The U.S. election is over but the Ecuadorean Embassy in London is maintaining an internet blackout on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who sought refuge there four years ago, the anti-secrecy group said Thursday.
WikiLeaks said the White House had pressured Ecuador’s government to silence Assange, and the government in Quito agreed to “temporarily” cut off his internet during the run-up to Tuesday’s election.
“His internet hasn’t been turned back on, despite the elections being over, and we don’t know why, though it was meant to just be turned off over the elections,” the group said in an “Ask Me Anything” question-and-answer forum on Reddit, a social aggregation and discussion website.
Assange, an Australian national, founded WikiLeaks a decade ago. The nonprofit group, which posts hacked documents and emails from governments and groups that it thinks benefit the citizenry’s right to know, has played an outsize role in the campaign by publishing more than 100,000 leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman. Many of the leaks came during the campaign’s most heated period. Assange’s internet was cut off Oct. 17.
The group asserts that it is nonpartisan but at times it posted tweets during the campaign, apparently written by Assange, that displayed a marked antipathy toward Clinton.