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Rights Groups and Newspapers Call on Biden to Finally Drop Assange Prosecution

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Rights Groups and Newspapers Call on Biden to Finally Drop Assange Prosecution

Twelve years after relying on WikiLeaks to publish “Cablegate” documents, the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, DER SPIEGEL and El Pais just published “An Open Letter from Editors and Publishers: Publishing is Not a Crime,” calling for the Biden administration to stop its prosecution of Julian Assange.

Consortium News reports: “Daniel Ellsberg has called on the U.S. to indict him for having the same unauthorized possession of classified material as Julian Assange.” Consortium News also highlights protests on Saturday for Human Rights Day.

CHIP GIBBONS, chip@RightsAndDissent.org, @ChipGibbons89
Gibbons is policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent. They, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Committee to Protect Journalists and over a dozen other groups, just sent a letter to President Biden: “It is more than a year since our coalition sent a joint letter calling for the charges against Assange to be dropped. In June, then U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel approved Assange’s extradition to the United States, a decision that Assange’s legal team is in the process of appealing. Today, we repeat those concerns, and urge you to heed our request. We believe that the prosecution of Assange in the U.S. would set a harmful legal precedent and deliver a damaging blow to press freedom by opening the way for journalists to be tried under the Espionage Act if they receive classified material from whistleblowers. …
“It is time for the Biden administration to break from the Trump administration’s decision to indict Assange — a move that was hostile to the media and democracy itself. Correcting the course is essential to protect journalists’ ability to report freely on the United States without fear of retribution.”
Gibbons just wrote the piece “Former CIA Director’s Institute Hosts Event On The Assange Case (And Madness Ensues)

See from the British National Union of Journalists: “CIA reportedly plotted to kidnap and assassinate Julian Assange.”

December 9, 2022