Lula had already criticized the fact that no one was working together to free Julian Assange.
Tuesday at the United Nations in New York City, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that it is “essential” to protect the freedom of the press and that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange should not be punished for telling the public what he knows.
“It is very important to protect press freedom. “You can’t punish a journalist like Julian Assange for doing his job in a clear and legal way,” Lula said.
The president’s words come one day before a group of Australian politicians from different political parties meet with U.S. officials, members of Congress, and human rights groups in Washington, D.C. More than 60 members of parliament have signed a message that the group is sending to the United States. The letter asks the U.S. to stop prosecuting Assange, who is fighting against being sent to the U.S., where he could spend up to 175 years in a maximum-security jail.
In late October, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will come to the United States to visit U.S. President Joe Biden. Albanese has asked the U.S. to stop prosecuting the Australian writer several times in the past few months.
Under the Espionage Act, Assange is accused of getting, having, and sharing secret information with the public. He is also accused of plotting to break into a computer, which is a separate charge. The charges are based on cables that U.S. Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning gave to Wikileaks in 2010. The cables showed that the U.S. government committed war crimes in the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The documents also show that the CIA has tortured people and sent them to other countries.
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The “Collateral Murder” video from Wikileaks, which shows the U.S. military shooting citizens in Iraq, including two Reuters reporters, was also released 13 years ago.
Lula said on Tuesday, “Our fight is against fake news and cybercrime.” Acts and platforms shouldn’t be able to overturn the labor laws we fight so hard for.
Assange has been held at London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison since April 11, 2019, when he was taken out of the Ecuadorian Embassy for breaking the terms of his bail. He asked for refuge at the embassy in London so that he wouldn’t have to go to Sweden, where he was accused of raping two women, because Sweden wouldn’t promise that it wouldn’t send him to the U.S. The sexual attack claims were finally not looked into any further.
In May, Lula criticized the fact that no one was working together to free Assange. He said it was “embarrassing” that a writer who had exposed a state’s trickery against another was caught and sentenced to die in jail, but nothing was being done to free him.
“It’s an unbelievable thing,” Lula said to reporters at the time. “We talk about free speech, but this guy is in jail because he spoke out against crime. And the press does nothing to support this reporter. I just don’t get it.”
After Wikileaks released the cables in 2010, the Obama administration chose not to charge Assange because it would have also had to charge writers from major news sites who published the materials. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for breaking the Espionage Act and other laws, but Obama reduced that to seven years.
But later, Assange was charged under the Espionage Act by the Justice Department of former President Trump, and the Biden administration has kept up with his pursuit.
“I think there must be a movement of press around the world to support him. “Not because I dislike him as a person, but because I want to protect the right to criticize,” Lula told reporters in May. “The guy didn’t say anything offensive. He said that a state was spying on other people, and because of that, the writer was charged with a crime. Even though the press is supposed to be free, nothing is done to set this person free. It’s sad, but it’s the truth.”
Last year, the editors and publishers of U.S. and European news outlets (The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El Pas) that worked with Assange to publish excerpts from more than 250,000 documents he got from the Cablegate leak wrote an open letter asking the U.S. to drop the charges against Assange.
In April, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, led a letter to the Justice Department asking for Assange’s freedom. Some of her fellow lawmakers signed it.
