WikiLeaks' Julian Assange speaking from the window of Ecuador's UK embassy in 2012. Charlie Osborne\/CNET <\/p>\n
Locked inside a small apartment in central London, Julian Assange has avoided arrest only because his dimly lit ground-floor bedroom also happens to be de facto Ecuadorian soil. <\/p>\n
Almost exactly two years after the WikiLeaks founder gave a soundbite-laden speech on the balcony of Ecuador's embassy in Britain's capital, he opted Monday for a more modest affair, only to offer a similar string of pointless remarks, which were all but retracted after the fact. <\/p>\n
In case you missed it, Assange said he would leave the embassy \"soon,\" after being holed up in the small embassy since June 2012. <\/p>\n
Following the appearance Monday morning, however, his spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said that although Assange was ready to leave the embassy, it would only be when he is offered passage free from the threat of arrest. <\/p>\n
Assange's message was anything but clear -- leaving more questions than answers. One being whether the political and legal situation has shifted since he first entered the embassy. <\/p>\n
It hasn't. Very little has changed in the diplomatic standoff between Ecuador and the UK. <\/p>\n
Assange, who founded the whistleblowing site WikiLeaks, rose to prominence in 2010 after the leak of classified US military documents on the Afghan and Iraq wars. He remains concerned that should he step outside of the protection of Ecuador's London embassy, he will first be extradited to Sweden -- where he faces accusations of sexual assault dating back to 2010 -- but then will be forced to travel to the US. An onwards extradition, he claims, could see him tried in a US court for espionage crimes for his involvement in the release of the classified cache. <\/p>\n
The Australian-born hacker turned media figure and document leaker was arrested in Britain, but received bail as he awaited court decisions in efforts to roll back the extradition process. <\/p>\n
Once the Supreme Court, the highest court in the UK, ruled against him, he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy to seek political asylum. <\/p>\n
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