LONDON
Supporters of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange have criticized British media reports focussing on the cost of police guarding the Ecuadorean embassy where he has been residing in London for three years.
The response came on Friday after London radio station LBC Radio reported that cost to the British taxpayer of London's Metropolitan Police providing a 24-hour guard at the embassy was about £10 million ($15 million) - an average of around £10,500 per day.
Wikileaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said: "It is embarrassing to see the UK government spending more on surveillance and detaining an uncharged political refugee than on its investigation into the Iraq war, which killed hundreds of thousands (of people)."
Police officers have been on guard outside the embassy in the wealthy London neighbourhood of Knightsbridge ready to arrest Assange for violation of conditional release if he leaves the building.
Assange, who has been granted political asylum by Ecuador, has been inside the embassy since June 19, 2012, in an attempt to avoid extradition to Sweden where he is accused of sexually assaulting two women.
Visitors 'targetted'
Assange has denied the charges and said he believes the Scandinavian country would extradite him to the U.S. after he released thousands of highly-confidential documents on his Wikileaks website.
Assange accused the Metropolitan police of targetting people who visit him during an interview with LBC last year.
He said: "The greatest concern for me is the intelligence gathering that the British police are doing on my visitors to the embassy, aggressively demanding their names and identity details.
"Obviously, as an investigative journalist dealing with sensitive documents and with staff under threat, that creates difficulties for me and my ongoing position."
High costs
LBC said that figures it obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request showed that, between June 2012 and Oct. 31, 2014, the total cost to London police of guarding the embassy was £9 million.
Allowing for costs accrued over the following three months, the total cost was estimated to be about £10 million.
Assange told a press conference from embassy home in August last year that he planned to leave the building "soon".
