The New American By
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took the occasion of America’s Independence Day to declare that the Statue of Liberty should be torn down if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is extradited to the United States and convicted of espionage.
Assange is currently facing extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States, where he has been charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 for having published classified material revealing, among other things, potential war crimes committed by the U.S. military. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.
The Australian journalist appealed his extradition to the U.K.’s High Court Friday.
According to the Mexico Daily Post, during a Monday press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, López Obrador called for “conven[ing] a meeting of the most important press in the world to exhort, request, call, so that a pardon be granted to Assange.”
