Above Photo: Kevin Lamarque and Peter Nicholls/Reuters.
Waters calls on Biden to end ‘disgusting’ sham prosecution.
With the brother and father of the jailed WikiLeaks co-founder on a US tour to raise awareness of Julian Assange’s plight, legendary Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters challenged Joe Biden to end the journalist’s prosecution.
Assange’s father John Shipton and brother Gabriel are traveling across the US this month to press the Biden administration to drop its charges, and highlight the threat to worldwide press freedom this prosecution poses. Joining them in New York this week was Roger Waters, who told RT on Friday why he’s fighting for Assange.
“He is being held up as an example: Keep your mouth shut or this will happen to you,” he said.
They’re trying to kill Julian Assange because he spoke the truth, and it’s disgusting.
After seven years holed up in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy, a change in power in the Latin American country saw British police officers allowed inside to arrest the WikiLeaks founder in 2019. He has languished in Belmarsh Prison since then, denied bail, even though a judge ruled in January that he could not be extradited to the United States due to concerns over US prison conditions.
On the day he was arrested, the US unsealed the Espionage Act indictment against Assange, secretly filed in March 2018 by the Trump administration’s Justice Department. Though Joe Biden is now in the White House, the US government is still seeking his extradition, and Waters called on Biden to stand by the Obama-era decision not to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder.
“It’s interesting that this Democratic president has not yet gone back to the Obama administration’s contention that there was no case… and that you cannot prosecute Julian Assange, because if you do, then you have to prosecute every publisher who publishes any truth that you might find inconvenient,” he said.
On the day he was arrested, the US unsealed the Espionage Act indictment against Assange, secretly filed in March 2018 by the Trump administration’s Justice Department. Though Joe Biden is now in the White House, the US government is still seeking his extradition, and Waters called on Biden to stand by the Obama-era decision not to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder.
“It’s interesting that this Democratic president has not yet gone back to the Obama administration’s contention that there was no case… and that you cannot prosecute Julian Assange, because if you do, then you have to prosecute every publisher who publishes any truth that you might find inconvenient,” he said.