The CIA plan to murder Julian Assange and the fight to free him |
@DoubleDownNews
#FreeAssangeNOW
Mexican President Obrador Suggests Dismantling Statue of Liberty if Assange Convicted in US
The Mexican president has once again said that he was willing to provide asylum to Julian Assange, adding that he would raise the case during his meeting with Joe Biden next week.
The Statue of Liberty should be dismantled if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is convicted in the United States, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said during a Monday press conference.
"If he is brought to the US and given the maximum sentence, [sentenced to] death in prison, a campaign should be launched to dismantle the Status of Liberty in New York that was gifted by the French, because it will no longer be a symbol of freedom," the president explained.
Obrador added that he would raise the case of Assange during his talks with Joe Biden in Washington, DC, next week.
Last month, Obrador said that he was willing to provide the WikiLeaks founder an asylum in Mexico, and stressed that he would call on Biden to drop charges against Assange during their meeting.
"Julian Assange is the best journalist of our time in the world and he has been treated very unfairly, worse than a criminal. This is a shame for the world,” he said, adding that his call for charges to be dropped would disappoint US hawks but insisted that “humanity must prevail.”
The Mexican president previously appealed to the former POTUS, Donald Trump, to drop charges against the Australian journalist.
Obrador also said he was disappointed by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel’s decision to greenlight Assange's extradition to the US, where he faces up to 175 years behind bars under the Espionage Act.
WikiLeaks lambasted the move as "a dark day for Press freedom and for British democracy," calling Patel "an accomplice to the United States in its agenda to turn investigative journalism into a criminal enterprise."
"Anyone in this country who cares about freedom of expression should be deeply ashamed that the Home Secretary has approved the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States, the country that plotted his assassination", the organization stated.
NEW 🚨 Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants Edward Snowden and Julian Assange to be pardoned
https://twitter.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1542292047398330370
Assange Put on Suicide Watch After Patel Decision, Father Says
John Shipton said Julian Assange was stripped naked and put in an empty cell to prevent him from killing himself over the home secretary’s decision to sign his extradition order, Joe Lauria reports.
After British Home Secretary Priti Patel signed Julian Assange’s extradition order on Friday the authorities in Belmarsh prison stripped Julian Assange and threw him into a completely empty cell in an attempt to prevent his suicide, Assange’s father has said.
It was just one more instance in which the prison humiliated his son, Shipton told a rally on Tuesday night at the offices of the junge Welt newspaper in Berlin. About 300 people attended, with an overflow crowd watching on close circuit TV in the courtyard.
Testimony was heard from expert defense witnesses during Assange’s extradition hearing that he might try to end his life in prison once he learned he was going to the United States.
It is not the end of the road for Assange legally, however. His lawyers have until July 1 to file for an appeal of Patel’s decision to the High Court. They also intend to apply for a cross appeal of issues such as the political nature of the charges, the threat to free speech and the reported C.I.A. plot to kidnap or kill Assange before his arrest.
Shipton and Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, are in Berlin to lobby the German government to put pressure on the United States to drop the case against Assange.
On Monday, the Shiptons met with Tobias Lindner, the minister of state, at the German foreign ministry. “It was a practical and appropriate step for Tobias to take, to welcome Julian Assange’s father and bother into the foreign ministry,” John Shipton said. “The invitation in itself and the meeting in the foreign ministry indicates that the German government is sincere in bringing about the freedom of Julian Assange.”
But Shipton said he would like to hear a public statement from Germany in support of his son. “We’d like Tobias to confirm what he’s said.”
A German government spokesman on Monday said however that Germany was unlikely to intervene with either the U.K. or the U.S. “This is a legal process that is already in motion, so I would be a little wary of political intervention,” he said, the French Press Agency (AFP) reported.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/06/22/assange-put-on-suicide-watch-after-patel-decision-father-says/
Mexico will ask Biden to free Assange
President of Mexico has offered sanctuary to jailed WikiLeaks publisher
WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has been treated “very unfairly” to the shame of the entire world, and Mexico has offered to take him in, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Tuesday. He said he would bring up Assange’s case with his US counterpart Joe Biden when they meet in July.
The UK announced last week it would extradite the jailed journalist to the US, where he faces espionage charges and up to 175 years behind bars if convicted. The decision by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel was “very disappointing,” said Lopez, who also goes by his initials AMLO.
He also said he intends to ask Biden to drop charges against Assange when they meet next month. Such an action would go counter to the “hardliners in the US” but “humanity must prevail,” AMLO added.
What about freedoms? Are we going to remove the Statue of Liberty from New York?
“Julian Assange is the best journalist of our time in the world and he has been treated very unfairly, worse than a criminal,” AMLO said. “This is a shame for the world.”
Mexico is willing to provide Assange sanctuary if and when he is released, the president added, reminding reporters that he had called on the previous US administration to drop charges against Assange as “a prisoner of conscience.”
Assange, an Australian citizen, sought asylum in Ecuador in 2012, suspecting that Washington wanted him arrested and extradited over WikiLeaks publishing the documents about US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. He spent the next seven years trapped at Ecuador’s embassy in London – as the UK refused him safe passage – until his asylum was revoked by a new US-friendly government in Quito.
British police dragged Assange out of the embassy in April 2019 and put him in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison in south London, where he remains to this day. Within a month of his arrest, the US unsealed an indictment charging him of offenses under the Espionage Act, for which he could face 175 years in prison. Assange has denied all allegations, and a key witness in Washington’s case against him admitted he lied in his testimony.
Canberra has not spoken up for Assange’s release, even though the recently elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had opposed the charges against the journalist during the election campaign. Albanese said Monday that he still believed Assange should go free, but that his government would not publicly intervene with the US on his behalf, because it “engages diplomatically and appropriately with our partners.”