«Julian Assange is free»is the announcement entrusted to a large poster affixed to the closed shutters of a disused newsstand in Piazza Dante in Naples where the news of the release was welcomed with enthusiasm and toasts by the network’s activists FreeAssangeNaples and by the municipal administration, led by the mayor who gave the founder of Wikileaks honorary citizenship. In a statement, the promoters of the talking newsstand, an initiative also replicated several times in other Italian cities and in London during Assange’s imprisonment, recall that Naples was the first Italian city to confer the honor sealed with a delivery ceremony in 2023 to the wife of Assange, the lawyer Stella Moris who, on this occasion, promised to return to Naples with her husband once free.
Among the other initiatives organized in recent years in the city by the network FreeAssangeNaples the installation in May of the monument «Anything to say?», again in Piazza Dante. of the sculptor Davide Dormino and the mural created in the Scampia district by the street artist Trisha Palma.
«The liberation of Assange – say the activists of the network FreeAssangeNaples – is the result of a great mass movement campaign throughout the world in which Naples played its part. Julian is our fellow citizen and we look forward to embracing him here with his wife and children.” Having put up the poster, the activists allowed themselves a toast: “Free Assange, long live Assange”.
“The release of Assange represents good news for freedom of thought and information in the world,” the mayor writes on X Gaetano Manfredi.
And the counselor Sergio D’Angelo (Napoli Solidale): «The international mobilization has brought to the attention of public opinion the dramatic personal and judicial story with the long and unjust detention. A procedural and persecutory process that primarily attacked the legal principles protecting the right to information, a founding principle of our democratic systems. Assange had to accept a plea deal with the American authorities to see his right to freedom, both personal and thought, recognized. In any case, this is a historic result as it has brought the protection of the right to information back to the center of the political debate. A fundamental right, in this dark period of conflict, which demonstrates how important the role of citizens is in preserving and defending the Rule of Law.”
Wikileaks broke the news tonight: Assange has already left the United Kingdom and the prison near London where he had been incarcerated for five years, after the guilty plea agreement reached with the American justice system. The founder of Wikileaks «left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of June 24, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released in the afternoon at Stansted Airport, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK. This is the result of a global campaign involving grassroots organizers, press freedom activists, lawmakers and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way up to the United Nations. This created space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, which led to an agreement that has not yet been formally finalized,” Wikileaks specifies. «Assange, after more than five years in a 2×3 meter cell, isolated 23 hours a day, will soon join his wife Stella Assange and to their children, who only knew their father from behind bars.”
Assange agreed to plead guilty to a crime relating to his role in one of the largest breaches of US classified material, as part of a deal with the US Department of Justice that will allow him to avoid imprisonment in the US and return to Australia. CNN reports this, citing documents recently filed with the court. The plea agreement still must be approved by a federal judge. Under the terms of the new deal, Justice Department prosecutors will seek a 62-month sentence, equivalent to the more than five years Assange served in a maximum-security prison in London while fighting extradition to the United States. The plea agreement would recognize the time already spent behind bars, allowing Assange to immediately return to Australia, his native country. The WikiLeaks founder is charged with 18 counts in a 2019 indictment for his alleged role in leaking top-secret papers, a crime that carries a maximum of 175 years in prison, although it is highly unlikely he will be sentenced to any similar punishment. Assange was being prosecuted by US authorities for publishing classified military documents provided by the former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 and 2011. U.S. officials said Assange pressured Manning to obtain thousands of pages of unfiltered U.S. diplomatic cables that potentially endangered classified sources, reports of significant war-related activity in Iraq and information relating to inmates of Guantanamo Bay. President Joe Biden in recent months he has alluded to a possible deal promoted by Australian government leaders to bring Assange back to Australia. FBI and Justice Department officials opposed any deal that did not include a guilty plea from Assange, people familiar with the matter told CNN. Last month, a UK court ruled that Assange had the right to still appeal extradition to the United States, giving him a victory in his years-long fight to avoid trial in the United States for his alleged crimes.
