Julian Assange arrested: How WikiLeaks founder’s ‘arrogant demands’ angered embassy staff

His every whim was initially catered for by starstruck workers. But when News Corp Australia was granted rare access to Julian Assange inside the embassy, the atmosphere was like a ticking time bomb.

As summer crept towards London, Julian Assange was wanting to get out.

Not out of the British capital as such, although that thought has no doubt crossed his mind over the years, or indeed in handcuffs but just out of his literal bolthole at the back of the embassy of Ecuador.

Temperatures in his living quarters are about to get hotter than a plate of chilli almerzo, the national dish of the country’s diplomatic post that has been both his refuge and prison for the past six years.

And the heat and conditions has driven him mad.

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When Julian Assange sought diplomatic immunity inside the Ecuadorean embassy, he was treated like a celebrity by starstruck staff. Picture: AFP

When on June 19, 2012 he sought diplomatic immunity and famously waved to hundreds of supporters from the balcony of the embassy at Number 3 Hans Crescent Kensington, he had the run of the place feted as he was by the starstruck staff of the small South American nation.

They catered for his whims and those of his all-hours celebrity visitors, he even demanded and was granted a refurbishment to turn a female toilet into his bedroom to change his outlook from overseeing the noisy loading docks of the Harrods department store next door to roof tops and rear alleyways of the up-market Kensington suburb.

As the years wore on, staff at the embassy ran out of patience.

But as the years wore on so too did the patience of the embassy staff, his celebrity status diminished by his constant arrogant demands for more space and resources.

When News Corp Australia was granted rare access to spend an afternoon with him in 2014, he was restricted to two spaces, his bedroom and a windowless Wikileaks operations room, come eating room, gym, library and store room and it was hot.

Julian Assange’s dramatic arrest and removal from the Ecuadorean embassy.

Seriously sweating hot, 35 degrees indoors that melted the Violet Crumbles and other Aussie treats including several jars of unopened Vegemite sent as gifts from supporters back home.

Legal documents were stacked high in corners with an entire wall dominated by a banks of servers and mass clutter of cables for added power supply to support his continued Wikileaks electronic operations.

Pamela Anderson, pictured taking vegan burgers to Julian Assange, regularly visited him at the embassy.

The constant running of these machines no doubt adding to temperatures.

His book shelves were stacked with conspiracies and martyrs from the DVD 12 Monkeys starring Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis about living underground in post-apocalyptic future to a book on Che Guevara and another on US conspiracies by film director Oliver Stone.

There was a tome War on Numbers by disaffected former CIA agent Sam Adams, a learn karate manual, a 2011 Walkley Award certificate for excellence in “journalism” and the full five series DVD box set of the Twilight Zone.

As if to lighten his depressing shelves there was also a still image of his caricature as it appeared on The Simpsons (episode 500).

Staff at the embassy would mutter under their breath about their “guest” with whom they would argue constantly with in their native tongue, the Aussie now fluent in Spanish.

It has cost British taxpayers $21,000 a day in police expenses to watch over the Assange bolthole and no doubt they wanted him out but perhaps not more so than the staff of Ecuador who had in recent times claimed he doesn’t wash, clean up after himself or his pet cat and hinted it was perhaps time for him to go.

Originally published as Julian Assange arrested: How WikiLeaks founder’s ‘arrogant demands’ angered embassy staff