LONDON — Five of the Western world’s leading
newspapers issued a joint call Monday for the
US to drop its prosecution of
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
اضافة اعلان
The Australian publisher remains in custody in
Britain pending a US extradition request to face trial for divulging US
military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Publishing is not a crime,” argued the editors and
publishers of The Guardian, Le Monde, The New York Times, El País, and Der
Spiegel in an open letter to the US government.
The letter marked the 12th anniversary of the
newspapers collaborating with Assange to release excerpts from more than
250,000 US diplomatic cables that had been obtained by WikiLeaks.
A year later, Assange published unredacted excerpts
of some of the cables. The five newspapers criticized him then for potentially
endangering the lives of US intelligence sources.
“But we come together now to express our grave
concerns about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and
publishing classified materials,” the letter said.
It noted that when
Barack Obama was president and
Joe Biden his vice president, the US administration had held off on indicting
Assange, as journalists involved could also have had to face prosecution.
That changed under Donald Trump, when the US justice
department charged Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act, “which has never been
used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster”.
“This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and
threatens to undermine America’s (constitutional) first amendment and the
freedom of the press,” the letter to the Biden administration argued.
“Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when
necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists,”
it said.
“Twelve years after the publication of ‘Cablegate’,
it is time for the US government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for
publishing secrets.”
Assange, 51, has been held in a high-security jail
in London since 2019, after serving time for skipping bail in a previous case
and spending years holed up in Ecuador’s embassy.
He is appealing against UK approval of his
extradition to the US. He could face decades in jail if found guilty.
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