Edward Snowden asks US President Trump to pardon Julian Assange; says Trump is the only one who can save his life
Edward Snowden, a National Security Agency(NSA) whistleblower today, took to Twitter, to ask US President Donald Trump to pardon Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, during his last days in office.
Snowden in his tweet asked the president to do one final act of clemency during his time in office by freeing Julian Assange. He also said that President Trump was the only person who could save his life.
Assange is currently in custody in London, United Kingdom. The founder of the internationally acclaimed WikiLeaks portal was arrested in April 2019 for breaking pre-trial release conditions in a 2012 case.
A month after his arrest, Assange was charged for conspiring to leak US classified materials by the US authorities. After that, they also accused Assange of trying to recruit famous hacker groups like Anonymous and LulzSec. Allegations stated that he asked the groups to carry out hacks in his behalf and to steal sensitive files to publish on WikiLeaks.
Ever since his arrest, he has been fighting the extradition case, but the first ruling is expected on January 4, 2021. The reason why Snowden in his tweet mentioned that only the President could save his life is that Assange has multiple occasions threatened to commit suicide if he is extradited to the US. His lawyers have been using this as a central piece in their defence case.
Also, last week, a House representative for the state of Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard, asked the US President Trump to pardon both Assange and Snowden. Gabbard had also introduced a bill in October to drop the 2013legal case against Edward Snowden and allow him to return to the US. However, these pardon requests may come at a bad time for Trump, who was recently involved in the bribery-for-pardon scheme.
