"The guarantees given by the United Kingdom are very nebulous guarantees. They basically mention the death penalty, but … it’s unbelievable that the Ecuadorian government would have accepted, 'Oh, there's gonna be no death penalty, then it's fine, he might as well go to the United States'… The British guarantees so far, they certainly — from Ecuador's point of view — weren't a reason good enough to hand over Assange", Long said.
READ MORE: Labour's Diane Abbot Urges Theresa May Not to Extradite Wikileaks' Assange
The former minister served who under President Rafael Correa stressed that journalists "shouldn't be grateful that there isn't going to be a death penalty" over their publishing of some information.
WikiLeaks has famously published a large trove of classified documents, including some referring to US government activities. The United States accused Assange of conspiring with former US Army soldier Chelsea Manning and helping her break into a classified US government computer to leak data related to the United States' activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Guantanamo Bay prison, and US diplomatic cables.
