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Met calls off vigil outside Assange’s refuge

POLICE OFFICERS will no longer be stationed outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London where Julian Assange sought asylum, Scotland Yard announced yesterday.

The WikiLeaks founder took refuge there in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations, saying that he feared being handed over to the United States to be prosecuted for publishing secret US documents.

Police have been stationed outside the embassy ever since, at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of more than £12 million.

In a statement, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) said: “Like all public services, MPS resources are finite” and that 24-hour surveillance of the embassy was “no longer believed proportionate.”

The Met added that it still has plans to arrest Mr Assange, using “a number of overt and covert tactics.”

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