Atlanta (CNN) Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said Tuesday his country was aware that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was interfering in the 2016 US presidential election from the safety of Ecuador's embassy in London, where he lived under political asylum until this year.

"We did notice that he was interfering in the elections and we do not allow that because we have principles, very clear values, as we would not like anyone to interfere in our elections," he said. "We are not going to allow that to happen with a foreign country and friend like the US."

Correa granted asylum in 2012 to Assange, who took refuge in the country's London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations, which he denies. Correa fueled his rise to power on anti-US vitriol and aligned with Assange after WikiLeaks published highly classified Pentagon materials.

Correa's comments came one day after CNN published an exclusive report about surveillance reports that describe how Assange transformed the Ecuadorian embassy into a command center and orchestrated a series of damaging disclosures that rocked the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States.

The report cited hundreds of surveillance documents detailing Assange's time inside the embassy. The documents describe how Assange met with Russians and world-class hackers at critical moments and acquired powerful new computing and network hardware to facilitate data transfers just weeks before WikiLeaks received hacked materials from Russian operatives.

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