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Julian Assange
The most important questions and answers about the case of the founder of Wikileaks
A British court ruled on Monday on the extradition of the Wikileaks founder to the United States. The United States’ request was denied. The most important questions and answers.
Fateful day for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange – a British judge on his extradition to the United States.
There was a time when Julian Assange appeared on his own on the front pages of the international media. In the early 2010s, the Australian and his organization Wikileaks revealed a host of secrets, including war crimes committed by the US military and hundreds of thousands of US embassy dispatches. Assange has been in a maximum security prison in London for almost two years because the Trump administration is demanding his extradition. On Monday, a British court ruled that Assange will not be transferred to the United States. However, the prosecution wants to appeal.
1) What is Assange accused of?
Assange is charged with 18 counts. 17 of them are related to the “reception” and “publication” of information classified as secret. It involves the exposition of embassy dispatches, military reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or reports from prisoners from the Guantanamo military prison. Prosecutors accuse Assange that his posts, some of which have not been blackened, put local US informants at great risk, but did not name any specific cases or evidence.
2) Was the founder of Wikileaks hacking?
No. The US Department of Justice makes every effort to present the process as a hacking case. However, the source of all the posts was a United States Army soldier who had legal access to the data. Prosecutors accuse Assange of trying to help the source crack a password. However, this was not used to access the information. It was intended to conceal the identity of the source. You could have downloaded the documents under a false name. The hacking charges include only one count, which is punishable by a maximum of five years in prison. The main purpose of the prosecution is a conviction for obtaining and publishing the classified material. Assange faces 170 years in prison for this.
The Wikileaks founder hid in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for a long time. In the photo from 2017, he greets from the balcony of the embassy.
3) Why do critics consider the persecution of Assange dangerous?
The prosecution has the potential to criminalize free journalism. Because what Assange is being prosecuted for is largely indistinguishable from the day-to-day activities of an investigative journalist who receives information of public interest and publishes it, even if it is classified as “secret.” For example, the “New York Times” received the same information as Assange and published it with impunity. Exactly the act that Assange could end up behind bars forever. Under Barack Obama, the US government carefully considered how to prosecute Assange, but decided not to. On the one hand, out of fear that a judge will reject the accusation as unconstitutional, on the other hand because no legal difference could be found between Assange’s actions and the work of the classic media.
4) What exactly is the British court deciding today?
The United States and Great Britain have an extradition agreement, so the accused are generally transferred. The agreement prohibits extradition for “political criminal acts.” Assange’s lawyers argued that this applies to the indictment against their client. The judge announced her decision today at 11 am (Swiss time). In general, he was expected to agree to extradition. However, it was not. She rejected the extradition request. The losing side will likely move the ruling to a higher court.
Assange has two children with his partner Stella Moris (image from September 2020).
5) If Assange is sent, what happens next?
Assange is being tried in a real “intelligence court”, that is, in the Eastern Judicial District of the state of Virginia. The court is notorious. There, the United States has been tracking Cold War-era Russian spies, whistleblower Edward Snowden and co-conspirator in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. For the past twenty years, prosecutors in the trials of intelligence and national defense have issued an almost perfect series of convictions. . The location of the court probably plays a role here. Within the court’s area of influence are the headquarters of the CIA foreign intelligence service, the Pentagon, and other parts of the US government apparatus. This means that a significant portion of the jury has at least family ties to the national security bureaucracy. Assange cannot count on indulgence. His doctors consider his suicide probable if he were extradited to the United States.
6) The president of the United States, Donald Trump, could forgive Assange. What are the chances of that?
Trump appears to be influenced by two different camps. The president was there to crush what he called the “deep state,” that is, the state within the state, within the United States government and the secret services. Assange has been more forceful than anyone in opposing these career officials, who were hated by Trump, for the past few decades. Still, under Trump, the Justice Department has decided to impeach Assange. Since then, the libertarian wing of Trump’s Republican Party has loudly advocated for forgiveness. But there are also “hawks” in Trump’s cabinet, like former CIA director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Three years ago he called Wikileaks an “enemy secret service.” The race to see which side can make Trump’s voice seem open until the last day of his term, January 20.
