The Limited Times

Mexican President López Obrador asks that the founder of WikiLeaks be released

1/3/2020, 6:20:27 PM


The Mexican president said the founder of WikiLeaks deserves to be released from prison, where he is being held on charges of espionage and leaking documents.

The president of Mexico asked Friday that the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, be released from the prison in London where he is located and that "he will not continue to be tortured."

Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in a press conference that Assange deserves to be released because, although he would have acted against the norms, "at the time these cables [demonstrated] how the world system worked in its authoritarian nature."

The cables published on WikiLeaks, a platform founded by Assange, that refer to Mexico include discussions of how prepared the Mexican police are to fight drug traffickers or if the government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) was under too much stress after declaring a War against the cartels.

Other cables reveal decisions of the US government around the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Not everything that was expressed in the cables was legal, most were violating democracy, freedoms and sovereignty," said López Obrador.

Assange has been in Belmarsh High Security Prison since last year, when the Ecuadorian government withdrew the asylum he had had in that country's embassy in London since 2012. He was subsequently convicted in the United Kingdom for violating the conditions of his probation when he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Assange, 48, is also pending a process of possible extradition to the United States, which accuses him of espionage and filtering of documents. Associations such as Reporters Without Borders and organizations such as the UN denounce that Assange has been subjected to psychological torture in Belmarsh.

"You cannot turn your back on the horrors of humanity. You cannot apply the policy to the ostrich to put your head in the sand. You have to express yourself," said López Obrador regarding why he decided to talk about Assange in his Press conference.