Julian Assange urges King Charles to visit Belmarsh prison

The WikiLeaks founder writes that he has been captive in the prison for more than four years ‘on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign’

Julian Assange has written a letter to King Charles ahead of his coronation inviting him to visit the UK prison where the WikiLeaks founder has been captive for more than four years “on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign”.

The letter is the first document the Australian journalist and WikiLeaks founder has written and published since his time in Belmarsh prison in London and accounts the horrors of his life there.

“On the coronation of my liege, I thought it only fitting to extend a heartfelt invitation to you to commemorate this momentous occasion by visiting your very own kingdom within a kingdom: his majesty’s prison Belmarsh,” Assange writes.

“One can truly know the measure of a society by how it treats its prisoners, and your kingdom has surely excelled in that regard.

“It is here that 687 of your loyal subjects are held, supporting the United Kingdom’s record as the nation with the largest prison population in Western Europe.”

Assange, an Australian citizen, remains at Belmarsh as he fights a US attempt to extradite him to face charges in connection with the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as well as diplomatic cables.

He goes on to point sarcastically to the UK government’s commitment to roll out the biggest expansion of prison places in more than a century, and the “culinary delights” of eating on a budget of two pounds per day.

A cross-section of Australian politicians have been raising the matter internally with their colleagues and international counterparts for the last few years, rallying for Assange’s freedom.