecuador to give Assange formal diplomatic status.

The involvement of Russian officials in hatching what was described as a “basic” plan raises new questions about Assange’s ties to the Kremlin. The WikiLeaks editor is a key figure in the ongoing US criminal investigation into Russia’s attempts to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

Robert Mueller, the special counsel conducting the investigation, filed criminal charges in July against a dozen Russian GRU military intelligence officers who allegedly hacked Democratic party servers during the presidential campaign. The indictment claims the hackers sent emails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton to WikiLeaks. The circumstances of the handover are still under investigation.

According to Mueller, WikiLeaks published “over 50,000 documents” stolen by Russian spies. The first tranche arrived on 14 July 2016 as an encrypted attachment.

Assange has denied receiving the stolen emails from Russia.

Details of the Assange escape plan are sketchy. Two sources familiar with the inner workings of the Ecuadorian embassy said that Fidel Narváez, a close confidant of Assange who until recently served as Ecuador’s London consul, served as a point of contact with Moscow.

In an interview with the Guardian, Narváez denied having been involved in discussions with Russia about extracting Assange from the embassy.

Narváez said he visited Russia’s embassy in Kensington twice this year as part of a group of “20-30 more diplomats from different countries”. These were “open-public meetings”, he said, that took place during the “UK-Russian crisis” – a reference to the aftermath of the novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March.

Sources said the escape plot involved giving Assange diplomatic documents so that Ecuador would be able to claim he enjoyed diplomatic immunity. As part of the operation, Assange was to be collected from the embassy in a diplomatic vehicle.

Four separate sources said the Kremlin was willing to offer support for the plan – including the possibility of allowing Assange to travel to Russia and live there. One of them said that an unidentified Russian businessman served as an intermediary in these discussions.

The possibility that Assange could travel to Ecuador by boat was also considered.

Narváez previously played a role in trying to secure Edward Snowden’s safe passage following his leak of secret NSA material in 2013. Narváez gave the former NSA contractor a so-called safe-conduct pass when he left Hong Kong for Moscow, where Snowden eventually found asylum. At the time, the then president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, said Narváez had issued the pass without the government’s knowledge. The Spanish-language broadcaster Univision reported that Narváez travelled to Moscow the same day that he issued the safe passage document to Snowden; other sources have corroborated this report.

Assange’s Christmas Eve escape was aborted with just days to go, one source claimed. Rommy Vallejo, the head of Ecuador’s intelligence agency, allegedly travelled to the UK on or around 15 December 2017 to oversee the operation and left London when it was called off.

More at link.


This is not the first time Assange has apparently considered seeking refuge in Russia. The Associated Press reported this week that the WikiLeaks founder tried to obtain a Russian visa. He signed a letter in November 2010 granting power of attorney to “my friend” Israel Shamir – a controversial supporter who passed leaked US state department cables from Assange to journalists in Moscow. Shamir would deliver Assange’s passport to the Russian consulate, and collect it afterwards, Assange wrote.

Swordsmyth
09-22-2018, 01:07 PM
Anonymous sources in the UK try to demonize Assange and Russia.

:sleeping:

Zippyjuan
09-22-2018, 01:15 PM
Russia spin doctors trying to downplay it.

Swordsmyth
09-22-2018, 01:18 PM
Russia spin doctors trying to downplay it.
Ingsoc spinmasters demand absolute submission to party dictates.

goldenequity
09-22-2018, 02:30 PM
https://i33.servimg.com/u/f33/19/91/34/17/rat10.jpg

dannno
09-22-2018, 02:42 PM
I think most anybody here would try and help Assange escape if they could because it is the right thing to do.

How does that make Russia look bad?

James_Madison_Lives
09-22-2018, 02:59 PM
I wouldn't blame Assange one bit, and Russia is the only country capable of protecting him. Hope it succeeds.

Working Poor
09-22-2018, 04:23 PM
Well good for Russia and hopefully Assange. I am glad someone is trying to help him

spudea
09-22-2018, 04:55 PM
So Russian cares more about the free press than USA. Thanks Zipp. Another quality post.

Danke
09-22-2018, 04:58 PM
Sounds legit.

ThePaleoLibertarian
09-22-2018, 04:58 PM
Putin angling to be the leader of the free world, evidently!

AZJoe
09-22-2018, 05:33 PM
I wish it were true - a thousand blessings and medals to Russia if it were a heroic attempt to rescue Assange from UK imprisonment. Unfortunately, it is most probably just another UK/The Guardian never-ending bigoted fake news attempted anti-russic hit piece.

