Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. 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.
This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations. This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible.
After more than five years in a 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars.
WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles,and for the people's right to know.
As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.
Julian's freedom is our freedom.
[More details to follow]
Other URLs from threads we merged:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/julian-assange-releas...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/us/politics/assange-plea....
"Well, they're informants. So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."
that's rich coming from an informant.
Why, though? I didn't even think that was a thing in Britain, at least if you're not some very high risk criminal convicted of violent crimes, which I don't think he is? Regardless of what one think about what Assange did that just seems extremely unnecessarily cruel unless he was a threat to guards or other prisoners...
> A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." A silence fell on the table as the reporters realised that the man the gullible hailed as the pioneer of a new age of transparency was willing to hand death lists to psychopaths. They persuaded Assange to remove names before publishing the State Department Afghanistan cables. But Assange's disillusioned associates suggest that the failure to expose "informants" niggled in his mind.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian...
"Willing to hand death lists to psychopaths" is the language of a hit piece so your link seems a little biased.
Assange had his own reality distorion field. Like inflating the number of servers wikileaks had, the numbers of active members, etc. etc. I could sense he and Daniel Schmidt aka Domscheid-Berg were making up things on the go, but I and others didn't speak up because we believed we were wrong (How could we doubt wikileaks in 2010ish?).
I personally met David Leigh during the offshore leaks investigation. Dumb & innocent as I was, I asked him right away about the password incident. For those who don't know: At first, the cables were only released in part and redacted, but there was an archive zip encoded with aes encryption and a very long password "ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#" that Leigh used as a headline in his book. Of course someone figured out it matched to that archive and so the cables became unredacted. Well, Leigh was really pissed about the question.
To his defense, Leigh said to me: he was under the impression that the password/archive were digital self destruct. I know, this does not make sense in any way and reality. But given how little Leigh knew about information security, encryption, tech in general - maybe he was told by Assange this as a prank, maybe he assumed it, who knows.
But boy, these people in that time - journos and hackers - back than, most of them were not thinking about any bad outcomes, it mostly about making a splash and spotlight.
And that was, is and will not be enough. I battled "on the hill" to protect a whistleblower and to block a release of information which may have resulted in people being prosecuted in countries with a death penalty. It cost me a lot, but if you're not willing to walk away from prestige and fame for other peoples lives, maybe you should find another job.
Unless you believe it to be so, it seems quite strange to assign any significant share of the blame to Assange for any hypothetical deaths that may occur as a result of him taking actions to reduce the US government's ability to kill people abroad, akin to blaming police who stop a hostage-taker because this might have prompted the hostage-taker to kill the hostage but holding the hostage-taker himself blameless.
Here's when their key expired in 2007: https://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks_talk:PGP_Keys
From another below:
vikingerik
A canary goes something like "This website has not received or acted on any government orders to disclose or modify or remove material." When they ever do, then they remove that notice. The government enforcement usually includes a gag order prohibiting the target from saying that they're under orders, so the intent is that you can infer government gag pressure by the canary having been removed. Wikileaks used to have such a notice and no longer does, so we assume government enforcement is why.
These days Snowden is screaming into the void even as concerns HN readers, never mind that he was completely right at great personal cost the first time.
I still trust Moxie, and Carmack/Palmer/etc. seem to be taking a stand, there are others, but it’s getting thin.
The users could then decide to jump ship but realistically they won't.
The insurance file also got changed out at some point as the hash changed.
Never understood why gag orders don't just say "You can't say you received this order. Oh and by the way if we find you removed a canary, we'll just write that up as you having said you received this order".
Because the point of a canary is for it to be known beforehand. So the government surely knows about any canary too.
There must be some backwards definition of "speech" here which doesn't include all conveying of information (such as by removing previously published information), which makes it work, at least in the US (?)
And then I just saw this... wow! I am so glad to be wrong, to see my pessimistic side be completely wrong. Julian is free!
Assange gave the public invaluable information that would not have been know otherwise, but he ended up playing right into the hands of the people who wanted to discredit Clinton.
Politics is complicated.
And no, letting USA or any other nation for that matter commit war crimes quietly does not support democracy.
