Lula celebrates Assange release
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Tuesday celebrated the release of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who agreed to plead guilty to a single felony under the U.S. Espionage Act in exchange for returning to his native Australia as a free man.
“The world today is a little better and less unfair,” Lula wrote on social media. “Julian Assange is free after 1,901 days in prison. His release and return home, albeit tardy, represent a democratic victory and the fight for press freedom.”
Mr. Assange departed London on Monday, after spending over five years in Belmarsh Prison without a trial. He landed in Thailand on Tuesday morning on his way to the Northern Mariana Islands, in the Pacific, where he is expected to be sentenced in a U.S. court to about five years, around the same time he has already served in the United Kingdom. He will then board a flight to Australia.
The U.S. sought to extradite Mr. Assange for breaching the Espionage Act for obtaining and publishing secret military and diplomatic documents in 2010. Back in August 2023, U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy raised the possibility of a potential plea deal that could allow Mr. Assange’s return to his home country.
Lula and his Workers’ Party have spoken several times in favor of Mr. Assange. In 2020, Lula said that Mr. Assange “should be treated like a hero for exposing to the world the U.S. State Department’s swindles.”
In 2022, filmmaker Gabriel Shipton, Julian Assange’s brother, thanked Lula for supporting the campaign against extradition to the U.S. In the following year, Julian Assange’s father, John Shipton, visited the presidential palace to promote Ithaka (2021), a documentary about his son’s incarceration.
Support for Mr. Assange fits with the stance taken by both the Workers’ Party and Lula of non-alignment with the U.S.
In 2010, WikiLeaks published a series of leaks provided by then U.S. army soldier Chelsea Manning, as well as more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables. In 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Mr. Assange with several crimes under the Espionage Act.
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