Barcelona, September 16 (RHC)-- About twenty people have concentrated this Friday afternoon in front of the British Consulate in Barcelona to demand the release of the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange.

The group 'Llibertat de premsa=Catalunya Assange', which has called the concentration, has delivered at the Consulate a manifesto that asks the British Government not to extradite him to the United States and that he be released definitively withdrawing all accusatory charges.

A spokesman for the rally (which included the musician Lluís Llach) explained to journalists: "It seems that soon there will be a sentence in the UK on the extradition of Julian and we do not want to allow that".

In addition, he assured that "the fight is for freedom of the press all over the world, for the right to truthful information".

The manifesto delivered to the Consulate notes a "concern for the state of democratic journalism" and CALLS as examples the cases of Assange, the Spanish reporter Pablo Gonzalez (who has been in custody in Poland for 16 months on charges of espionage by the Polish security services) and Jamal Khashoggi, murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (Turkey) in 2018.

"We demand that journalists be able to exercise their profession without restrictions on their personal freedom and individual rights," argues the text, in which the group also demands that states protect and guarantee the professional freedom of journalists.

The text adds that if he is extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States "it will create a serious precedent for many other similar cases in Western democracies."

Assange, imprisoned in the United Kingdom since April 2019, faces 18 criminal charges in the United States and will have to answer for accusations of espionage if he is finally transferred to the North American country.