The judicial farce against Julian Assange

FABIAN SCHEIDLER

Those who speak the truth need a fast horse,” says an Armenian proverb. Or they need a society that protects the truth and its messengers.

But this protection, which our democracies claim to offer, is in danger. As a journalist, Julian Assange has published hundreds of thousands of files documenting war crimes committed by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo and elsewhere. The authenticity of the documents is beyond doubt.

However, none of the perpetrators have been brought to justice or convicted. Instead, the courier has been imprisoned for five years in a high-security prison in London with health problems that endanger his life, after having previously spent seven years locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy. He has not been charged with any crime in the UK, any EU country or his home country of Australia.

The only reason for his painful deprivation of liberty is that the United States government has initiated an extradition procedure accusing journalist Assange of espionage, invoking a law that dates back more than a hundred years, to the First World War: the Law of Espionage.

Never before has a journalist been charged under this law. Therefore, the extradition process sets a dangerous precedent. If successful, all journalists on Earth who expose US war crimes would have to fear the same fate as Assange. It would be the end of press freedom as we know it. Because it is based on the ability to bring to light the dark sides of power without fear of punishment. When this freedom is extinguished, not only the freedom of journalists dies, but the freedom of all of us: freedom from the arbitrariness of power.

For this reason alone, this extradition process should never have been accepted by the courts in a functioning legal system. Julian Assange did not act in any way as a spy, but as a journalist and, as such, is subject to special protection. Incidentally, the key witness for the espionage accusation was the notorious fraudster and convicted pedophile Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, who admitted in 2021 that he had lied on behalf of the FBI and that he had been granted immunity from prosecution.

Let's imagine the case with the roles reversed: Suppose an Australian journalist had published war crimes committed by the Russian military and intelligence services and sought protection in a Western European country. Would the courts seriously consider an extradition proceeding to Moscow for espionage, especially if the key witness is a convicted criminal?

Assange faces the absurd sentence of 175 years in the United States. It is to be feared that she will not survive the harsh conditions of the infamous American prison system. For this reason, London Magistrates' Court initially stopped her extradition in 2021. The US government then published a document stating that Assange would not face solitary confinement. However, according to Amnesty International, this statement “is not worth the paper on which it is written,” since the non-binding diplomatic note reserves the US government the right to change its position at any time. However, the Court of Appeal considered that this role was sufficient to pave the way for extradition, a travesty of justice, as Amnesty noted.

The hearings, which took place on February 20 and 21 at the High Court in London and whose verdict is expected in March, are Assange's last opportunity to appeal this extradition decision. However, there is a high risk that the law will be reversed again. As reported by the research platform Declassified UK, one of the two judges, Jeremy Johnson, previously worked for the British secret service MI6, which is closely intertwined with the CIA and whose illegal activities came to light thanks to the work of Julian Assange.

For Julian Assange, the trial itself has already become a punishment. Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, concluded, after thorough investigations, that Assange had been subjected to systematic psychological torture for years. The fact that the United States was willing to go even further came to light in September of that same year: according to information published in The Guardian, senior officials of the intelligence services, including the then head of the CIA and later Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, planned to kidnap and assassinate Assange in 2017. The background: Wikileaks had published that year documents that became known as “ Vault 7”. They show the CIA's massive activities in the field of cyber warfare and demonstrate how the secret service systematically and comprehensively intervenes in web browsers, automobile computer systems, smart TVs and smartphones, even when they are turned off. This was one of Wikileaks' most sensational revelations since the Edward Snowden leaks, which uncovered massive illegal surveillance by the NSA. The CIA did not forgive Assange for this blow and later classified Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service”, a transcendental neologism that allowed journalists to be declared enemies of the State. After Pompeo became Secretary of State in 2018, the US government began the extradition process. This measure replaced Pompeo's original kidnapping and murder plan, with the same objective: the destruction of an uncomfortable journalist.

The revelations of whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and journalists such as Julian Assange have shown that, in the shadow of the so-called war on terrorism, a vast parallel universe has emerged in recent decades obsessed with the illegal espionage of its own citizens. and the arbitrary imprisonment, torture and murder of political opponents. This world largely escapes democratic control; in fact, it is undermining the democratic order from within.

However, this evolution is not entirely new. In 1971, leaks revealed a secret FBI program to spy on, infiltrate and disrupt the civil rights and anti-war movements, which became known as COINTELPRO. That same year, the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers leaked by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, which showed that four successive US administrations had systematically lied to their citizens about the scope and motives of the Vietnam War and massive war crimes. committed by the US military. In 1974, Seymour Hersh revealed the CIA's secret programs to assassinate foreign heads of state and the covert operation to spy on hundreds of thousands of war opponents, which operated under the code name "Operation CHAOS." Prompted by these reports, the US Congress convened the Church Committee in 1975, which carried out a comprehensive review of covert operations and led to greater parliamentary control of the services.

Julian Assange is part of this venerable journalistic tradition and has contributed decisively to its renewed flourishing. However, there is an important difference with the 2012s: Today, the most important investigative journalist of his generation is openly persecuted, criminalized and deprived of liberty. When states declare that the investigation of crimes is a crime in itself, society enters a dangerous downward spiral, at the end of which new forms of totalitarian regime may emerge. Already in XNUMX, Assange commented, at the time, in relation to increasingly comprehensive surveillance technologies: “We have all the ingredients for a turnkey totalitarian state.”

If the US authorities manage to convict a journalist for exposing war crimes, this would have another serious consequence. In the future, it would be even more difficult and dangerous to expose the sordid reality of wars, especially those wars that Western governments like to sell as civilizing missions with the help of embedded journalists. If we don't know the truth about these wars, it will be much easier to fight them. Truth is the most important instrument of peace.

Julian Assange has not yet been extradited or convicted. Over the years, a notable international movement has formed in favor of his release and the defense of press freedom. Many parliamentarians around the world are also speaking out. The Australian Parliament, for example, supported by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, approved by a large majority a resolution calling for Assange's release. A group of more than 80 members of the German parliament have joined this petition. However, the German government continues to refuse to put serious pressure on Joe Biden's government, which continues to persecute Assange. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who as a Green Party candidate for chancellor had spoken out in favor of Assange's release, has persistently avoided questions on the issue since she joined the government. For months, his ministry has left the deputies' questions about the case unanswered, and then make evasive rhetorical excuses. The leading politicians of the German ruling coalition, who like to present themselves with great fanfare as the guardians of democracy and the rule of law, must act once and for all in this case of political justice and unequivocally demand the release of Julian Assange before that it's too late. However, this would require overcoming the cowed attitude towards the godfather of Washington and truly defending the vaunted values ​​of democracy.

Fabian Scheidler is a German writer and journalist. He collaborates with several German and French media. He received the Otto Brenner Award for Critical Journalism. His work can be followed here.