«The world is a little better and less unfair today. Julian Assange is free after 1,901 days in jail. His release and his return home, although late, represent a democratic victory and the fight for freedom of the press,” Lula wrote on the social network X.
Assange was released from prison in the United Kingdom on Monday after reaching an agreement with the United States justice system to plead guilty to espionage charges.
As the sentence was already served in “pretrial detention”, he was released.
Since 2010, Lula has defended the communicator in public statements, when WikiLeaks began to disclose secret government documents and the founder was arrested.
On May 19, the former union member again asked for his freedom. “I hope the persecution against Assange ends and he returns to have the freedom he deserves as quickly as possible,” he strummed in X, on that occasion.
He considered that the Australian should have been awarded for revealing “secrets of the powerful” instead of being imprisoned.
Previously, Lula denounced in June 2022 that the real criminals are the United States spies who had their activities leaked by WikiLeaks.
«If someone committed a crime, it was the one who, in the name of the United States, was spying on planet Earth, spying on other countries, even spying on our (oil company) Petrobras, even activating our Petrobras after the discovery of the pre-salt (deep areas of oil reserves)”, he remarked.
Based on 18 charges related to alleged violations of the espionage law against him, Assange could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.
Among other details, the WikiLeaks documents revealed that the US military killed hundreds of civilians during the Afghanistan war in previously undisclosed incidents.
According to confidential information from the United States National Security Agency and WikiLeaks in 2015, US officials also spied on the government of then-president Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) in Brazil.
A total of 29 phones of members and former members of its management were tapped. Rousseff faced a judicial parliamentary coup in 2016 that removed her from power.
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