In June 2012, the Wikileaks founder fled bail, walked into the embassy, and applied for political asylum to the Ecuadorean government. And he’s stayed there ever since.
Assange was on bail because the UK was trying to extradite him to Sweden, where authorities want to question him in relation to an allegation of rape. Investigations into two counts of sexual molestation and one count of unlawful coercion were dropped in August 2015 after they reached their statute of limitations – that is, the window for the Swedish authorities to bring the case expired. The statute of limitations for the rape investigation expires in 2020.
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