Wikileaks founder Assange embassy watch costs Met Police £1 million in first three months

THE Metropolitan Police bill for guarding the Ecuadorean embassy since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange took refuge there has reached £1 million.

Home Secretary Theresa May is expected to come under pressure from senior officers to help cover the cost of the operation in Knightsbridge.

Assange, 41, who is fighting extradition to Sweden over sex crime allegations, was granted asylum by Ecuador in June after exhausting all legal routes to avoid extradition.

The final bill for taxpayers from the two-year legal saga could be as much as £2 million, after legal and court costs are taken into account.

However, this could soar if Mr Assange decides, as expected, to appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, delaying the process by years. Mr Assange claims the case is part of a plot to make him stand trial in America over his work with WikiLeaks, which published hundreds of US diplomatic and military cables. Sweden and the US reject the claim.

Since he entered the embassy on June 20, dozens of officers have been outside the embassy and security sources said Mr Assange would be arrested and deported if he put “one toe” outside.

Foreign Secretary William Hague, who was forced to downplay concerns that the police would storm the embassy, admitted last week that he saw “no sign of any breakthrough” after meeting his Ecuadorean counterpart Ricardo Pinto at the United Nations in New York.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “Both ministers agreed that they were committed to the search for a diplomatic solution to Mr Assange’s case.” Mr Pinto has warned Mr Assange that he could be in the embassy for a decade if he is not allowed to leave Britain.

Last week, Mr Assange delivered a provocative speech to a UN meeting in New York last week via satellite just hours after David Cameron addressed the UN General Assembly. He accused the US of persecuting WikiLeaks and torturing Bradley Manning, the US private accused of supplying his organisation with the classified cables.

Mayor Boris Johnson revealed in a written answer that the policing bill between June 20 and September 10 was £905,000. If the costs continued at the average of £11,000 a day the total would now be over £1.1 million.

City Hall sources said the Met was considering asking the Home Office for a one-off “extraordinary” grant.