Mexico's President will ask Biden to drop charges against Assange

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Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador considered Tuesday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been treated “very unfairly”, affirming that Mexico is willing to receive him.

The Mexican President told reporters that he would touch on Assange’s case during his July meeting with US President Joe Biden, and ask the latter to drop charges against the Australian journalist.

Lopez Obrador considered that “Julian Assange is the best journalist of our time in the world and he has been treated very unfairly, worse than a criminal."

“This is a shame for the world," he expressed, adding that the UK's approval to extradite Assange to the US is "very disappointing".

He pointed out that Mexico is willing to provide Assange sanctuary if and when he is released, adding that he had urged former US President Donaldo Trump's administration to drop charges against the journalist as “a prisoner of conscience.”

It is noteworthy that UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has approved the US government's request to extradite the WikiLeaks publisher.

The interior minister "must sign an extradition order if there are no grounds to prevent the (extradition) order from being made," and the courts had found none. Assange has 14 days to file an appeal, according to the Home Office. 

The United States is prosecuting Assange over espionage charges after the organization he founded published thousands of classified documents that exposed war crimes committed by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan during the so-called "war on terror".

Assange is currently on remand at the Belmarsh maximum-security prison in southeast London and has been there since October 2020 after serving an 11-month sentence for breaking bail conditions.

The UK authorities detained him after he sought shelter in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, where he remained until 2019 over concerns that he could be extradited to the United States.