Also interesting that they didn't Wikileak these messages, some mainstream journalist had to do it for them. Probably they just hadn't gotten around to it
It's easy to blame one entity or another for these sorts of upset events, but national elections are media circuses largely run by private spending on the terms of private parties and blaming any one party seems like missing the forest for the trees.
Again, election "interference" is not unfamiliar ground for democracies or republics, liberal or classic, so it confuses me why people blame the electorate rather than the flaws in our implementation of democratic ideals (eg the citizens united ruling) that allowed private capital to run rampant over our election mechanics.
To illustrate how inevitable this is, the roman republic had statute stipulating the width of the halls leading up to the ballots to physically restrict voters from being harassed or intimidated. Otherwise the richer candidate would simply pay a mob to physically bully you into voting a certain way regardless of your original intentions—or perhaps they might outright buy your vote out if they knew which way your ballot cast. It was completely understood by all involved that voting (& armies) could be bought with sufficient money and ingenuity by even single people.
Why we are discussing anything other than restricting the ability of money to interfere with our modern processes when it comes to "democratic health" is beyond me.
0. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansar...
1. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/10/politics/biden-assange-au...
More than happy to locked them up unless it creates an image problem.
Unfortunately in this country, a whistle blower is a fast track to being punished.
Despite Mr. Albanese (the prime minister)'s election promise to bring Assange home, he's officially refused[0] to talk to Biden about it and has never answered questions on what they're doing about it.
It is great he's finally coming home, but forcing a journalist to plead guilty of espionage falsely, the decade of harassment and false imprisonment, the fake rape case... This should not be treated as "job done".
0. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-29/pm-says-biden-wont-in...
[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternative...
To me that plea creates a bad precedent.
Today was a good day.
This would have been embarrassing for the US. One country doing something decent and calling another out on the whole indecency of the whole case. Not a good look after a decade plus of legal limbo with no end in sight. And of course the man actually being extradited (as unlikely as that would have been at this point) would just refocus the attention on all the embarrassing things that Wikileaks actually leaked that have caused this whole vindictive attitude towards Assange. All that stuff being rehashed in court rooms and the media for months on end was not going to end well. So, the US grudgingly finally doing the right thing via a plea deal seems like a good face saving compromise that just ends this now.
(massive sidetrack, but I can't let this sentence go unpunished)
The current labour leader is the lamest duck in a group of wet blankets. His policies revolve around not being as corrupt as the Tories whilst doing virtually nothing else to better his constituents. His backbone has a restitution coefficient somewhere in the Oort cloud.
Wet blanked doesn't begin to cover it. I honestly think he's an entryist trying to tank the Labour party on the behalf of some British spy-lord. He's failing, but that's more the Tories' fault.
I am not commenting on the backbone, but he is definitely there for his constituents.
Maybe you are referring to them not stating that they will change taxes significantly? Well, yeah no shit. a) they can't, taxes are at their highest level since WW2, and b) they don't want to destabilise things like Truss did.
I think his biggest issue is that his voice sounds a bit wet and that makes people think he is wet.
To be fair, he was refusing to face trial. And he is expected to plead guilty, so he isn't innocent.
That said, there may be legitimate questions about whether the United States should be entitled to exercise jurisdiction over foreign nationals who are not physically present in the jurisdiction for national security offences.
You are speaking of the "human rights lawyer" who at best acquiesced in Starmer being locked up in Belmarsh.
You are speaking of the man who became Labour leader on the strength of six promises, all of which he repudiated as soon as he was leader.
He doesn't have a principled bone in his body.
I do think it's right to accept a guilty plea and time served, but it's hardly a story of exoneration for Assange.
If you knew anything about British politics you'd know that this is horseshit.
> Julian Assange has embarked on flight VJ199 to Saipan. If all goes well it will bring him to freedom in Australia. But his travel to freedom comes at a massive cost: he will owe USD 520,000 which he is obligated to pay back to the Australian government for the charter flight. He was not permitted to fly commercial airlines or routes to Saipan and onward to Australia.
Links:
Not permitted by who, and on what basis?
Hopefully his Second Act brings good fruits without the thorns and rot of the previous ages. Good luck to him!
Did he make the right choices? Who knows. There is always a lot of counterfactual reasoning involved.
