Parliamentarians from the Brazil of Hope Federation (PT, PCdoB and PV) announced this Tuesday (29 November 2022) support for the international movement for the release of Australian journalist Julian Assange.
In a letter sent to the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, the parliamentarians are against the extradition of Assange to be tried in North American territory and warn that this fact would create a negative precedent for freedom of expression and the free exercise of the press throughout the world.
The support took place at a meeting of the Federation’s benches, in the Chamber of Deputies, which was attended by the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Kristinn Hraffsson, and Joseph Farrell, ambassador of WikiLeaks.
In the letter, the parliamentarians reminded the US authorities that Assange “adopted practices that are essentially investigative journalism”, among them, “receiving classified information from a source within the government and publishing information of public interest”. Still according to Brazilian congressmen, this act cannot be included in the Espionage Act, because “it would criminalize routine practices, which are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States”. Deputies also recalled that the Obama administration refused to prosecute Assange for espionage.
Article originally published here.
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