Ecuador's Correa Refutes Reports On Quito's Awareness Of Assange Meddling In US Election

MONTEVIDEO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th July, 2019) Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa refuted as "lies" in an interview with Sputnik media reports claiming he confirmed that Quito was aware of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's attempts to interfere in US elections from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and had prevented him from doing so.

On Tuesday, CNN published an interview with Correa, quoting him as saying that his country had been aware that Assange was interfering in the 2016 US presidential election from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

"It is a lie. If there was any meddling/spying, we would know about it and would never allow it," Correa stressed.

He attributed misinterpreting of his quotes to deliberately misleading editing by the journalists.

"The same staging that they want to prove, are the claims about spying activity from the embassy, which Assange - together with Russians - made a centre of special operation and that we allegedly knew this and protected him," the former president said, stressing that while Assange published information that harmed the US Democratic Party, this was completely different from spying or intelligence activity that US media was alluding to.

"This happened because [Assange] published information that harmed the [US presidential] candidates. I don't know how he got it. Maybe, he copied it from somewhere - how am I supposed to know? There is a difference between spying on the US Democratic Party, [working with] a Russian hacker from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, or [getting information] from the Internet," he said.

Correa admitted that he had ordered the government to turn off internet to Assange because the latter had been publishing information harming US presidential candidates and did not want Ecuador to be involved in this.