Yes, there was a point in getting the information out as fast as possible, but I think it's fair to blame Assange for not putting in the redaction work.
I think precisely in that situation is when you need that kind of ability. But I wouldn't say we should whip him! Again speaking for yourself I suppose hahahahahaha! :)
Frankly, I wouldn’t care if this info was dropped by the Kardashians on a very special episode. It was crucial public information and it needed to get out one way or another. If vanity is an incentivizing factor toward someone taking that risk, so be it.
What is it about someone being incentivized to be a whistleblower, in your mind, changes the validation of the act?
> A city slicker shoots a duck out in the country. As he's retrieving it, a farmer walks up and stops him, claiming that since the duck is on his farm, it technically belongs to him. After minutes of arguing, the farmer proposes they settle the matter "country style."
> "What's country style?" asks the city boy.
> "Out here in the country," the farmer says: "when two fellers have a dispute, one feller kicks the other one in the balls as hard as he can. Then that feller, why, he kicks the first one as hard as he can. And so forth. Last man standin' wins the dispute."
> Warily the city boy agrees and prepares himself. The farmer hauls off and kicks him in the groin with all his might. The city boy falls to the ground in the most intense pain he's ever felt, crying like a baby and rolling around on the ground. Finally he staggers to his feet and says: "All right, n-now it's–it's m-my turn."
> The farmer grins: "Forget it, you win. Keep the duck."
Or, in this case, after prosecutors hold someone in prison for a decade or two they offer a plea deal.
Here's another: https://www.newagebd.net/article/226187/julian-assanges-gran...
Ultimately the responsibility falls to the President since the DOJ isn’t responsible for international relations. Biden must have thought the case was important otherwise there’s no reason to harm relations with an ally over something like that.
The direct spat lead to Assange helping Trump and the Russians publish Hillary’s email server spool.
I don’t like that Assange ended up helping Trump and Russia, but you can’t blame him for helping the one person who can kick the person out of office who wants to Tomahawk you
Although I'm willing to bet that the true actors here weren't necessarily presidents (even though they would ultimately be accountable like you say). Would be interesting to see who demanded what and when.
What you say we need badly as it keeps every government employee accountable for what they did.
But I might missunderstand you.
Out of genuine curiosity: what "actions" do you want taken and what accountability are you interested in? I mean, to be blunt: you think this is a crime, right? You want someone charged and prosecuted in a court, with due process, in front of a jury of peers, yada yada.
So... what if your imaginary prosecutor jumps ship to somewhere else where they get arrested and detained, and then refuse to come back to the US to face trial. Are they not then a political prisoner? Why not?
The point being: Assange wasn't thrown in jail without trial, he was thrown in jail because he refused trial. And there's an important difference.
Imagine you're a journalist and someone hands you a shoebox full of SD cards with classified materials including video evidence of war crimes. Most of us would agree it is the ethical thing to do to publish that and you're definitely a journalist.
Now imagine you had a contact in the military with acccess to classified data. What if instead of simply receiving that information, you tell that person what you're interested in. Are you still a journalist?
What if you procure tools for that person to bypass security procedures? What if you instruct them on methods they can smuggle out that information from a secure facility? Are you still a journalist?
What if you run someone off the road so they have a car accident and they miss their shift and that person is in charge of facility security, making it easier for your contact to smuggle out classified materials? Are you still a journalist?
This can go on and at some point you're no longer a journalist.
My point is that Assange was allegedly more of an active participant in acquiring these materials so there's an argument to be made that he wasn't a journalist, legally speaking.
But here's where I think Assange really hurt himself: by playing politics in selectively releasing the Podesta and DNC emails to try and sway the 2016 election. This demonstrated that Wikileaks is not, as it portrays itself, a vessel for unfiltered publication. This mattered in the court of public opinion because that's what would ultimately have to come to Assange's aid.
Now make no mistake: the US government did what it set out to do, which was to create a chilling effect on journalism that exposed US government secrets. Assange has essentially spent 12 yaers in confinement between the Ecuadorian embassy and Belmarsh awaiting extradition.
And it's not that they're committed to always releasing everything, they painstakingly withheld information about Russia's financial backing of Syria during one of their releases.
