Revealed: Russia's secret plan to help Julian Assange escape from UK
Source: The Guardian
Tentative plot to whisk fugitive from London embassy on Christmas Eve was considered too risky
Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Dan Collyns and Luke Harding
Fri 21 Sep 2018 07.00 EDT
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.
Read more: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/21/julian-assange-russia-ecuador-embassy-london-secret-escape-plan?CMP=share_btn_tw&__twitter_impression=true
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