Julian Assange, Ecuador, and the Belarus connection

A rights group is demanding a full accounting from WikiLeaks on claims that it supplied intelligence on dissidents to the repressive regime of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus.

Aliaksandr Barankov is breathing easier, after Ecuador's highest court on August 28 rejected a request for his extradition to Belarus - the country known as "Europe's last dictatorship", facing international isolation for its harsh repression. Barankov, a former police investigator from the ex-Soviet republic, was granted asylum by Ecuador in 2010,  after he was charged with fraud and extortion in his homeland - charges he claimed were bogus, and brought in retribution for having exposed a petrol-smuggling ring implicating high officials of
President Alexander Lukashenko's regime. Barankov said he feared for his life should he be sent back home. An extradition request by Belarus was refused last October.

But on June 7, Barankov was arrested at his home in Quito, and imprisoned while Ecuador's courts reviewed a new extradition request from Lukashenko's government. Shortly thereafter, probably not coincidentally, Lukashenko visited Quito and signed various cooperation pacts with Ecuador's President Rafael Correa. "Everything changed after Lukashenko came," Barankov told the Associated Press by phone from his Quito prison cell.

Amazingly, for all the media focus on the Assange sex scandal, there has been virtually no coverage of the accusations over collaboration with the Belarus dictatorship. One rare exception was an article in the UK's New Statesman this March, noting that Assange had been invited as a guest speaker at the London premiere of a new movie on Lukashenko, Europe's Last Dictator. Writer Kapil Komireddi noted the irony of this invitation in light of charges of WikiLeaks "damaging the cause of democracy" in Belarus.