(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) Julian Assange and his family traveled to Rome over the weekend and were among hundreds of thousands of people at the Vatican attending the funeral of Pope Francis, who was a supporter of the WikiLeaks founder.
“Now Julian is free, we have all come to Rome to express our family’s gratitude for the Pope’s support during Julian’s persecution,” Assange’s wife, Stella, said in a statement released by WikiLeaks on X that included a photo of the couple with their two young children.
“Our children and I had the honor of meeting Pope Francis in June 2023 to discuss how to free Julian from Belmarsh prison. Francis wrote to Julian in prison and even proposed to grant him asylum at the Vatican,” Stella added.
On the day Pope Francis died at 88, WikiLeaks paid tribute to the late Pontiff, calling him a “true ally in the fight for Julian Assange’s freedom.”
When Stella visited Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2023, Julian was still being held in London’s Belmarsh Prison and was fighting extradition to the US for exposing US war crimes by publishing documents he obtained from former US Army Private Chelsea Manning, a standard journalistic practice.
At the time of the visit, Stella said Francis had “provided great solace and comfort, and we are extremely appreciative for his reaching out to our family in this way. He understands that Julian is suffering and is concerned.”
The Assange family’s appearance at the Vatican was the second known time Julian traveled outside of Australia since he returned home after reaching a plea deal with the US government last year.
A few months after his release, Julian addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). “I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism,” he said in the address.
“I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else,” the WikiLeaks founder added.
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
