Julian Assange is Dangerously Close to Being Extradited to the U.S.
If the U.S. government is successful in its attempts to punish Assange, it will set a dangerous precedent for a free press and have a chilling effect on journalists everywhere.
Last Friday, December 10, 2021, the government of the United States gained some ground in its legal battle to extradite Julian Assange, an investigative journalist and the founder of Wikileaks. Assange has been indicted on 18 counts by the U.S. for his role in revealing classified documents — some of which showed evidence of war crimes being perpetrated in Iraq and Afghanistan by our military — to the public. If he gets extradited to the U.S. and is found guilty, he could potentially face a 175-year sentence.
The so-called “crimes” Assange is wanted for happened back in 2010 when it is said he not only received documents from whistleblower Chelsea Manning but is alleged to have tried to talk her into collecting more documents, and possibly even helped Manning actually retrieve the documents and send them to Wikileaks. Most of what the government is considering to be criminal activity would be considered routine aspects of journalism by many others. It should also be noted that Wikileaks is not the only media outlet to publish the leaked documents, but Assange is the only journalist facing charges for it. Also, Chelsea Manning has already served time in prison for her participation in the leaks.
During the Obama Administration, the Federal government tried its best to find substantial evidence of these alleged crimes but failed to do so. Obama’s time in office was filled with attacks on whistleblowers, although to be fair, he did commute Manning’s sentence. It was during Trump’s term in office that charges were actually brought against Assange back in 2019, and Biden has continued this bipartisan attack on press freedoms.
In 2012 Assange sought asylum from Ecuador to avoid being extradited to Sweden for allegations of sexual assault, as he feared Sweden would hand him over to the U.S. No charges were ever brought against him and that case was eventually dropped, but that situation led to him essentially being imprisoned in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the next seven years, until Ecuador rescinded his asylum. At that time, Assange was arrested by authorities in the U.K. for failing to appear in court years before. Since then, he’s been held at Belmarsh Prison in London.
Once he was arrested, the U.S. began its attempts to convince the U.K. to extradite Assange. Those attempts hit a roadblock in January of this year when U.K. Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied that appeal on the grounds that Assange’s state of mental health was not fit for the harsh conditions he would face in the U.S. prison system, specifically the potential of being placed in solitary confinement. That ruling was validated in October when it was reported Assange suffered a stroke, likely due to the ongoing stress of his legal predicament, and his near-decade of imprisonment.
Despite nothing changing, except for the U.S. claiming to not subject Assange to those conditions (they wouldn’t lie about that, right?) and also claiming to let him serve out his sentence in his home country of Australia should he be found guilty, the U.K. High Court reversed their position last week. Assange’s lawyers will most likely appeal that decision, but it appears to be an ever-increasing probability that he will end up being extradited. Should that happen, it will have very dangerous implications.
This decision comes mere months after Yahoo News reported that the CIA and high-ranking officials in the Trump Administration had considered possible ways of kidnapping or even assassinating Julian Assange. The idea that that same government would suddenly show some humanity for him now is laughable. They’ve been foaming at the mouth to prosecute him for years. Even Democrats who spent all of Trump’s presidency clamoring about the dangers of him shattering democratic norms have wanted Assange imprisoned ever since he published emails revealing how the DNC rigged the 2016 primaries to favor Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, prompting top DNC officials to resign.
To understand this story better, I would recommend watching this video from journalist Glenn Greenwald, who does an excellent job of breaking down the case while also giving his own thoughts on the subject.
These recent developments cast a long shadow over the future of investigative journalism and the freedom of the press. If supposed “liberal democracies” such as the U.K. and the U.S. openly treat a journalist this way, imagine how more obviously authoritarian governments will act in the future. This will also cause journalists to think twice before publishing documents that expose crimes and embarrassing secrets of their governments, even if the public genuinely deserves to know. This persecution of Julian Assange must end, and if it doesn’t, we’re heading down a very dark path for press freedoms.
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