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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) joined forces this week in a letter calling on President Joe Biden to stop the extradition and prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Sixteen participants of Congress from both main parties signed a letter on Wednesday strongly encouraging Biden “to withdraw the U.S. extradition request currently pending towards Australian publisher Julian Assange” and to “halt all prosecutorial court cases towards him as quickly as that you can think of.”
The letter warned:
We are mindful that the Assange case has been mentioned via officials of the Folks’s Republic of China to claim that the U.S. is “hypocritical” on the subject of purported support for media freedom. We are also well aware that will have to the U.S. extradition and prosecution go ahead, there’s a important risk that our bilateral relationship with Australia will probably be badly damaged.
It’s the accountability of journalists to are looking for out sources, together with documentary proof, with a purpose to report to the public on the activities of presidency. The United States must no longer pursue an needless prosecution that dangers criminalizing popular journalistic practices and subsequently chilling the work of the free press. We urge you to make sure that this case be dropped at an in depth in as well timed a manner as that you can imagine.
The letter, which was led by way of Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), was once signed by means of a diverse group of lawmakers in the Home and Senate: Ocasio-Cortez, Greene, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO), Rep. Matthew Rosendale (R-MT), Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-IL), and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).
Assange — an Australian citizen who has by no means set foot in the US — has been imprisoned in London’s Belmarsh Jail seeing that April 2019, watching for extradition to america to face fees of violating the Espionage Act.
In Could, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed frustration over the Biden administration’s refusal to drop its prosecution of Assange, declaring, “enough is sufficient.”
Albanese told newshounds that the subject wanted “to be brought to a conclusion,” and that he had made it “very clear” to the Biden administration “what our place is on Mr Assange’s case.”
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