Ironically, however the idiots at the Guardian can't even realize that this attempted smear story actually makes Russia the heroic good guy, and exposes UK as a despotic regime from which journalist Assange must flee to escape persecution.

AZJoe
09-22-2018, 05:35 PM
It is a sad reflection on the current state of the UK- Washington regimes that heroes, actual journalists, and whistleblowers like John Kiriakou, Edward Snowden, Chelsey Manning, Julian Assange , Sibel Edmonds either suffer persecution by these governments or flee to Russia. Meanwhile corrupt criminals, torturers, warmongers, agents of death like Gina Haspell, McCain, Bolton, Clinton, etc. … get protected, promoted, and idolized by the UK-Washington regime.

Zippyjuan
09-22-2018, 05:51 PM
More spin meisters jumping in.

Russia loves freedom of the press.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/CvfWcE3jlg2EKf0UjzMfhNiFNHkZ-CKtj3gKiMANqekzarp7wmVGnNc-BABGNk1htT-bOZT3IElg-UiakNlyuLc59GSrPvv2iRuj-_DqMLJe4haHV8gEKvAKQ1og8nWnYSsX-Ds8

https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2016/jan/04/does-vladimir-putin-kill-journalists/


Putin has been in power since 2000, when he was first elected president and when his regime began to commandeer the press. Sometimes this could mean a literal takeover. In 2000, authorities raided the offices of the major television network NTV and arrested its owner Vladmir Gusinsky for fraud. The charges were dropped once Gusinsky agreed to sell his media empire to a state-controlled company.

More often, the Kremlin makes it difficult for independent outlets to operate in roundabout ways: denying broadcast licenses, coordinating providers to dump channels, banning advertising on cable, limiting foreign ownership of media and firing journalists for "extremism."


Combining data from two nonprofits that records violations of press rights (the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and the Moscow-based Glasnost Defense Foundation), we found that at least 34 journalists have been murdered in Russia since 2000.

(This tally only includes deaths confirmed or likely to be work-related homicides committed in Russia. It doesn’t include murders where the motives are unclear, or journalists killed in war and on other dangerous assignments, like covering the mob or riots.)

For comparison, in the same time period, two journalists were murdered in China, while three were killed in the United States (including the on-air deaths of two television reporters in Virginia this year).

Nina Ognianova, the coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Europe and Central Asia program, said journalists covering corruption, human rights abuses, organized crime, and official wrongdoing can be "slain with impunity in Putin’s Russia."


Just one case over the past 15 years was fully adjudicated. In 2011, two ultranationalists were convicted of the 2009 double murder of a prominent human rights lawyer and Anastasia Baburova, a freelancer for the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Baburova had covered the rise of neo-Nazism and race-motivated crimes in Moscow.

The murders of two other Novaya Gazeta reporters resulted in partial justice. In 2000, Igor Domnikov died from an attack in his apartment after reporting on government corruption. Though Domnikov’s assailants, members of a criminal gang, are serving prison terms, the statute of limitations ran out before the former deputy governor suspected of ordering the attack could be convicted.

The third journalist assassination, of a journalist renowned for her critical coverage of Putin and the human rights abuses inflicted during the war in Chechnya, made waves around the the world. On Oct. 7, 2006, Anna Politkovskaya was shot in her apartment after receiving, and narrowingly escaping, numerous death threats. The five men hired to kill her were convicted and sentenced seven years later, but the identity of the person who ordered the murder (believed to be $150,000 contract) remains unknown.

Aratus
09-22-2018, 06:22 PM
my bet is on "they already know what he knows and this is for show" rather
than "they are in awe of his skill set & really do need him for the midterms"

AZJoe
09-22-2018, 06:29 PM
More spin meisters jumping in. Russia loves freedom of the press.

The Zippy-logic rear its head again.
So the Zippy posting a discredited (https://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/politifact_and_the_scam_of_neutral_expertise/), biased (http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/16/running-data-politifact-shows-bias-conservatives/), Politibias (https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/12/27/in-2008-politifacts-2013-lie-of-the-year-that-you-could-keep-your-health-plan-under-obamacare-it-rated-true/#7de8f7c77c14)website that pushes "Russia bad" dogma is supposed to be proof that Russia must be rescuing Assange from UK persecution?
or is it the Zippylogic "proof" that its ok for UK to continue to persecute the journalist Assange, or the UK-Washington to continue to imprison and persecute its whistleblower heroes while covering up and protecting criminals, torturers, murderers exposed by the whistleblowers?

