DEMOCRATS URGE BIDEN TO DROP CHARGES AGAINST JULIAN ASSANGE

Wed 12 Apr 2023:

Several Democrats in the House have signed a letter urging the Department of Justice to drop its charges against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange and halt extradition proceedings aimed at bringing him to the US to face prosecution under the World War I-era Espionage Act.

The group of progressive lawmakers, known as ‘the Squad’, addressed their letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday to mark the fourth anniversary since Assange’s 2019 arrest, saying the charges against him represent a serious threat to the free press.

“We write you today to call on you to uphold the First Amendment’s protections for the freedom of the press by dropping the criminal charges against Australian publisher Julian Assange and withdrawing the American extradition request currently pending with the British government,” the lawmakers said.

They went on to cite warnings from a long line of human rights, civil liberties, and press freedoms groups – among them the ACLU, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Defending Rights and Dissent, and Human Rights Watch – which have argued Assange’s case poses “a grave and unprecedented threat to everyday, constitutionally protected journalistic activity.”

The Democratic lawmakers argued that Assange’s prosecution would “greatly [diminish] America’s credibility” as a defender of human rights around the globe and set a dangerous legal precedent “whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted.”

“In the future the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information. Or, just as dangerous for democracy, they may refrain from publishing such stories for fear of prosecution,” they continued.

The charges against Assange come from the 2010 publication of a vast trove of classified papers obtained by US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, which included evidence that US forces committed war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. Manning was tried and sentenced to 35 years in jail before being released after President Barack Obama reduced his sentence.

Assange was detained by British authorities in 2019 after losing his political asylum status at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had been hiding for more than seven years due to the publishing of substantial volumes of confidential material by Wikileaks.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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