Julian Assange, expelled from his embassy perch, will fight extradition from jail

The plush neighborhood of Knightsbridge, a high-rent hub of deluxe retail and discreet diplomats, awoke Friday with one international curiosity fewer in its midst.

Julian Assange, the Australian bad boy and founder of WikiLeaks, had been dragged Thursday from the Ecuadoran embassy, where he had entertained the likes of Lady Gaga and Pamela Anderson in the Victorian red-brick building a stone’s throw from Harrods, the luxury department store. He was arrested to face a hacking charge in the United States.

“We heard the helicopter overhead,” said James Smith, a local real estate agent. The scene outside the embassy was the dramatic climax of a seven-year diplomatic stalemate, as Ecuador revoked the anti-secrecy crusader’s asylum and turned him over to British authorities.

Gone now are the demonstrators with “Free Assange” banners. But life goes on in Knightsbridge, Smith said. It is not as if residents saw their notorious neighbor, holed up in the embassy since 2012. From his corner room, where he lived with his Internet-star cat and used a treadmill to stay in shape, Assange had become a fading fascination.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/julian-assange-expelled-from-his-embassy-perch-will-fight-extradition-from-jail/2019/04/12/d388584c-5cb2-11e9-98d4-844088d135f2_story.html