Ecuador Claims They Found A Microphone At The London Embassy

Ecuador’s foreign minister claims that they found a hidden microphone in their London embassy and they will reveal who controls the device on Wednesday.

Foreign minister Ricardo Patino says the listening device was found inside the office of the Ecuadorean ambassador to the United Kingdom, Ana Alban.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been living at the embassy for more than a year trying to escape extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault and rape, which he denies.

Patino was scheduled to meet with Assange on June 16, but it was revealed that Assange lives and works in a different room in the embassy.

His fear is that if he is extradited to Sweden to face the charges, the US could also seek extradition in the case of the release of confidential information to Wikileaks.

The Ecuadorean foreign minister made the announcement at a news conference in Quito on Tuesday.

“We regret to inform you that in our embassy in London we have found a hidden microphone.” Patino stated.

“I didn’t denounce this at the time because we didn’t want the theme of our visit to London to be confused with this matter.”

“Furthermore, we first wanted to ascertain with precision what could be the origin of this interception device in the office of our ambassador.” he said.

“We are sorry to say so, but this is another instance of a loss of ethics at the international level in relations between governments.” he added.

The Foreign Office in London declined to comment on the allegation and Prime Minister Cameron’s spokesman said he did not comment on security issues.

Ecuador and Great Britain have been at odds at the impasse with Assange.

In the Twitter handle for Wikileaks the following tweet was sent.

Listening device found in #Assange's UK #Ecuador Embassy http://t.co/bcMi9YGXtk

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 3, 2013

[Image via Chris Harvey / Shutterstock.com]