Brazilian President Ignacio Lula da Silva ended his press conference this morning in Rome by bringing up what no journalist had raised: the threat of life imprisonment faced by Julian Assange for doing what all journalists should do: investigate and tell the truth. “The name of this is called cowardice,” he told the reporters present from several nations. They must speak out, he said, while there is still time. As translated from the official Brazilian transcript, he confronted the journalists thus:
“You know that I have been a little angry with the defenders of freedom of the press in the world…. We have Assange in jail because he denounced to the world the American espionage. This citizen is in jail in England. He will be sent back to the United States to, who knows, maybe get life imprisonment, and I don’t see any press declarations in defense of freedom of the press. It is unbelievable. Not even the newspaper that published the article that he published defends him. The name of this is called cowardice.
