Julian Assange invites King Charles to visit His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh

Julian Assange wrote a letter to King Charles ahead of his coronation inviting him to visit the UK prison where Assange has been captive for more than four years.

“I implore you, King Charles,” Assange wrote, “to visit His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, for it is an honour befitting a king.”

The Guardian reported that the letter is the first document the Australian journalist and WikiLeaksfounder has written and published since his time in Belmarsh prison in London.

Indian news and media website First Post highlighted Assange’s plight and his message to King Charles and then added a message of their own: “As a Republic Day gift from India for the BBC – a list of suggestions for the BBC …”

The following is Julian Assange’s letter to King Charles as published by Declassified UK on 5 May 2023.

To His Majesty King Charles III,

On the coronation of my liege, I thought it only fitting to extend a heartfelt invitation to you to commemorate this momentous occasion by visiting your very own kingdom within a kingdom: His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh.

You will no doubt recall the wise words of a renowned playwright: “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.”

Ah, but what would that bard know of mercy faced with the reckoning at the dawn of your historic reign? After all, one can truly know the measure of a society by how it treats its prisoners, and your kingdom has surely excelled in that regard.

Your Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh is located at the prestigious address of One Western Way, London, just a short foxhunt from the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. How delightful it must be to have such an esteemed establishment bear your name.

It is here that 687 of your loyal subjects are held, supporting the United Kingdom’s record as the nation with the largest prison population in Western Europe. As your noble government has recently declared, your kingdom is currently undergoing “the biggest expansion of prison places in over a century,” with its ambitious projections showing an increase of the prison population from 82,000 to 106,000 within the next four years. Quite the legacy, indeed.