Lula returns to defend Assange and criticizes US for “espionage”

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) once again defended Australian journalist Julian Assange, who was in an extradition process from the United Kingdom to the United States for publishing confidential information from the US government.

Lula says he defends Assange for being a “democrat” and criticized that the same press that wrote articles about the journalist does not defend him. He says he received a letter requesting asylum, but that he would not be able to grant it.

“This citizen is under arrest because he received information about the United States spying on other countries, including Dilma Rousseff (PT) and Petrobras, Angela Merkel, and denounced it,” he said in an interview with TV Record this Thursday (13).

The petista still defended that Assange should receive an award for the denouncement. It is estimated that he published on his website, WikiLeaks, more than 700,000 classified documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other operations, which gave rise to content published in newspapers such as The Guardian and The New York Times.

Lula also criticized the United States for the “espionage system” that the country had set up, and that “it should stop spying”. “If there is no spying, there is no denunciation, and everything is easier, freer, more democratic”, he added.

Last month, Lula criticized Assange’s trial in the UK shortly after returning from London, where he attended the coronation of King Charles III. The president also met the journalist’s father, in Switzerland, and delivered a letter from the family to Pope Francis.