Julian Assange has been arrested by British police inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London as footage showed him being dragged out of the building he's been living for nearly seven years. The city's police force confirmed the arrest in a statement Thursday morning. “[Assange] has been taken into custody at a central London police station where he will remain, before being presented before Westminster Magistrates' Court as soon as is possible,” the statement read. It went on to say police were “invited into the embassy by the Ambassador, following the Ecuadorian government's withdrawal of asylum.” A livestream from Russia's state-owned RT showed the Wikileaks founder being forcibly removed from the embassy by police and pushed into a van. He took refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case. That case has been dropped, but British police arrested him for not surrendering to the court. WikiLeaks has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. Justice Department is building a criminal case against Assange over the leaking of Democratic emails hacked by the Russians in the 2016 election.