Mexico offers political asylum to Julian Assange

MEXICO CITY: Mexico said that 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’m going to ask the foreign minister to carry out the relevant procedures to request that the UK government releases Mr.Assange and that Mexico offers him political asylum,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters.

The leftist leader welcomed the British court’s rejection of the US request to extradite the 49-year-old Australian publisher due to the risk of suicide, calling it a “triumph of justice.”

“Assange is a journalist and deserves a chance,” he said.

Lopez Obrador said Mexico would ensure “that whoever receives asylum does not intervene or interfere in the political affairs of any country.”

Mexico has welcomed many political asylum-seekers over the years, from Nicaraguan antiimperialist hero Cesar Augusto Sandino to Russian revolutionary Leon 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 would depend on political pressures and the stances of the various actors and countries with an interest in his fate, Laborde said.

Assange is wanted on 18 charges in the United States relating to the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If convicted in the US, he faces up to 175 years in jail.