I found this helpful. Apparently the Ecuadorians did, in fact, just get sick of him.
Julian Assange has finally been arrested. What happens now? A guide
- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police on Thursday after Ecuador, whose London embassy had been his home for nearly seven years, withdrew his political asylum. Police went into the embassy at Ecuador’s invitation, removed Mr. Assange and brought him to a central London police station before a midday court appearance.
- London police confirmed they had arrested him on behalf of U.S. authorities, who have had him under scrutiny ever since his site published secret government documents in 2010. His lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, said in tweet that he had been arrested for breaching his bail conditions and in relation to a U.S. extradition request. WikiLeaks claimed the extradition request involved “conspiracy with Chelsea Manning,” the former U.S. soldier who provided the documents leaked in 2010.
- Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno said his government made a “sovereign decision” to revoke Mr. Assange’s asylum due to “repeated violations to international conventions and daily life.”
Who is Julian Assange?
The 47-year-old Australian founder of the whistleblower site WikiLeaks has been a thorn in the side of global intelligence agencies for years, particularly since 2010, when WikiLeaks published classified documents provided by soldier Chelsea Manning. The leaks included detailed logs of the U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as sensitive cables between diplomats and the State Department.
Shortly after the 2010 leaks, Swedish authorities, investigating allegations that he sexually assaulted two women, issued an international warrant for his arrest. British police arrested him in London, and for two years, he fought a legal battle to avoid extradition to Sweden, which he feared would then hand him over to the United States. When Britain’s Supreme Court okayed the Swedish extradition in 2012, Mr. Assange fled and sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was granted asylum. He would end up staying at the embassy for nearly seven years.
Who wants him for what, and who doesn’t
Sweden
Swedish prosecutors dropped the r*pe case against Mr. Assange in 2017. Theoretically, it might reopen if he returned there before the statute of limitations runs out in August, 2020, but Swedish chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren said Thursday that “we have not been able to decide on the available information” whether that could happen. In any event, a return to Sweden seems unlikely given that U.S. authorities want him first.
Britain
British authorities had been seeking to arrest Mr. Assange for skipping bail, an offence punishable by up to a year in prison. But on Thursday, London police confirmed that the arrest was on behalf of a U.S. extradition request.
United States
The fact that U.S. authorities want Mr. Assange is no secret, but it’s not yet clear what specific crimes they’re accusing him of. WikiLeaks claimed on Twitter that the extradition request dealt with “conspiracy with Chelsea Manning."
The Justice Department secretly filed criminal charges against Mr. Assange as recently as last year. That fact
accidentally became public in an unrelated Virginia court case in November, but the wording and nature of the charges was left unclear. WikiLeaks has also been implicated in cyber-meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, because it leaked confidential Democratic Party e-mails obtained by Russian hackers. But while Russian spy agencies and several associates of U.S. President Donald Trump who communicated with WikiLeaks have been charged, Mr. Assange is not one of the people indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in
his now-concluded probe of the Trump-Russia connection.
Why was he arrested now?
Mr. Assange’s relationship with the Ecuadorians had been
going sour in recent years as he flouted the conditions of his asylum while apparently continuing to co-ordinate WikiLeaks’ activities. Staff at the embassy complained that he was aggressive with security staff, rode a skateboard in the halls and flouted other rules of his living conditions. At one point he even sued Ecuador to have them pay his phone bills, medical expenses and clean up after his cat. The relationship deteriorated further when he was accused of leaking personal information about President Lenin Moreno’s personal life, including private photos of his family.
“The patience of Ecuador has reached its limit” on Mr. Assange’s behaviour, Mr. Moreno said in a video statement announcing the withdrawal of asylum on Thursday. He alleged that Mr. Assange violated international asylum rules by continuing to intervene in the affairs of other states. Mr. Moreno brought up the example of WikiLeaks’s release of Vatican documents in January, though he did not mention the 2016 U.S. election.
Reaction from WikiLeaks and its allies
WikiLeaks denounced the arrest as part of a campaign by "powerful actors" to discredit a publisher and journalist:
Fellow whistleblower Edward Snowden, an American fugitive now living in Russia, also criticized the arrest, saying it set a dangerous precedent for freedom of expression: