AMLO confirms that he spoke to Biden about Assange

Nestor Jimenez and Alonso Urrutia

Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, January 25, 2023, p. 16

In the meeting he held with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, during his visit to Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed that he had spoken with the American about the case of Julian Assange, editor and founder of WikiLeaks, detained in the United Kingdom after an accusation from the neighboring country to the north for espionage, and with a request for extradition to face said charge.

We do talk, but I can’t talk because I care very, very, very much that we win Assange’s freedomsaid López Obrador yesterday at his daily press conference, when asked about the statements made to La Jornada by Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, in an interview with journalist Tania Molina last week, in which Hrafnsson revealed that this man who was one of the topics they discussed.

Without going into details of the dialogue, the head of the federal Executive endorsed that his position was the same as that expressed, but we must respect the decision of the United States government, and that is my commitment.

Regarding the arrest of Assange, who has spent almost four years in a maximum security prison, the Tabasco native insisted that You cannot hit freedom of expression, that is, it would be keeping Assange in jail for more time, since he will continue to insult the right we have to express ourselves freely. Meanwhile, he pondered that it is convenient for all of us to send a message of the importance of respecting and putting, above all else, the freedom of the human being.

In addition, he stressed that Assange, He is not a spy, but a journalist, and what he did was release information, just like the information he released to the New York Times and other media, and why aren’t those media being prosecuted? what is Assange? And that the Statue of Liberty cannot become an empty symbol. The most important thing is freedom, whether we agree or not.

After defining President Biden as a very good person and a good ruler, he said that in this case, as in others, the American deserves to be trusted.