US President Joe Biden said this on Wednesday (April 10) in the White House in Washington. Assange has been in the high-security Belmarsh prison since April 11, 2019, after previously hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years.
From prison, Assange is fighting extradition to the USA - where he faces up to 175 years in prison. The 52-year-old's supporters consider him to be an "unjustly persecuted journalist" and see his imprisonment as a "serious attack on media freedom," as it was said in an open letter to the German Foreign Ministry last September. “Julian Assange dared to bring to light revelations of alleged US war crimes. It is unacceptable that years of his life were stolen from him,” said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard. The US President surprised the world public one day before the fifth anniversary of Assange's imprisonment in London. The founder of Wikileaks published secret US documents in 2010 and 2011, sometimes together with media such as the New York Times, the Guardian and Spiegel.