Julian Assange Is Free

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on June 24 reached a deal with the US government, agreeing to plead guilty to one felony related to the disclosure of national security information in exchange for his release from Belmarsh Prison in the United Kingdom.

Assange faced the risk of spending the rest of his life in US prison if convicted of Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charges for publishing classified material including the "Collateral Murder" video and the Afghan and Iraq war logs. Before Belmarsh, he spent seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London with asylum protections.

"Julian Assange is free," WikiLeaks declared on the social media platform X, confirming that he left Belmarsh Monday [June 24] after having spent 1,901 days there, locked in a small cell for 23 hours a day.

"He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stanstead Airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK," WikiLeaks said. "This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grassroots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators, and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations."

The news of Assange's release was celebrated by people around the world, who also blasted the US for continuing to pursue charges against him and the UK for going along with it.

Seth Stern, advocacy director at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said that "it's good news that the Department of Justice [DOJ] is putting an end to this embarrassing saga. But it's alarming that the Biden administration felt the need to extract a guilty plea for the purported crime of obtaining and publishing government secrets." As opposed to receiving a deserved pardon…. the persecution of Assange has been indicative of the guiding principle of American foreign policy these days: Prosecute the whistleblowers exposing war crimes while funding Israeli war criminals in an ongoing attempt at genocide against occupied Palestine.

"The American administration could've easily just dropped the case but chose to instead legitimise the criminalisation of routine journalistic conduct and encourage future administrations to follow suit”.

Leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro said in a statement: "I congratulate Julian Assange on his freedom. Assange's eternal imprisonment and torture was an attack on press freedom on a global scale. Denouncing the massacre of civilians in Iraq by the US war machine was his 'crime'; now the massacre is repeated in Gaza I invite Julian and his wife Stella to visit Colombia and let's take action for true freedom."

Julian Assange will finally be free. While great news, this has been over a decade of his life wasted by US overreach.

Journalism is not a crime. Pursuing Assange was anti-democratic, and anti-press freedom, and the charges should have been dropped.

One of the most horrific videos published by WikiLeaks was called "Collateral Murder," footage of the US military opening fire on a group of unarmed civilians—including Reuters journalists—in Baghdad. While Julian has been in captivity for the past 14 years, the war criminals that destroyed Iraq walked free. Many are still in government positions today or living off the profits of weapons contracts.

[Contributed by Common Dreams]

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Vol 57, No. 2, Jul 7 - 13, 2024