‘Every single human right of his has been broken’: Why the US Government Must Pardon Julian Assange
Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, awaits a Jan. 4 extradition ruling; until then, we must demand his pardon or face a crushing blow to journalism.
“This is the most important case concerning press freedom in our lifetime,” said Juan Passarelli, investigative journalist, filmmaker and director of the documentary titled “The War on Journalism: The Case of Julian Assange.” “There’s nothing more important than this because democracy is at stake [and] your right to know is at stake.”
Though Assange is an Australian citizen, the United States government is trying to extradite him from the United Kingdom to the U.S. to face 175 years in prison for 17 violations of the Espionage Act of 1917 and one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion; however, the court denied him First Amendment rights, which protect publishers in the U.S., since he is a foreign national.
The prosecution’s inconsistent interpretation of the Espionage Act would also set a dangerous precedent for readers.
“One of the things that came out of the trial is that this law is so broad and so outrageous that even if you read a newspaper that contained classified information, you would be committing a crime because you’re receiving and holding classified information,” Passarelli said.
The U.S. charged Assange with espionage for working with Chelsea Manning to release the “Iraq War Logs” and the “Afghan War Diary,” which reported the true, secret nature of the two wars by revealing thousands of previously unreported civilian and combatant deaths.
Ironically, an unspecified U.S. intelligence agency actually spied on Assange while he took asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he stayed from 2012 to 2019 before his arrest. Files The Grayzone obtained show the Spanish security firm UC Global, originally hired to provide surveillance to protect Assange in the embassy, began providing its video surveillance, including footage of Assange’s privileged meetings with his lawyers, to a client referred to as “American Friends.” This alone should prevent his extradition.
Assange’s privacy is not the only right that the U.S. and U.K. violated.
“Mr. Assange has been deliberately exposed, for a period of several years, to progressively severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture,” said Nils Melzer, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture, in a U.N. article published to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights following his visit with Assange in prison.
Torturing Assange in London’s Belmarsh supermax prison should also stop the extradition trial, especially considering he will not receive better treatment in the U.S.
“It’s very important that [Assange] is released from prison and seeks medical care immediately or he could literally die — that is no exaggeration,” said Taylor Hudak, journalist and editor on YouTube’s AcTVism Munich, who covered the extradition trial. “He has depression and is at a very, very high risk of suicide. The U.S. prison system is not equipped for somebody with his mental health issues.”
Article 4 of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. states that “Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense” and “extradition shall not be granted if the competent authority of the Requested State determines that the request was politically motivated.”
“Espionage is as political as you get,” Passarelli said. “The Obama administration started a grand jury investigation as to whether they could prosecute [Assange] under the Espionage Act, and the reason they didn’t [prosecute him] was because of the ‘New York Times problem.’ The Obama administration and the Obama Department of Justice could not differentiate between what WikiLeaks does and what The New York Times does.”
They could not differentiate between Assange’s publication, WikiLeaks, and The New York Times because Assange is a publisher, not a spy.
“The spies gather information, but they don’t publish it; they use it to their advantage,” Passarelli said. “If you’re talking about journalistic practices, WikiLeaks deals with sources, they make sure that their sources are anonymous, they receive documents, they evaluate if these documents are of public interest and they also take quite a lot of effort into finding out if these documents are legitimate, which is what journalists do.”
Thus, any attempt to paint Assange as a spy and not a journalist is baseless and instead stems from a frustration with what WikiLeaks publishes.
“[Assange] showed the world the crimes committed by the government of the United States, and [the extradition request] is an act of revenge against him,” said Carolina Graterol, a Venezuelan journalist and filmmaker based in London.
Another sign of the political motivation for Assange’s extradition came from the written testimony of Cassandra Fairbanks, who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy to warn him that British police would soon arrest him at President Donald Trump’s request due to false information he received that publications from WikiLeaks put U.S. personnel in danger.
“We have a U.S. president who was personally requesting for [Assange] to be arrested,” Hudak said. “It was a really important moment in court — I would say perhaps one of the most important things that came out of the hearing.”
You would not know this, though, with only a cursory glance at most mainstream media outlets. It is a travesty and a tragedy that Assange’s extradition trial — a case which pits the First Amendment and the right to know against the opaque American empire and global elite — continues to receive such lackluster coverage from the country’s foremost press sources, including ones which collaborated with WikiLeaks themselves. The New York Times, which published and reported on released WikiLeaks material such as “The Guantánamo Files” and the “Iraq War Logs,” failed to adequately cover this profession-defining story; apparently this news was not fit to print. The Washington Post, the paper I remember racing to grab every morning growing up and which I still read online, also paid little attention to the trial; evidently, democracy does die in darkness.
“When you realize that many of these very, very big international media [companies] are really propaganda outlets for governments, that is the reason why they are not there [covering the trial] — with some exceptions, obviously,” Graterol said.
As a journalism student, it is frightening to try and navigate the media landscape with this in mind, which is why WikiLeaks is so invaluable and the U.S. must pardon Assange.
“[WikiLeaks’ publishing] has 100% accuracy — that is something that no other media [outlet] can say,” Passarelli said. “They have released more secrets than all the rest of the world’s media combined.”
WikiLeaks released more than 10 million documents over its first 10 years publishing. These documents changed the world for the better.
“[As a journalist,] your job is to create history — to tell the side of history that is not the official line, but the reality,” Passarelli said. “Your job is to seek the truth. If you don’t go out and risk your life and your reputation to find this truth, you’re not doing journalism.”
The U.S. must pardon Assange. He risked his life and reputation to share the world’s secrets. He is a shining star who freed truth from darkness. If he is not free, none of us will be.
