Several major international media outlets have called on the U.S. government to stop prosecuting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, reports Das Erste. The letter, signed by Der Spiegel magazine and The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde and El País newspapers, claims that the charges against Assange “set a dangerous precedent” and threaten to undermine press freedom.
German news and politics magazine Der Spiegel and four other international media outlets have called on US authorities to drop the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “The charges against Assange set a dangerous precedent and constitute an attack on press freedom,” said an open letter signed by Der Spiegel magazine, US newspaper The New York Times, British newspaper The Guardian, French newspaper Le Monde and Spanish newspaper El País, Das Erste reported.
In 2010 – exactly 12 years ago – these five publications teamed up to publish excerpts of documents obtained by Assange. As Reporters Without Borders, an international NGO, wrote on Twitter, the editors and publishers in chief publicly called on the US to stop prosecuting Assange for publishing classified documents for the first time.
“Journalism is not a crime,” the letter said. One of the main tasks of journalists in democracies is to criticise the mistakes of the authorities. “If such work is criminalised, public discourse, and therefore democracy, is significantly weakened,” the letter’s authors emphasise. The charges against Assange “set a dangerous precedent” and threaten to undermine press freedom.
Since 2010, Assange has published some 700,000 classified documents on WikiLeaks about US military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan, including information about the killing of civilians and the mistreatment of prisoners.
Assange is accused of stealing classified material and endangering the lives of US intelligence informants by publishing it. Supporters see Assange as a courageous journalist who exposed war crimes and who should now be made an example of.
Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for five years since 2012. In 2019, the Central American country revoked his asylum, after which British police arrested Assange. He has since been held in solitary confinement in London’s maximum security Belmarsh prison.
In early July, Assange appealed the British government’s decision to extradite him to the US. There, the Australian faces 175 years in prison, Das Erste reports.