Five congressmen of the most extreme wing of the Democratic Party have called for the release and dismissal of all federal charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is known to have conducted a massive leak of confidential U.S. information.
Through a letter sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland, lawmakers Rashida Tlaib -who is leading the request-, Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman and Greg Casar argued that the case of the prosecution of the WikiLeaks founder "is dangerous for democracy":
Four years ago today, Julian Assange was arrested for publishing the truth.
I’m leading a letter to Attorney General Garland urging him to uphold the freedom of the press by dropping these Trump-era charges and withdrawing the extradition request. pic.twitter.com/91wLrBXRQk
— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) April 11, 2023
The five congressmen, who belong to the group popularly known as The Squad, reflected that they are not the only ones who have requested Assange's release. The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador; the President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández; and the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, are just some of the international leaders who have called for his exoneration. All of them are of similar political ideology to the signatories of the letter.
Four years after Julian Assange's arrest
This request comes exactly four years after Assange's arrest at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London (UK). After the resignation of former Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, the Latin American country stopped granting him asylum after seven years of protecting him in its embassy.
British authorities gained access to the Ecuadorian Embassy, arrested Assange and transferred him to Belmarsh maximum security prison, located southwest of London. Immediately, the US government presided over by Donald Trump made an extradition order official.
On June 17, 2022, the UK judiciary confirmed his extradition after months of appeals and appeals. A delivery that has not yet taken place. Assange faces eighteen federal criminal charges in the US.
WikiLeaks leaks
Assange founded WikiLeaks in late 2006. Four years later, the organization gained fame after releasing a video showing a U.S. Army helicopter shooting Iraqi civilians during the war.
Also in 2010, WikiLeaks leaked some 90,000 U.S. military documents related to the war in Afghanistan. A few months later, it released some 391,000 classified files linked to the Iraq war. These two batches of reports reflected the number of civilian casualties.
In 2011, Assange made public hundreds of documents on the Guantanamo military prison and the practices denounced by some prisoners. He also leaked that governments in France, Germany, Italy and Japan had been spied on by the National Security Agency (NSA). And the emails that Hillary Clinton sent to several well-known American businessmen before the 2016 presidential election in which she accused Qatar and Saudi Arabia of supporting the terrorist group Islamic State.
