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Matt Dunham / AP
Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange take part in a protest outside the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, in London, last week.
New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager told WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s UK extradition hearing that he drew up “a few hundred” Australian and New Zealand names from leaked files.
US prosecutors have charged Australian Assange, 49, with 17 counts of espionage, and one count of computer misuse, for WikiLeaks’ publication of secret US military documents a decade ago, mainly surrounding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.
Kevin Stent / Dominion Post
New Zealand investigative reporter Nicky Hager has been testifying at the extradition hearing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (file photo).
In providing evidence by video link, Hager told the Old Bailey criminal court hearing that he spent “a few days” in 2010 reviewing leaked files while working with Assange and WikiLeaks. The australian reported.
He said he wrote “a few hundred” names from Australia and New Zealand.
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It was because of the efforts that Assange had made to redact names and prevent unredacted publication by warning the US State Department and other agencies from the archives, that US authorities had time to warn sensitive sources and protect them, Hager said.
Jack Taylor / Getty Images
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
He suggested that the criteria he used to draft names was based on his own judgment and that Australia and New Zealand were “safe” countries and therefore viewed from a different perspective than other countries.
“In the context of the countries I was looking at, there was no threat, just a factor of political embarrassment,” Hager told the court.
In the time he worked with Assange and WikiLeaks, he believed that “they took what they were doing very seriously, they were honest and responsible.” The australian informed him saying.
Assange was not the “difficult and terrible person” portrayed in the media, and had “dedicated himself to trying to make the world a better place,” Hager quoted The Press Association as saying.
The Afghanistan and Iraq war logs, along with embassy cables, released by the organization in 2010 and 2011, were “exactly the kind” of leaked information the public needed at the time, Hager said.
Assange has been in a British prison since his expulsion from the Ecuadorian embassy in London in April 2019. Ecuador had granted him asylum in 2012 for fear that he would face possible extradition to the United States in connection with his work with WikiLeaks.
Assange’s lawyers say the indictment is politically motivated and will not receive a fair trial in the United States. They also argue that Assange was acting as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection.
