BEIJING, June 12. /TASS/. The Chinese Foreign Ministry believes that it is not WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that should be put on trial for revealing information about the United States, but a number of senior officials in the United States for spying and theft of sensitive data around the world, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday.
"It's not Assange that should be tried, but <...> the ‘hacker empire’ that is pervasively spying and stealing confidential information in other countries," Wang told a news briefing.
Earlier, Assange's wife said that her husband would use his last chance to block his extradition to the US through a British court.
Assange, 51, is charged in the United States with crimes related to the largest case in US history involving the disclosure of classified information. He faces a total of 175 years in prison on all counts. In November, leading Western media outlets, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times, Le Monde and El Pais, called on the United States government to drop the charges against Assange.