Sweden issued an arrest warrant for Assange in 2010 in a case of sexual abuse, which they eventually dropped in 2019. To avoid extradition, he fled to a London apartment housing Ecuador’s UK embassy. Ecuador granted him asylum based on the risk that extradition to Sweden might be followed by extradition to the US, where he said he could face political persecution and even the death penalty.
In 2018, he obtained citizenship through naturalisation from Ecuador foreign minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa in a failed bid to resolve the standoff by moving him to Moscow as an Ecuadorean diplomat. But in 2019 Ecuador withdrew his asylum status and allowed him to be arrested. Under the immigration law in effect at the time, the foreign ministry suspended his citizenship but had to request court confirmation for it to be revoked.
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