Geneva Сalls on Swiss Government to Give Asylum to Assange - Reports

Assange’s lawyers said on 23 January they had filed an urgent application to the Washington-based Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) in order to compel US authorities to disclose the charges against the whistleblower.

The city council of Geneva has called on the Swiss government to provide asylum to founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange, who has been inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, the Swiss broadcasting company RTS reported.

The text was proposed by Eric Bertinat of the conservative right People's Party who stated during the debate that such figures as Assange deserve support, because "otherwise there is a risk of plunging into a totalitarian state".

Geneva (the city) passes resolution that Switzerland should give Julian Assange asylum. https://t.co/QwVxPYYknw

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 7, 2019

The Swiss government has already responded to the request, saying that the founder of WikiLeaks "is not a human rights defender, and therefore Switzerland cannot defend him in that capacity".

In January, Assange’s defence team said it had asked the IACHR commission to compel Ecuador to cease its espionage activities against Assange, to stop the isolation imposed on him and to protect him from extradition to the United States. Later, WikiLeaks stated the commission had given Ecuador five days to answer seven questions on threats against Assange’s asylum.

READ MORE: US Questioning Ecuadorian Embassy Staff Over Debunked Assange-Manafort Story

Assange, who has been living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom since 2012, has repeatedly noted he feared extradition to the United States over publishing thousands of leaked classified documents. His defence team has cited media reports suggesting that Ecuador’s president Lenin Moreno had sought to reach an agreement with the United States on handing Assange over to Washington in exchange for "debt relief".

Moreover, in November, WikiLeaks and a number of US media outlets published what they claimed was a court filing in an unrelated case including some sealed charges that used Assange's name in an "apparent cut-and-paste error". The outlets then suggested that the existence of these files meant the existence of charges brought against Assange by the US authorities.

In October, the Ecuadorian authorities introduced a protocol restricting Assange's communications. The activist's defence team said the new rules were a violation of Assange's rights.