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Mexico has said it was ready to offer political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after a British judge blocked his extradition to the United States to face espionage charges.
“I am going to ask the foreign minister to carry out the pertinent procedures to request that the government of the United Kingdom release Mr. Assange and that Mexico offer him political asylum,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told reporters.
The leftist leader welcomed the British court’s rejection of the US request to extradite the 49-year-old Australian publisher on suicide risk, calling it a “triumph of justice.”
“Assange is a journalist and deserves a chance,” he said.
López Obrador said that Mexico would guarantee “that whoever receives asylum does not intervene or interfere in the political affairs of any country.”
Mexico has hosted many political asylum seekers over the years, from Nicaraguan anti-imperialist hero César Augusto Sandino to Russian revolutionary León Trotsky and, more recently, former Bolivian President Evo Morales.
“Mexico has a long history of offering asylum,” Adolfo Laborde, an academic and foreign relations expert, told AFP.
Whether Assange joins the list will depend on political pressures and the positions of the various actors and countries interested in his fate, Laborde said.
Assange is wanted on 18 charges in the United States related to the 2010 publication by WikiLeaks of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If convicted in the United States, he faces up to 175 years in jail.
Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, said the asylum offer could generate tensions with the incoming administration of US President-elect Joe Biden.
He said López Obrador appeared to be ignoring or overlooking WikiLeaks’ publication of 20,000 hacked emails from Democrat Hillary Clinton’s US election campaign team in 2016.
The Mexican president “is turning the issue into another potential area of friction with the next US administration,” Sarukhan said.
President López Obrador’s relations with Biden had already gotten off to a rocky start, as he was one of the last high-profile leaders to congratulate him on his victory and said he wanted to wait until the legal disputes were resolved.
The activists held a protest outside the British embassy in Mexico City after the court decision, demanding the release of Assange.
Read more:
Latest chapter in the divisive Assange saga
The US Justice Department said it was “extremely disappointed” by the judge’s decision not to extradite Assange.
“While we are extremely disappointed with the court’s final decision, we are pleased that the United States prevailed on all points of the law raised,” the department said.
“We will continue to seek Assange’s extradition to the United States.”
Defense witnesses called during the hearing said his history of depression meant he would be at risk of suicide if sent to the United States and locked up in a maximum security prison.
He has also complained of hearing imaginary voices and music during his detention.
Before the ruling, both Germany and a United Nations rights expert expressed concern about the humanitarian and human rights issues that extradition presents.
Assange has a respiratory condition that makes him more vulnerable to Covid-19, which has infected several inmates at the high-security prison where he has been held in London.
Assange’s supporters were delighted with the decision not to extradite him to the United States, but expressed dismay that the decision was made for health reasons.
His mother Christine urged the United States not to appeal the ruling, saying that her son had suffered enough.
Assange’s mother tweeted: “British judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled against the extradition of my son Julian to the United States on medical grounds.
“US prosecutors say they will appeal. I beg President Trump and President to elect Biden to order them to stand down.
“The decade-long process was punishment. He has suffered enough.”
The United States claims that Assange helped intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal the 2010 documents before exposing confidential sources around the world.
After Sweden first issued an arrest warrant for Assange in 2010 on allegations of sexual assault, he applied for asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he remained from 2012 to 2019.
In April 2019, Ecuador, by then ruled by right-wing president Lenin Moreno, revoked its citizenship. British police dragged Assange out of the embassy.
He was detained for breaching the conditions of his bail, but he remained in detention pending the resolution of the extradition request.
The previous Swedish assault investigation against him was later dropped due to lack of evidence.
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