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WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has been handled “very unfairly” to the disgrace of the complete world, and Mexico is keen to take him in, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador instructed reporters on Tuesday. He mentioned he would deliver up Assange’s case along with his US counterpart Joe Biden once they meet in July.
The UK introduced final week it could extradite the jailed writer to the US, the place he faces espionage costs and as much as 175 years behind bars if convicted. The choice by UK Residence Secretary Priti Patel was “very disappointing,” mentioned Lopez Obrador, who is often identified by his initials AMLO.
He additionally mentioned he intends to ask Biden to drop costs in opposition to Assange once they meet subsequent month. Such an motion would go counter to the “hardliners within the US” however “humanity should prevail,” AMLO added.
What about freedoms? Are we going to take away the Statue of Liberty from New York?
“Julian Assange is the most effective journalist of our time on the earth and he has been handled very unfairly, worse than a felony,” AMLO mentioned. “This can be a disgrace for the world.”
Mexico is keen to offer Assange sanctuary if and when he’s launched, the president added, reminding reporters that he had referred to as on the earlier US administration to drop costs in opposition to Assange as “a prisoner of conscience.”
Assange, an Australian citizen, sought asylum in Ecuador in 2012, suspecting that Washington needed him arrested and extradited over WikiLeaks’ launch in 2010 of labeled information on the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He spent the subsequent seven years inside Ecuador’s embassy in London – because the UK refused him secure passage – till his asylum was revoked by a brand new US-friendly authorities in Quito.
British police led Assange out of the embassy in April 2019 and put him within the maximum-security Belmarsh jail in south London, the place he stays. Inside a month of his arrest, the US unsealed an indictment charging him of offenses beneath the Espionage Act, for which he may face 175 years in jail. Assange has denied all allegations, and a key witness in Washington’s case in opposition to him admitted he lied in his testimony.
Australia has not spoken up for Assange’s launch, though the just lately elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had opposed the fees in opposition to the journalist through the election marketing campaign. Albanese mentioned on Monday that he nonetheless believed Assange ought to go free, however that his authorities wouldn’t publicly intervene with the US on his behalf, as a result of it “engages diplomatically and appropriately with our companions.”
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