Mexico Offers Political Asylum to Julian Assange

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Mexican government is offering political asylum to WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, announced President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Monday, January 4th.

“I’m going to ask the Foreign Minister to carry out the relevant procedures to request that the UK government release Mr. Assange and that Mexico offers him political asylum,” he said during the morning press conference, after a British court blocked the hacker’s extradition to the United States, where he faces charges leading to a sentence to up to 175 years in prison.

López Obrador celebrated the ruling of London’s Central Criminal Court judge Vanessa Baraitser, who on Monday decided that the WikiLeaks co-founder could not be extradited to the United States and that Assange’s risk of committing suicide, if extradition were granted, “would be high”.

The Mexican president assured that his government will be committed to providing Assange with “protection” and to taking on the responsibility to “not intervene in any country’s political affairs”.

“I think it is a triumph of justice. I celebrate that England acted in this way because Assange is a journalist and deserves a chance. I’m in favor of him being pardoned,” he said.

The Mexican president had made his position clear in recent days: “I wish him to be pardoned and released.” “I don’t know if he has recognized that he acted against the rules and a political system, but at the time those telegrams evidenced how the global system works in its authoritarian nature,” he had said on Friday.

López Obrador stands strong in his defense of Assange largely because the U.S. government had been investigating Mexico’s president since 2006, according to Wikileaks. The Mexican president considers that the leak of these telegrams, dating back to when he was part of the opposition, “violated sovereignty, freedoms, and democracy.”

One of the first reports the U.S. security agency sent about López Obrador is a thorough review of the names that the politician then assessed to form his cabinet: Rogelio Ramírez de la O, Juan Ramón de la Fuente and José María Pérez Gay. “None of the three is a radical”, reads the closing comment.

Later, the U.S. government paid close attention to the massive protest that López Obrador called in mid-July 2006 in the Mexican capital, after losing the elections to Felipe Calderón, to denounce a suspected electoral fraud.

“According to a source, López Obrador plans to continue the protests until the Electoral Court performs a complete recount at the national level. The source adds that unless the Electoral Court orders this recount, the country is in danger of becoming ungovernable,” read a telegram that leaked on July 18th, 2006.

“The real question is what AMLO’s [as López Obrador is known] next step will be, because it seems clear that he won’t be satisfied with any result that leaves Calderón as the winner,” signed agent Alan Metlzer. The United States voiced its concern that protests by López Obrador’s followers would radicalize and escalate, so at the time they prepared a profile of the political leader, based on interviews with historian Alejandra Lajous.

“AMLO is extremely manipulative and willing to betray long-time allies and supporters to promote his cause,” “one should not underestimate his charisma to keep the movement alive,” “he is convinced that he is right and reluctant to expose himself to potential criticism,” are some of the descriptions that can be read in the document, entitled The Creation of the President in the Shadow.

In the report, the U.S. Government also recognized that López Obrador’s protests would hardly result in violence, given that he had always avoided it in the past.

With Barack Obama in the presidency and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, the investigation into López Obrador and his close advisors continued. The U.S. agency wanted to know what connection the president had with Marcelo Ebrard – current Foreign Minister of the Mexican government, who at the time was head of the Mexico City government – Jesús Ortega, Alejandro Encinas and, again, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, rector of UNAM (“one of the most prominent left-wing institutions in Mexico”).

“To what extent are these individuals working together or are they harming each other? How much support do they have within the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and among the smaller leftist parties?” asked the text, written by Elissa G. Pitterle, director of operations for the State Department’s Intelligence Office.

Furthermore, data on López Obrador reflects the United States’ concern with the left-wing’s empowerment in Latin America under Fidel Castro in Cuba; Hugo Chávez in Venezuela; Evo Morales in Bolivia; Néstor Kirchner in Argentina; Michelle Bachelet in Chile, and López Obrador in Mexico.

Mexico’s long asylum tradition

López Obrador’s offer to Assange is part of a long tradition of asylum in Mexico. In late November 2019, the country welcomed former Bolivian President Evo Morales, but the list includes exile granted to Spanish Republicans fleeing Franco, Soviet ideologist León Trotsky, Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, former Argentine President Héctor Cámpora and Guatemalan Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu.

The Mexican government, conditioned by its proximity to the United States and limited military power, has been marked by legalistic diplomacy, that is, adherence to international law, the principles of non-intervention and solidarity with the victims of authoritarian regimes and war.

Assange is imprisoned in London and is accused by the United States of 18 counts of espionage and computer misuse. Washington accuses him of several crimes against National Security for the disclosure of confidential documents about the United States’ military intervention and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Source: El Pais