Assange Denied ‘Safe Passage’ for Hospital Treatment by UK Government

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been denied safe passage to hospital to get vital scans, recommended by his doctor, for a “deep pain” he has been suffering with in his right shoulder since June. Assange, exiled in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the past three years, will be arrested if he leaves the grounds of the embassy to get an MRI scan, the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino revealed.

“The British government is not offering the terms to make this happen,” Patino said at a press conference yesterday. “It’s an additional fault in his protection, in the defense of a person’s human rights. This is a person who needs to have exams done to understand the situation given it is grave. We don’t know what he may have, and they don’t want to give an authorization that they can perfectly well give.”

Carey Shenkman, Assange’s American lawyer, claims the UK is making his client “choose between the human right to asylum and the human right to medical treatment”.

If Assange steps foot on UK ground – the embassy and its boundaries are considered Ecuadorian soil – he is fair game, according to the Metropolitan Police. “Should he leave the embassy, the [Met] will make every effort to arrest him. However, it is no longer proportionate to commit officers to a permanent presence,” a police spokesperson said.

Thank you SputnikNews and The Guardian for providing us with this information.