Buenos Aires, February 11 (RHC)-- Argentinean Nobel Peace Prize laureate and fighter Adolfo Pérez Esquivel urged the international community on Sunday to demand the release of cyberactivist Julian Assange and to speak out against his possible extradition to the United States.

In a video posted on the social network X, Perez Esquivel said that the prosecution of the WikiLeaks founder in U.S. territory "would be a huge injustice to freedom of the press and to a man who defended the truth.

"We have to build peace, support Assange and demand the British justice not to extradite him to the U.S. (...) I call for solidarity with him and his family, to end this anguish and pain he has been suffering for years." 

Assange remains locked up in prison in the UK since Ecuador withdrew in 2019 the political asylum granted seven years earlier and allowed the police to arrest him at its embassy in London.

In mid-2022, the British government communicated its decision to allow his extradition to the United States, which intends to try him for bringing to light war crimes committed by its military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and thousands of secret files of its diplomacy.

If prosecuted and convicted by a U.S. court, he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison on 17 charges related to the Espionage Act.

Last year, the Nobel Prize winner and other personalities from Argentina delivered letters to the United Kingdom embassy in this capital, in which they assured that this country has the sovereign possibility of setting an international precedent in the defense of freedom of the press as a fundamental human right (Source: Prensa Latina).