International media reports say British police entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Thursday, forcibly removing the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on a US extradition warrant and bringing his seven-year stint there to a dramatic close.
Video showed a heavily bearded Assange shouting and gesticulating as multiple officers hustled him into a waiting police van.
He was arrested on charges that he skipped bail in the UK in 2012 and at the request of US authorities, London's Metropolitan police said.
Officers moved in after Ecuador withdrew his asylum and invited authorities into the embassy, citing Assange's bad behavior.
According to CNN, the US Department of Justice confirmed Assange had been indicted on a single charge of hacking of intelligence computers with Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who supplied thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks.
Assange, who is from Australia, appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court in central London on Thursday afternoon, where he was charged with failing to surrender in 2012.
The judge reportedly found Assange guilty of breaking his bail conditions. He faces up to 12 months in prison.
Assange must also appear for an extradition hearing on May 2, before which he will remain in custody.
The WikiLeaks founder has been holed up at the embassy since 2012, when he was granted asylum as part of a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was facing allegations of sexual assault.
The Swedish case has since been dropped, but Assange feared US extradition due to his work with WikiLeaks and remained in the embassy. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Relations between Assange and staff became strained during his seven-year stay in the embassy. Ecuadorian officials claimed the WikiLeaks founder smeared feces of the walls of the building.
Ecuadorian authorities "tolerated things like Assange putting feces on the embassy walls and other behaviors far from the minimum respect that a guest can have," the country's Interior Minister María Paula Romo said.
Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno said in a video statement Thursday that his country withdrew Assange's asylum due to his "discourteous and aggressive behavior," "the hostile and threatening declarations of his allied organization against Ecuador" and "the transgression of international treaties."
