Ecuador has granted citizenship to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Assange has been holed up inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London for over 5 years now. Assange was avoiding extradition to Sweden by being at the embassy. He has been accused of allegedly sexually assaulting two women.

Reports say that Ecuador has tried to provide diplomatic status to Assange, but the same was rejected by the UK. That means that Assange couldn’t leave the embassy without the risk of being arrested. Having diplomatic immunity allows a person to roam freely in a particular country, but without it Assange could be arrested for skipping bail in 2012.

On the other hand, the assault investigation against Assange had been discontinued last year by the Swedish authorities. The authorities had said that they couldn’t investigate the case as long as Assange was inside the Ecuadorian embassy.

Many Assange supporters have called the case against him a controversy by the nation-state, due to his activities with Wikileaks. Assange was responsible for publishing classified US diplomatic cables in 2010, and Wikileaks has since leaked a lot of classified information about a myriad things.