William Hague to the Swedish authorities who had requested his extradition; thus Swedish prosecutors, unwilling to break diplomatic protocol, have deferred from interrogating Assange at the Embassy of Ecuador, London. Hague confirmed the British Government's position – that it is lawfully obliged to extradite Julian Assange. "We're disappointed by the statement by Ecuador's Foreign Minister today that Ecuador has offered political asylum to Julian Assange. Under our Laws, with Mr. Assange having exhausted all options of appeal, the British authorities are under a binding obligation to extradite him to Sweden. We must carry out that obligation and of course we fully intend
Julian Assange on behalf of Assange, Baltasar Garzón, head of his legal team, said that Assange had sent the open letter to French president François Hollande; but Assange had only expressed his willingness "to be hosted in France if and only if an initiative was taken by the competent authorities". On 16 August 2016, Assange's lawyer in the UK, John Jones, was found dead, according to the first reports after being hit by a train in an apparent suicide. An inquest into his death found that the lawyer was accepted since March to a private psychiatric hospital with several issues of mental