Snowden and Manning had a duty to the US. They were US citizens, they even worked for the military or spying apparatus.
For them to release information, no matter how justified, is obviously a crime, but Assange isn't American, not US permanent resident, and he has no duty to be loyal to the US.
This is why I feel that the prosecution is so insane. Assange getting extradited to the US is like Russia getting somebody extradited to Russia. Now of course, you can't expect better from the UK, which participated in the same war he is most famous for publishing stuff from, and him going to the UK was incredibly stupid.
But acquiring material actively is something you should obviously do. If you're a citizen of a third country and have a chance to obtain material of public interest, of course you should, and it shouldn't concern you whether the country whose material you obtain regards that as a crime.
I believe illegal acquisition of proof shall be punished only if the underlying case is denied.
If I as a US citizen didn't sign a contract agreeing not to publish something and if that something isn't libelous, I should be free to publish it.
Why do governments are given special treatment when some of their secrets are crimes that are disclosed too late to get anyone involved in a trial, and happened too long ago to do anything about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
At the time, I was initially a person who thought that what Wikileaks was doing was a net good for the rule of law, but changed my mind when I learned about the selective nature of what they publish. The fact that they were playing politics, pushing conspiracy theories, and actively coordinating with the Trump campaign completely discredits any moral high-ground they had. You can say that what happened to him is unfair and that may even be true but Assange is no hero.
What your asking implies is was he more an agitator or conspirator. Well he is about to admit to as much out of necessity, more to the point, will the next round of international journalists feel so much grey area hunting is necessary to bring us the truth about governments acting in the red area? I suspect many a journalist would go back in time and spill coffee on Hitler if it helped unearth those state secrets.
David Leigh and Luke Harding's history of WikiLeaks describes how journalists took Assange to Moro's, a classy Spanish restaurant in central London. A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." A silence fell on the table as the reporters realised that the man the gullible hailed as the pioneer of a new age of transparency was willing to hand death lists to psychopaths. They persuaded Assange to remove names before publishing the State Department Afghanistan cables. But Assange's disillusioned associates suggest that the failure to expose "informants" niggled in his mind.
I'm ambivalent about his jailing. If you are going to get heroic people killed then you can't cry too much if you get jailed a bit.
However, Assange has always displayed a great respect for human life, and so, this doesn't sound like him at all.
I can't find any clip of this, nor anyone discussing this, and have never heard of it before your claim. Care to bring receipts?
Edit: Looking more into it, I found the source - people said that Declan Walsh said that he heard Assange say this at a dinner party. You really ought to be a little more discriminating when using a single quote to try and completely dismiss someone.
The list goes on, they are not the BBC or Al-Jazeera. The DNC hack/wikileaks release timeline is absolutely disgusting and shows the true nature of the organization.
Just such a bizarre take completely divorced of reality.
In what locale and at which time did humans have control of their leadership?
Can this be used to indict other journalists who receive and publish classified information? As if so, this feels like a huge loss, though I can hardly blame Assange for not continuing the fight.
Julian Assange actively solicited leaks of information. That's where the espionage claim comes from.
There's not much precedent on this though and making a plea deal avoids establishing one. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. Generally, precedent is established when someone appeals their conviction, and a higher court determines that the conviction is lawful. Higher court decisions bind lower courts, so e.g. if a circuit appeals court says the law is "X", every district court within it has to agree.
Since generally, you wouldn't appeal a plea deal, there probably won't be legal precedent from this.
That being said, I wonder if the USA will informally say "we got Assange; we can get you" the next time a similar situation comes up.
This phrasing makes it sound like Assange asked "Do you have this?" when the accusations have always been closer to "Can you get me this? Here is how you could go about doing that." That takes it out of the realm of journalism in at least the legal sense.
I can't imagine we haven't been saying that since the day Assange set foot inside the Ecuadorian embassy.
Even if you think Assange did more than this, this plea deal is very clearly over passively receiving classified information.
The precedent information is good to hear, thank you.
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/new-york-times-co-v-...
As the last paragraph points out, not a clear victory for the free press, but the Assange prosecutors know this case very well and you are absolutely right that they want to avoid another one.
