Assange has been living inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London for the past three years, fearing deportation to Sweden over sexual assault allegations.
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“The situation of Mr Assange does not present any immediate danger”, the statement said.
“In a brief statement sent Friday, July 3 by the Elysee Palace, the President of the Republic has raised an objection of inadmissibility to the open letter of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who asked Paris to host it because ” his life is in danger “…
In Assange’s letter, published earlier Friday in Le Monde newspaper, he described himself as a “journalist pursued and threatened with death by the United States’ authorities as a result of my professional activities”.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not find a home in France.
Prominent French voices, including soccer legend Eric Cantona and star economist Thomas Piketty, had appealed to the French government to take in the ex- computer hacker, who turned 44 yesterday.
The WikiLeaks Twitter account was quick to note that Assange has not made a formal application for asylum. The political motivation of the charges was demonstrated by their timing, coming soon after the first major WikiLeaks publication of internal U.S. military reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, documenting numerous war crimes, and while top U.S. government officials were calling for Assange’s arrest and even assassination.
In it, he wrote: “By welcoming me, France would carry out a humanitarian and symbolic gesture, sending encouragement to every journalist and whistleblower”. Assange wrote in the letter that his youngest child is French, and so is the child’s mother.
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“Only France finds itself in a position to offer me the necessary protection against… the political persecutions I face”.
