As the Biden administration calls for the freedom of the press all over the world, especially in the countries it is opposed to, US President Joe Biden is in quite the pickle as Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is still locked up in the United Kingdom awaiting his extradition to the United States since he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London three years ago and arrested by British police.

Assange is currently facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, which marks a precedent, as the legislation was never used before against classified information being made public. In Assange's case, he's been unlawfully charged in the US with 17 counts of "espionage" and one count of computer misuse in connection with WikiLeaks' disclosure of tens of thousands of military and diplomatic documents - whereby Assange exposed the US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan - that whistleblower Chelsea Manning had disclosed.

"It's the first time the US government has used the Espionage Act to go after a publisher and the implications are huge," Columbia University law professor Jameel Jaffer said. Assange "has been indicted for activity that reporters are engaged in every day and that reporters have to engage in every day to inform the public. This would have dramatic implications for national security journalism," the professor added, as per The Guardian.

Belmarsh maximum security prison has been where Assange is being kept in the UK for three and a half years so far as he awaits a potential 175-year sentence following the approval in December 2021 of his extradition to the US by the UK High Court.

For months now, however, there has been a paramount effort from international - such as Mexico's President - and US politicians, activists, and even renowned newspapers and media outlets - such as The Guardian and The New York Times - to urge the Biden administration to move against Assange's extradition.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador considered that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been treated "very unfairly", affirming that Mexico was willing to receive him.

The Mexican President told reporters back in June 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.

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

Meanwhile, several renowned newspapers, namely The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, El País, put out an open letter earlier in the month highlighting that Washington indicting "sets a dangerous precedent" and undermines the first amendment. The message was concluded by stressing: "Publishing is not a crime."

Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr demanded back in June that the US abandon its prosecution of Assange.

Carr stated in an op-ed for the Sydney Morning Herald that Assange's conviction contrasted sharply with the US pardoning of former military intelligence officer Chelsea Manning, who provided the classified information to Wikileaks.

Carr stated that this was newly elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's "most potent argument" for Assange's release.

Related News

Panama president rules out talks with Trump over canal threat

US-assisted Israeli attack on Yemen hits Sanaa Airport during UN visit

"Our new prime minister can say: 'We're not fans of the guy either, Mr. President, but it's gone on long enough. We're good allies. Let this one drop.'"

Other Australian officials met with their US counterparts to appeal for Assange's release. "My position is clear and has been made clear to the US administration: that it is time that this matter be brought to a close," Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese told Parliament in late November.

Brazilian President-elect Luis Inácio Lula da Silva also demanded that Assange's "unjust imprisonment" be ended.

Even Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters went out and attended a rally calling for freeing Julian Assange in front of the British Consulate in New York just this Saturday.  

About 100 people attended the rally in the early afternoon, holding banners that read "Free Julian Assange".

In August, Waters showed up at a rally in front of the Justice Department in Washington while on his 2022 "This Is Not a Drill" Tour, where he warned that Assange's stay in prison was making him sicker and pushing him closer to death and called on the protestors to "never, never shut up" and keep doing what they are doing until Assange is free.

The main point of contention surrounding Assange's case is that his supporters see that he should be considered a journalist covered by the first amendment, and his imprisonment is in violation of the constitution, with US officials, such as senator Ben Sasse, saying the Australian was "an outlet for foreign propaganda and an enemy of the American people" just because he exposed war crimes committed by Washington abroad.

The United States only brought criminal charges against Assange under former US President Donald Trump in 2019. This led to "Operation Pelican".

The secret operation named 'Pelican' to seize Assange from asylum came to light after being revealed in the memoirs published last year by former Foreign Minister Sir Alan Duncan.

As foreign minister for the Americas from 2016 to 2019, Duncan was the key British official in the diplomatic negotiations between the UK and Ecuador to release Assange from the Embassy.

Although Assange was granted political asylum by Ecuador back in 2012, he was never allowed safe passage out of Britain since he was the target of prosecution by the US.

After the events took place and Assange was imprisoned, Duncan had drinks at his office for the operation team. “I gave them each a signed photo which we took in the Ops Room on the day, with a caption saying 'Julian Assange’s Special Brexit Team 11th April 2019,'” he wrote. 

In September 2021, 30 former US officials went on the record to reveal a CIA plot to “kill or kidnap” Assange in London. In the case of Assange leaving the Embassy, the article noted, "US officials asked their British counterparts to do the shooting if gunfire was required, and the British agreed, according to a former senior administration official."

Rafael Correa, former president of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017, recently disclosed to Declassified UK that the reason why he granted Assange asylum was that Assange "didn't have any possibility of a fair legal process in the United States.' He further exposed the UK for trying to "deal with us like a subordinate country."