Further: Assange wasn't simply charged with "receiving and publishing classified information"; he was charged with being instrumental in that information being exfiltrated in the first place.
Practically, yes.
I've been in situations where there was no precedent, and in asking what would happen if this went to court, decisions were made based on how lower courts ruled. Legal analyses, law review articles, customary practice, etc. all /influence/ courts.
>Further: Assange wasn't simply charged with "receiving and publishing classified information"; he was charged with being instrumental in that information being exfiltrated in the first place.
Those charges were (presumably) dropped as part of the plea, and his plea did not mention them. The plea is only about receiving and publishing.
Also Australia is beholden to US and has deep ties with it.
Sweden may differ of course. I don't think either of the 3 primaries care what Sweden thinks.
"Swedish papers illuminate CIA renditions" https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7915747
"Sweden Violated Torture Ban in CIA Rendition" https://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-...
Edit: Your down votes do not change reality. More important countries than Sweden have been satellites, such as East and West Germany.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/10/biden-assange-...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/14/austr...
But the fact he is pleading guilty to a serious crime will have further implications for his life e.g. preventing travel, not allowed to apply for certain jobs etc.
I think he'll be fine.
Had he done what he did to China or Russia, he probably would not be a alive.
He is not a character worth celebrating.
His liberty is a triumph of western values. We don’t off our dissidents.
What does that say about those people? Are they easily led by emotion? They certainly don't care about the rule of law, if breaking the law by others can so easily be ignored. They aren't particularly patriotic, if they think that subverting the checks and balances in their preferred kind of government is fine.
I'm glad this partiular episode will be finished soon.
This is true in both directions and Assange is the perfect example of that. Someone being a whistleblower is not a get out of jail free card and there are still laws regarding how whistleblowing should be handled and what qualifies. Assange leaked a lot of important stuff that qualifies, but that wasn't all he leaked or did. A shockingly few number of people seem willing to engage this issue with the nuance that is requires and either label Assange a hero or a villain when he clearly is somewhere in between.
In the beginning Assange tried to vet the leaks he published. He contacted the US over the Manning leaks to go over them so he could publish without risk, the US refused.
So Assange set up a huge team of journalists to comb through the documents to see what was safe to publish. One of those journalists working for The Guardian proceeded to publish the key to the entire database, ensuring everything was leaked
Shortly after, he ends up in embassy and was unable or unwilling to do similar things.
This is much bigger than Assange.
I find it troubling that people dont have the nuance to identify that hes a bit of a smelly housemate and problematic manager but ultimately a clear net benefit to mankind.
This means that whistleblower immunity should be extremely strong and anything the government wants to do to prosecute whistleblower should have to pass many hurdles.
This doesn't conflict with the concept of checks and balances, rather it has to be an integral part of the checks and balances.
In fact, this rationale is so simple and self-evident to anyone who asks themselves how the rule of law can be upheld in the face of the potential for unlawful conduct by government actors that one should ask themselves if coming to the opposite conclusion does not require a strong dose of motivated reasoning.
He's more akin to an activist.
This agreement itself is a plea deal, but involves the agreement in principle that Assange has committed a crime by publishing this information. That in itself is an enormous problem for people seeking out government wrongdoing.
Essentially uncovering hypocrisy in the way our Governments and corporations works.
People can both care about the act of whistleblowing and the illegal actions incurred as a result.
But it's all nuanced, there's whistleblowing and then there's whistleblowing in a way that puts other innocent people at risk.
From: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstrike
3 attacks. Two 30mm cannons and one hellfire.
There is tons of video out there and sometimes leaked of the drone strike recordings. The hostage video section of high side is creepily advertised also for inspiration or idk.
"Deemed illegal", sounds rubber-stamped.
The fact that you put "collateral damage" in quotes, has the same value as me putting "Murdered by COD players, just for carrying a camera" in quotes.
I stand to be corrected regarding the video in question.
They hate you because of your "freedom" anyway.
Regardless, the exposures are exactly what journalists and publishers should be doing - government agencies went out of control under the umbrella of the Patriot Act, and the results, from fabricated claims of WMDs in Iraq to who knows what, have been disastrous.
