Julian Assange: Fancy dress plan to escape embassy

Leaked documents showed Ecuadorian diplomats were becoming increasingly concerned about Assange's behaviour and drew up a number of bizarre plans to allow him to leave. Photo / Getty Images

Staff at the Ecuadorian embassy, where the WikiLeaks founder fled more than three years ago, drew up elaborate plans to help him escape

The embassy in London where Julian Assange has stayed for more than three years considered getting rid of their long-term guest by helping him flee in fancy dress, it emerged.

Leaked documents showed Ecuadorian diplomats were becoming increasingly concerned about Assange's behaviour and drew up a number of bizarre plans to allow him to leave the building without being arrested by waiting police officers.

Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, claimed asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in June 2012 to avoid being extradited to Sweden to face questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations. He has not left the building since.

One option set out by diplomatic staff was to help Assange make a rooftop flit to a nearby helipad.

Other proposals included dressing him in a disguise so he could walk unrecognised out of the building, in Knightsbridge, west London, or simply for him to dash out and become lost among the crowds of shoppers at Harrods department store just yards away.

"Assange could leave in fancy dress or try a discreet exit," one document stated.
It is already known that police had anticipated another possible exit-strategy of concealing Assange in a diplomatic bag. The papers disclosed that was ruled out by embassy officials because Scotland Yard deployed body heat scanners outside the embassy.

The documents, reported by the Ecuadorian journalist Fernando Villavicencio and the Buzzfeed website, also showed how several incidents involving Assange's behaviour inside the embassy caused his hosts concern.

In September 2012 he was discovered in the security control room, which was off-limits, and was said to have been tampering with equipment.

A security guard alleged Assange then punched a computer screen and grabbed him by the shirt. Assange gave a contradictory account blaming the security guard for accosting him.

It led to a meeting of embassy officials, who describe Assange as "Mr Guest", which set out how he should know his limits within the building.

In January 2013 another incident occurred in which a loud crash was heard from inside Assange's quarters in the embassy just after 6am. A security guard took photographs of a tall bookcase which was lying face-down in the room. Assange told embassy staff later that the bookcase had fallen over of its own accord.

The dossier also revealed staff were concerned about Assange's "evident anger" and "feelings of superiority" and stated officials in the building should "control access to alcohol".

It continued that his behaviour was causing stress to those around him, "especially the personnel who work in the embassy, mainly women."

Assange, 44, is alleged to have raped a woman known as SW, then aged 26, and committed other sexual offences against AA, a 31-year-old woman, although the lesser sexual allegations have now lapsed because of the Swedish statute of limitations,
Assange's lawyers contend that if he was sent to Sweden he would be at risk of being extradited to the US, to face prosecution for WikiLeaks' disclosures of sensitive information.

The bill for policing the embassy, to arrest Assange if he emerges, topped £11 million earlier this year.

A Scotland Yard spokesman refused to comment.