Julian Assange is currently sitting in a south-east London prison awaiting his fate. Extradition hearings began in May following the WikiLeaks founder’s arrest in April by British authorities after his asylum was withdrawn by the Ecuadorian government.
Assange had been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012 after being granted asylum by the Ecuadorian government after he failed in his attempt to thwart extradition to Sweden, which had issued an international arrest warrant for Assange on dubious sexual assault allegations. Assange, rightly in my opinion, saw his extradition to Sweden as a pretext to be extradited to the United States.
A decision on his extradition to the United States on charges of violating the espionage act of 1917 is expected to be given on January 4, 2021. If found guilty, he faces 175 years in prison.
According to the Free Speech centre, “The Espionage Act of 1917 prohibited obtaining information, recording pictures, or copying descriptions of any information relating to the national defence with intent or reason to believe that the information may be used for the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”
Has anything that Assange has done have any relation to the above? No. So far, the Australian’s biggest detractors have stated on numerous occasions that the WikiLeaks founder endangered the national security of the United States. Have they offered any evidence for such a charge? Never, would be the answer; but I suppose this is hardly surprising when we live in an era where no evidence is required to make assertions stick.
Julian Assange is a journalist, not a security threat- Mark Manduca
This era seems to be more concerned with personality rather than facts or principle. Is Assange the nicest person in the world? Probably not. He does come across as arrogant and difficult to work with. The former spokesperson of WikiLeaks, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, described Assange as “paranoid,” “power-obsessed” and “monomaniacal.” So, he’s not the kind of guy that’s for everybody. Ok, so what? What does that have to do with his case? Nothing.
For the truth of the matter is this: Assange exposed the murderous secrets of power, and as such, he must be made an example of to deter others from doing the same. I am referring to the ‘collateral murder’ video released by WikiLeaks in April 2010, in which two US Apache helicopters fired on Iraqi civilians, killing over a dozen people, including two Reuters journalists.
The US servicemen carrying out the atrocity laughed while they were doing it. Was anyone prosecuted for this war crime? Yes, but not the individuals who perpetrated the murders. Rather, the brave US soldier, Chelsea Manning, who leaked the video showing the killings taking place, was sent to jail for seven years.
Guess what Manning was charged with? Violating the Espionage Act of 1917 of course. Who would have thought? There seems to be a pattern here. Expose war crimes, get charged with espionage.
Julian Assange must not be extradited to the United States. He is a journalist, not a security threat to the most powerful nation on earth.
Mark Manduca has a Master’s degree in Diplomatic Studies from the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies.