Mexico City, June 26 (UNI) Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador hailed the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after he was held in a high-security prison in England for five years.
“I congratulate Julian, his family, his father, his brothers, his friends, and the millions of Mexicans and all the countries in the world who participated in making Julian Assange’s freedom possible,” Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday during his daily press conference.
Lopez Obrador said Assange’s incarceration was akin to “jailing freedom of expression,” and called his plight “very unfair.”
Assange was released after reaching a deal with the U.S. Justice Department, in which he agreed to plead guilty to violating the U.S. Espionage Act in exchange for avoiding further imprisonment.
Lopez Obrador recalled his administration’s attempts to secure Assange’s release, including writing letters to then U.S. President Donald Trump and his successor Joe Biden in 2020 and 2023 respectively.
Assange was released from London’s Belmarsh Prison on Monday and boarded a plane to leave Britain, according to a WikiLeaks post on X, formerly Twitter.
