MEXICO CITY, Jan 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador offered political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after a British judge ruled that Assange could not be extradited to the United States “due to concerns about his mental health.”
In his customary morning press conference, the president said he will ask Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry to contact British officials over the asylum offer and request Assange be pardoned.
“It is a triumph of justice. I commend England’s action because Assange is a journalist and deserves a chance,” Lopez Obrador told reporters, referring to the ruling.
“We will give him protection, we will take that step,” the president added.
U.S. authorities wanted to try Assange, 49, for his alleged role in hacking and revealing U.S. military secrets.
The controversial activist previously spent nearly seven years holed up inside Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he sought and received political asylum.
However, the British side claimed to arrest him if he set foot outside the embassy and never allowed him safe passage out of the country. He was eventually handed back to British authorities and imprisoned for breach of bail as alleged.
Meanwhile in MOSCOW, RUSSIA, fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden said he hoped the British refusal to extradite Julian Assange would mark “the end” of attempts to see the WikiLeaks founder face espionage charges in the United States.
Reacting to the news, former US intelligence contractor Snowden tweeted:
“Let this be the end of it.”
Snowden is himself wanted in the United States on espionage charges after
he leaked information showing that agents from the National Security Agency were collecting telephone records from millions of US citizens.
He has been living in exile in Russia since 2013 and last year announced
he intends to become a dual US-Russian citizen. — NNN-AGENCIES
