Particularly dangerous

For several years, the United States has been seeking Julian Assange's extradition. We tell how the last meetings have passed, and why the founder of Wikileaks has turned into the main enemy of democracies

Australian journalist Julian Assange achieved the first victory in the upper court of Britain in extradition in the United States. For five years now, the founder of WikiLeaks has been in custody, in the States he faces until 175 years in prison in the case of revealing military secrets. Under the military secret, the American authorities have in mind the personnel of the Civil Military in the capital of Iraq Baghdad. The case of the extraction of Assange attracted the attention of many media and human rights organizations, most of which are opposed to the extradition of the founder of WikiLeaks in the United States.

The New Gazeta Europe talks about how Assange has turned into one of the most conflicting journalists of our time and how the struggle for freedom of information led him to the fact that now he could be behind bars until the end of his life.

In an endless struggle

“I feel anything can happen. Julian can be very close to liberation or he can be very close to being put on the plane and he never saw freedom again, ”Julian Assange Stell described her fortune a few days before the trial.

On May 20, the British high court considered the Julian Assange's extradition case in the United States. After several hours of the meeting, at which the journalist himself could not be present due to health reasons, the judge issued a verdict - Assange may appeal in his claim. This is the first victory for the defenders of the journalist for many years (the trial has been going on for 5 years).

The American authorities accuse Assange under 17 points of the US Law on espionage, obtaining secret military documents and conspiracy to hack a Pentagon computer network.

If he is found guilty, he may face imprisonment for a period of up to 175 years.

In his column for The New York Times, a senior researcher at the Personality and Self -Expelity Fund James Kirchik writes that such an accusation "may sound like a vile activity." “But this is that journalists, especially those who cover national security issues, do every day so that citizens are better informed,” he added.

The act of espionage is first used against a journalist. Understanding that the pressure on the press violates the first amendment to freedom of the American Constitution, the assistant to the general prosecutor, announcing the Assange case, said that the founder of Wikileaks was not a journalist at all.

Opening the curtain

Born in 1971 in the Little Australian city of Towsville Assange at first and really was not a journalist. At 16, Julian became interested in computers and began to engage in hacking. Then he came up with the pseudonym Mendax and, together with his friends, created the organization “Worms against nuclear murderers” (Worms Against Nuclear Killers). Already in 1991, the 20-year-old Assange came across to the authorities after hacking the server of the Canadian telecommunication company Nortel Networks. He was charged with an episode of cybercrime, but when sentenced to sentenced, he received only a small fine after he pleaded guilty. After that, Assange worked as a cybersecurity consultant and studied at the University of Melbourne at the Faculty of Physics.

The hacker past led the Australian to the desire to create a platform with the main idea - "radical transparency and truth." So in 2006, Assange founded Wikileaks. As planned, people could anonymously send classified materials of intelligence and government of countries to publish. And for the first few years it turned out, important documents appeared on the site about the prison on the American military base of Guantanamo, the internal documents of the Church of Scientology and the merged mail of the candidate for the post of vice president from the Republican Party of 2008 Sarah Paylin.

The real peak of popularity occurred in 2010, when the video “Rebukeing Murder” was released. On these frames, the American helicopter Apache firms and kills two journalists and several Iraqi civilians in 2007. The military stated that the helicopter crew believed that the goal was armed rebels, not civilians. These personnel, like another 750 thousand other documents, were transferred to Assange and Wikileaks through Chelsea Manning. She, having gained access to secret data, sent them to the journalist.

Who is Chelsea Manning
Chelsea Manning (before the transparenger - Bradley Manning) served as an expert on intelligence analysis, having access to classified data. In May 2010, manning was arrested due to the transfer of confidential documents to Assangeus. Chelsea Manning was released only in 2017 after pardon from US President Barack Obama.

The CNN reporter Schubert, who then communicated with Assange, recalls that Assange looked “uncertain” and “elusive”. Looking back, she now believes that his behavior was the result of the fact that he "sat over this cache with the documents of Chelsea Manning and tried to come up with how to publish them." Later, in that 2010, publications with thousands of materials about American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan were published in the largest publications in the world: CNN, El Pais, The New York Times, Der Spiegel and others.

