On the 22nd July 2021 Fabien Rives reports in The News 24
As part of a press conference which took place on July 21 at the seat of the presidency of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador spoke about the alleged practices of targeted espionage targeting journalists, lawyers and politicians, recently brought to light by a consortium of 17 media in connection with the Pegasus case.
Underlining the effectiveness of such coordination on a global scale, the Mexican president then considered that it was just as essential to recognize the importance of the work carried out by Julian Assange through the WikiLeaks platform.
“Assange must be released because he is unfairly in prison, treated with cruelty, for providing information of an even greater magnitude [que l’affaire en cours]», Declared Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“As revelations related to the Pegasus affair tour the world, the President of Mexico calls for the release of WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange, who first exposed large-scale global surveillance operations.” , commented WikiLeaks by reposting the extract in question on social networks.
Despite the weak media response from which this appeal launched by the Mexican president has so far benefited, the short extract published by WikiLeaks has already accumulated several hundred thousand views in less than 24 hours.
This is not the first time that Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador has shown his support for the Australian journalist, locked up since April 11, 2019 in a British high security prison. Thus, on January 4, 2021, when the British justice had just announced its refusal to grant Washington the extradition of the founder of WikiLeaks, the Mexican president had, for example, offered to offer him political asylum.
As of this writing, Julian Assange’s situation is still alarming. Locked up for 833 days in His Majesty’s prison services, the Australian national still cannot see the end of the tunnel since on July 7, according to Wikileaks, Washington obtained “limited authorization” to appeal against the refusal of extradition pronounced by the British justice. From the perspective of the UN rapporteur on torture, the charges against him collapsed one after the other without the persecution against him ceasing. The latest twist was revealed on June 26 by the Icelandic magazine The hour, according to which American justice would have incorporated, in its last indictment targeting Assange, the statements of a sulphurous witness who would now admit to having lied.
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and Granma (in Spanish)