Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid arrest and extradition to the US, was on Thursday denied diplomatic status by the UK Government.
The anti-secrecy group's chief has been based at the Ecuador embassy since 2012 after he lost appeals against sexual assault charges in Sweden. The request for diplomatic status was made on behalf of Assange by the Ecuadorean government, which has reportedly issued a passport to the Australian national after he had sought political asylum from the South American country five and a half years ago.