Julian Assange’s freedom, and its price

Julian Assange has been free since 24 June. Who would have expected this after 14 years of incredible ordeals? His agreement with the American legal authorities required him to plead guilty to something that will, once again, shift the spotlight from the perpetrator to the victim. He must, like Galileo Galilei once did, “recant” to save his life. In the press release from the US Department of Justice on the verdict handed down by the Federal District Court on the island of Saipan, which the US occupied in 1944 and which is still a US territory, it reads this way:

Julian P. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, pleaded guilty today to conspiring with Chelsea Manning, at that time a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, to unlawfully obtain and disclose classified documents relating to the national defense. After obtaining classified national defense information from Manning, and aware of the harm that dissemination of such national defense information would cause, Assange disclosed this information on WikiLeaks.

This is not true from end to end. But this is the language he had to accept. Anyone who has studied the 14-year odyssey of this courageous journalist will be able to pin down the truth of the Assange case. See Joe Lauria, the editor of consortium news, in his article “Why the US let Assange go”¹ where he deals with the precise legal terms of the plea agreement. And in a previous article Lauria explains clearly the crux of Assange’s position, “I broke the law, [the Espionage Act], but the law as written is wrong.”²
  The fight for freedom speech and freedom of the press continues post-Assange.
  The pictures of Julian Assange leaving the courthouse and arriving in Australia show a visibly exhausted but not broken man.
  It is also grotesque that the Australian government required Assange to pay for the cost of his flights from London to Saipan and on to Australia – 520,000 US-Dollars. Thanks to an immediate appeal by his wife, Stella, the community of supporters covered these costs.
  Some impressions and images from those agonising years appear in my mind’s eye.
  The years of his first refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, beginning in 2012. After the change of government in Ecuador, the CIA’s wiretap operation. The discussion within the CIA about kidnapping or even assassinating him. The staged sex scandal in Sweden that people tried to pin on him. His undignified, arbitrary arrest and transport to Belmarsh high-security prison in 2019. More than five years in solitary confinement. The outcry from doctors that Assange was in poor health and was denied appropriate medical treatment. The UN special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, who tirelessly denounced the psychological abuse of Julian Assange in prison, but at the same time repeatedly pointed out the ‘elephant in the room’ (see box). The corrupt trials. Assange’s father, John Shipton, Assange’s wife, Stella, who married him in prison. The pictures outside the prison: Stella in a white wedding dress, without her husband – a wretched testimony to his tormentors. But at the same time, the many, many people who supported him and never stopped doing so.
  I think of the joy and relief of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who have tirelessly supported and accompanied him over these long years – humanly, legally, politically, in their journalism and their advocacy. Because they refused to accept blatant injustices that could not be overlooked. With his relentless documentation of war crimes, the disclosure of huge political scandals (the Democratic Party’s emails) and thus the documentation of US hubris, he has done the world public a great service. And let us not forget: To this day, those responsible for the war crimes uncovered have not been brought to justice.
  He did what every journalist should do – and what many do. And many have to pay for it with their lives. According to Reporters Without Borders, 100 journalists were killed worldwide in 2023, most of them in the Gaza Strip. This year, 53 have already been killed, and 553 journalists are in captivity.
  Jennifer Robinson, Julian Assange’s long-time legal advisor, told the Australian edition of “The Guardian” shortly after the court ruling:

Julian Assange suffered for more than 14 years because of the risk of extradition to the United States. He faced 175 years in prison for publishing evidence of war crimes human rights abuse and US wrongdoing around the world today. He pleaded guilty to an offense for having published information in the public interest for which he’s won journalism Awards the world over and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year for the past decade.
  This prosecution sets a dangerous precedent that should be of concern to journalists everywhere. The US is seeking to exercise exterritorial jurisdiction over all of you without giving you constitutional Free Speech protections, and anyone who cares about free speech and Democratic accountability should stand against it.
  But I want to encourage everyone that stood up and fought for Julian to continue to stand up and fight against this dangerous precedent. I hope that the fact that we’ve been able to free Julian Assange today against all the odds and against one of the most powerful governments in the world will give hope to all journalists and publishers who are imprisoned around the world, and we encourage everyone who stood to fight for Julian to continue that fight for him and for all of those others in the hope that we can secure their freedom, too.

Assange must now first and foremost recover with his family and friends. We wish him all the best. He has also already announced that he will continue in his work.  •

¹ https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/12/joe-lauria-why-the-us-let-assange-go/ of 12 July 2024
² https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/26/assange-walks-out-of-court-a-free-man/ of 26 June 2024