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fwww.allmystery.de%2Fi %2Ft45a72a_free-julian-assange.jpg&f=1

http://media1.theindicter.com/2015/12/Various-whistleblowers.jpg

pcosmar
09-22-2018, 06:33 PM
Russia spin doctors trying to downplay it.

and what Spin Doctors wrote and published that??
and what kind of spin intern would post ridiculous garbage like that??

Zippy the Pinhead

spin on spin

Aratus
09-22-2018, 06:38 PM
Assange is not Snowden...

TER
09-22-2018, 07:42 PM
Assange is not Snowden...

Assange is much better, actually

Swordsmyth
09-22-2018, 07:57 PM
More spin meisters jumping in.

Russia loves freedom of the press.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/CvfWcE3jlg2EKf0UjzMfhNiFNHkZ-CKtj3gKiMANqekzarp7wmVGnNc-BABGNk1htT-bOZT3IElg-UiakNlyuLc59GSrPvv2iRuj-_DqMLJe4haHV8gEKvAKQ1og8nWnYSsX-Ds8

https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2016/jan/04/does-vladimir-putin-kill-journalists/

Even IF they try to control their own journalists that doesn't make them the bad guy in this story IF this story is even true, the UK/US is the bad guy here and Russia would be the good guy.

charrob
09-22-2018, 08:14 PM
Glad to see at least someone on this earth is trying to help this guy. Really sorry to see it did not work. Hoping there will be future plans that will be successful so he can be free of the US/UK hegemons.

Zippyjuan
09-22-2018, 08:29 PM
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/ecuador-wanted-to-make-julian-assange-a-diplomat-and-send-him-to-moscow/


Ecuador wanted to make Julian Assange a diplomat and send him to Moscow

Reuters: UK's Foreign Office did not accept diplomatic status, so plan was scuttled.

Last year, Ecuador attempted to deputize WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as one of its own diplomats and send him to Russia, according to a Friday report by Reuters.

Citing an "Ecuadorian government document," which the news agency did not publish, Assange apparently was briefly granted a "special designation" to act as one of its diplomats, a privilege normally granted to the president for political allies. However, that status was then withdrawn when the United Kingdom objected.

The Associated Press reported earlier in the week that newly-leaked documents showed that Assange sought a Russian visa back in 2010. WikiLeaks has vehemently denied that Assange did so.

On Friday evening, neither WikiLeaks nor the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment via Twitter. However, earlier in the day, WikiLeaks categorically denied that Assange’s proposed diplomatic status had anything to do with Russia.




The Reuters report comes a day after Paola Vintimilla, a member of the Ecuadorian parliament, started raising public questions about Julian Assange’s status inside the country’s London embassy and about the citizenship Assange was granted last year.

Vintimillia said at a press conference (Spanish) in Quito on Thursday that Assange’s citizenship should be rescinded. She also said that it is not clear precisely what legal status Assange has, as he appears to have withdrawn his asylum claim as of December 4, 2017, just eight days prior to his being granted citizenship.

"At this moment, what is Assange’s status?" she said. "He’s an Ecuadorian living in the London embassy and we’re paying for this?"

Vintimilla also noted that Assange’s naturalization documents "mysteriously" lack the signature of then-Foreign Minister María Espinosa.

As Reuters reported, the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office told Ecuador on December 21, 2017 that it would not accept Assange as a diplomat. Had the UK accepted his diplomatic status, he likely would have been allowed to leave the embassy and travel to Moscow.

Once Ecuador learned of the UK’s perspective on Assange’s status, the country abandoned the plan to make him a diplomat.

Were Assange to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has lived since 2012, he would almost certainly be arrested by British authorities. Assange has said he is concerned that he would be extradited to the United States.

In July 2016, WikiLeaks published 20,000 internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, a hack that likely originated from Russia.

"We assess with high confidence that the GRU relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks," the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wrote in a January 7, 2017 report. "Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries."

More at link.

Swordsmyth
09-22-2018, 08:41 PM
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/ecuador-wanted-to-make-julian-assange-a-diplomat-and-send-him-to-moscow/





More at link.

More anonymous sources and unpublished documents. :rolleyes:

If true it's too bad it didn't work.

ThePaleoLibertarian
09-23-2018, 02:43 AM
More spin meisters jumping in.

Russia loves freedom of the press.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/CvfWcE3jlg2EKf0UjzMfhNiFNHkZ-CKtj3gKiMANqekzarp7wmVGnNc-BABGNk1htT-bOZT3IElg-UiakNlyuLc59GSrPvv2iRuj-_DqMLJe4haHV8gEKvAKQ1og8nWnYSsX-Ds8

https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2016/jan/04/does-vladimir-putin-kill-journalists/Breaking news; Russia has an autocratic and illiberal government. You heard it here first, folks!