Ecuador: Military group from U.S. embassy ordered to leave the country

hngn.com/AP reported that all 20 Defense Department employees in the United State’s Embassy’s military group in Ecuador were ordered to leave the country by month’s end, The Associated Press has learned.

The group was ordered to halt operations in Ecuador in a letter dated April 7, said embassy spokesman Jeffrey Weinshenker, the AP reported. The AP was first alerted to the expulsions by a senior Ecuadorean official who refused to be identified by name due to the information’s sensitive nature. U.S. relations with Ecuador have been strained in recent years, even before Correa provided asylum in 2012 to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization published troves of leaked U.S. military documents and diplomatic cables highly embarrassing to Washington, the AP reported. Correa had previously expelled at least three U.S. diplomats including then-Ambassador Heather Hodges in 2011 in response to a cable divulged by WikiLeaks that suggested Correa was aware of high-level police corruption, according to the AP. Read Article

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