After that, Wikileaks became famous throughout the world. The journalist James Ball worked there for a short time, CNN told : “We worked on a material that we had never seen before. Since then, leaks have become more common, but the idea that you can view

These huge sets of records showing what happened during conflicts or what actually happened behind closed doors was a kind of completely new. ”

Sarah Ellison, in an article for Vanity Fair, wrote that the results of Assange's work were "extraordinary." “Given the scale, depth and accuracy of leaks, this cooperation made it possible to create by any standards one of the greatest journalistic sensational news over the past 30 years,” the journalist adds.

There was a leak, however, the moral side of the question. In the book about the history of WikiLeaks, David Lee and Luke Harding, the authorssay that before the publication of plum, they talked with Assange that it would be worth removing the names of the Afghan informants who helped the United States. To this, Assange replied: "If they are killed, they will receive what they deserve." American politicians also criticized the publications of plums for jeopardizing the life of the military.

12 years in siege

In 2010, the Swedish authorities unexpectedly issued an arrest warrant of Assange in the case of the rape of two women. The founder of WikiLeaks arrived in Stockholm for a seminar, where he met with the coordinator of the Swedish group WikiLeaks Anna Ardin. According to the girl, she and Assange entered into sexual contact, but she asked him to put on a condom, which the journalist did not. In Sweden, this applies to rape. The second woman chose to remain unnamed, but her story does not differ from the first. She also worked as part of the WikiLeaks volunteer group and met Assange at the seminar, where, according to her version, she entered into unprotected sexual contact with her. The Australian journalist immediately called the charges “politically motivated”. In December of the same year, Assange was arrested in the UK on the basis of the European Order for arrest, but was released on bail.

Already during the persecution by the Swedish authorities, Assange published new documents. This time - almost 2.5 million letters from Syrian politicians, government ministries and companies since 2006. They confirmed the connection of the American government with the administration of Bashar al -Assad, against which they allegedly spoke, as well as assistance in the work of Western companies in Syria.

The last time Assange was in 2012. In that year, the journalist and founder of Wikileaks was actually concluded at Ecuador Embassy in London.

There, Assange, after he asked for asylum in it after a failure appeal in the Swedish case of rape. To avoid extradition to Sweden, he had to take refuge at the embassy. There he lived for 7 years.

The next attack on Assange was much more serious. If under the President of the United States Barack Obama, the American authorities avoided conflict with the journalistic community and did not touch the founder of WikiLeaks, then the administration of Donald Trump was not ashamed to attack Assange. On April 11, 2019, he was detained in London. The Ecuador Embassy, ​​which had previously responded the status of a citizen at Assange, did not interfere with the British police to take the journalist in conclusion. Since then, he has been in a maximum security prison Belmarsh in the southeast of London.

The fate of Assange was supposed to be decided back in March, but then the court postponed the consideration until the United States provided guarantees for a “fair court” over the journalist. On Monday at a court meeting, the team of lawyers Assange said that judges should not believe the statements of US prosecutors that the Australian journalist would receive defense on the first amendment. The lawyer’s strategy was built on the fact that since the founder of Wikileaks is an Australian citizen, then discrimination can be applied to him. This tactic worked, the court recognized the US guarantees insufficient.

Under the wing of colleagues

On May 20, many supporters of Assange came to the court session. In front of the building, protesters against his detention placed posters in his support. Al Jazeera reported that on one of the large posters of the protesters there was a photograph of Assange and the inscription: “Publications are not crimes. War crimes - yes. ”

The editor -in -chief of WikiLeaks Christinn Krabnsson, talking with journalists before the hearing of May 20, called the Assange case and the trial “falsified”.

“This is institutional corruption at the judicial level. Julian Assange is a political prisoner ",

He said .

Assange was supported by both many journalists and politicians. The former leader of the British Labor Party Jeremy Corbin made a statement that "journalism is not a crime." Editor columns released the publications Le Monde , The New York Times , El Pais and others.

The future of Assange is still not defined. On April 10, Joe Biden said that the United States could stop the pursuit of Assange at the request of Australia. A couple of months before, in February 2024, the Australian parliament approved the proposal to transport and release a journalist in his native country.

The date of the next hearing has not yet been set. The wife of Assange is so far “ relieved ”. “The United States should carefully study the situation and immediately terminate this matter,” she added .