The president reiterated in his morning conference the offer of political asylum in Mexico for the activist and revealed that he asked to pardon him in a letter to Donald Trump before the end of his term in office in the United States.

Mexico City, January 4 (RHC)-- The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has called on the United States to be "humanitarian" with Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, who is imprisoned in the United Kingdom and is wanted by the U.S. justice system on charges of espionage.

The president reiterated in his daily morning conference the offer of political asylum in Mexico to Assange and revealed that he even sent a letter asking for a pardon for the activist to Donald Trump before the end of his presidency in the United States.

"Before the end of President Donald Trump's administration, I sent him a letter asking him to be exonerated, to be pardoned (...). but I had no response," said López Obrador, who promised to disclose the letter.

He insisted that "the United States should act with humanism" since "Assange is ill and it would be a sign of solidarity, of fraternity, to allow him to receive asylum" in a country of his chosing, including Mexico.

A year ago, Lopez Obrador offered to host the journalist and activist, who is fighting a legal battle to avoid extradition to the United States.   Assange and WikiLeaks went public in 2010 after publishing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. documents on practices in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The Mexican president assured that the right to asylum is part of the foreign policy of Mexico.  And he recalled that this has a regulation in the sense that whoever receives the asylum benefit must act with respect to the laws of the country and cannot intervene in external affairs.

Given this, he considered that the Australian journalist meets the requirements and “does not represent any danger to Assange in Mexico.”