Also, Wikileaks did pretty responsible journalism for example on the explosive Vault 7 leaks:
https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/
> "Wikileaks has also decided to redact and anonymise some identifying information in "Year Zero" for in depth analysis. These redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any approach chosen, we remain committed to our publishing model and note that the quantity of published pages in "Vault 7" part one (“Year Zero”) already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks."
where are the dumps from north korea. where is kim jong un's private communications with Xi Jinping. Where is Putin's communications with Lukashenko. Where are internal memos from the people's liberation army. Where are the leaks from the Ayatollahs.
Also yes the targets were western governments. What about western corporations? Where are leaks from Boeing about their issues? Where are leaks from Facebook about PTSD of their moderators? Where are the leaks about Peter Thiel or Elon Musk or whatever?
The targets WL chose were basically the "evil west", you know, the only reason Ukraine has not been reduced to a prison complex.
i really hope this man will be free. there's still a really bad precedent set that they will imprison you first, make you serve your term, then get your day in court to go free.. its a bit crooked and i really dont like this
part of me thinks this is happening now because the presiding dominant western political establishment is losing power everywhere and they don't want the growing adversarial camp to hold freeing him as a victory while being able to set the precedent of his guilt to someday have in their back pocket the ability to do this again without the perceived unfairness
Well thats fascinating. Were his kids somehow all born after he was imprisoned?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Assange#Personal_life_a...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-t...
public intellectual*
Whether or not his work had any worth to it, it's hard not to conclude that he was a de-facto Russian agent, IMO. The most pungent data point is probably that Rohrabacher [2] was mediating a pardon deal between him and Trump. [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...
[2] https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/kevin-mc...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/19/donald-trump-o...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r...
REJOICE!!!!!!!!!!!
Woooo!!! This is incredible news to wake up to.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/04/08/activist-ola-bini-sen...
Then the US requested the countries he happened to be in to extradite him to the US.
If this is correct, if he were in Australia (his country) when the US issued their request, he would have been free, right? (without the possibility to travel I guess as other countries may follow the US request).
And who was punished for killing journalists in [0]? The whistleblower.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstri...
Julian Assange leaves UK after striking deal with US justice department
https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/jun/25/julian...
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nmid.64...
This is a little disingenuous, and made me chuckle. It's faster and cheaper to get to Australia from the US mainland than it is from Saipan. Yes, it's physically closer as stated, but does not confer the claimed benefits.
So, they get to rubber stamp this and get it over with without too much scrutiny in the media before the man starts giving non-stop interviews in Sydney or wherever he is going in Australia.
Where were they in the dark days of the semi-secret travesty of a trial in London?
Thankfully people like Craig Murray stepped up to the crucial fourth estate role they abdicated, to witness it for us.
Wrong and right are not absolutes.
But I think, charitably, what people mean when they say things like this is that more information should be free. And I think agree with that. But I'm not entirely convinced it applies to everything Assange is responsible for releasing.
Keeping war crimes classified until everyone responsible is dead is not the same as keeping plans secret during a war.
Hard to mix those two up to the point I'd say it was done in bad faith.
Seems like the perfect place to kidnap him
He didn't serve 12 years. He locked himself in his room for 7, then he actually served 5.
Assange was never going to be extradited to the USA, because of the US Govt's behaviour in the Harry Dunn case (finally closed this month):
Harry Dunn was a UK teenager who, while riding his motorcycle was struck and killed by a car driving on the wrong side of the road close to a US Airforce base. The driver, Anne Sacoolas, was reported to be the wife of a US Intelligence Officer. Under the UK- US Govt agreement, Intelligence Officers could be prosecuted locally, but their husbands / wives had diplomatic immunity. The US Govt asserted diplomatic immunity (probably aided and abetted by the UK Govt), and Sacoolas was swiftly hustled out of the UK on a private flight by the NSA or CIS). Anyhow, after a long campaign for justice by Dunn's family, it turns out that Anne Sacoolas is herself a senior US Intelligence officer, so should not have had diplomatic immunity. Charges were brought in the UK, but the US Govt refused to extradite, despite a direct request from the UK Prime Minister (Johnson) to the US President (Trump). There has been huge and sustained public sympathy in the UK for the Dunn family in their quest for justice, and the UK legal system and civil service was seriously angered by the attitude of the US Govt. Anne Sacoolas finally pleaded guilty over video link to charges of causing death by dangerous driving earlier this year. The inquest on the death of Harry Dunn (which was delayed until the conclusion of the criminal case) concluded earlier this month.
The UK was not going to extradite Assange as the US Govt refused to extradite Sacoolas. There was enough noise around the conditions that Assange could be held in, or the possibility of him facing the death penalty, for UK judges (who have a lot of independence) to raise questions on Assange's possible treatment in the US, and refuse an extradition request - it had already been going round in circles on this question for years.
Everyone wanted a face saving resolution - and with the possibility of a Trump presidency next year, the UK Govt did not want to have a point of contention with Trump, and his severely transactional approach. So, this is a face-saving compromise for the UK and US Govts. Assange pleads guilty (so the US says they have brought him to justice), Assange goes home (not to the US), and the UK Govt gets a nasty diplomatic problem resolved.
"National Defence Information" ... is that what we're calling "War Crimes" these days?
That's the conspiracy charge they indicted Assange for. If you don't believe me then read https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-julian-assa... . If you say that's too long to read then just read the last 4 paragraphs.
They've bent over backwards to charge him here over something that literally did not happen and was only discussed as an option in passing. If they had anything else to charge him with they would. But they don't and rely on people like you propagating falsehoods.
Assange is not and has never been a US citizen or permanent resident. What he did is perfectly permissible.
He made a huge mistake in traveling to the UK though.
Here on HN, people tend to think highly of "journalists", especially those involved with foreign policy-related stories, as being some sort of guardians of democracy. Yet Julian Assange has shown that many journalists are in fact working closely together with governments to generate consent for war. To this day, journalists are still actively misleading the public with fearmongering for the Next Big Enemy(r) with whom who we should go into war with next. And a large part of the public — including the HN crowd — are still falling for this.
I get that the US has (had?) an interest to make him pay and that the only thing that really counts in geo-politics is power — but I don't see why my country should be allied with a nation that punishes the people uncovering their war crimes instead of (at least: also?) punishing those who carried them out.
That being said I can't shake the feeling that it would also be to some degree in the self interest of US citizens that their government respects the rule of law. Hard to claim to be the good guy while you are the driving force behind such things or propaganda campaigns against vaccines¹ or all² the³ other¹¹ things¹² the¹³ has¹¹¹ done¹¹²
¹: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...
²: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-67582813
³: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
¹¹: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MKUltra
¹²: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1953_Iran_coup
¹³: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9...
¹¹¹: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Brazilian_coup_d%27%C3%...
¹¹²: You get the point, also not all superscript numbers seem to be supported on HN
I don’t believe that Starmer would have actually have dropped extradition proceedings against Assange as he’s extremely stingy with his political capital, but I guess things look different on the other side of the Atlantic. Easy to see a “left wing” government incoming and think “oh shit we’d better agree a plea deal”.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110901064746/https://wikileaks...
Less persecution of those that benefit society, more persecution of those that seek to undermine it, please.
Is that too cynical of a view? I mean this is an administration that is supplying the most destructive weapons to Israel so they can kill and dismember Palestinian women and children — what’s the freedom of one innocent man to such people?
Do you think this helps Biden? Assange is a right winger, helping him out isn't likely to convince moderates to go for Biden.
He was an Australia citizen left out to dry.
Disgraceful.
Keep your name and any trace back to you out of it.
No idea how but I have yet to see a story of a whistleblower not getting fucked over.
Probably the answer is to not bother and try and destroy the system from within.
#FREEDASSANGE
What a waste of a life over a pointless and vindictive prosecution. Here’s hoping all prosecutors involved go the way of Stevens’
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedeta...
However, I won't cheer for Assange, the person. He's using the guise of impartial journalism to be anything but impartial.
His selective disclosure of leaks, with a heavy bias towards NOT disclosing Russian caches, is pretty damning. Assange was shouting from the rooftops that WikiLeaks "doesn't have targets", but at the same time chose to focus on the DNC campaign leaks and decline to publish 2016 caches showing Russian involvement in Ukraine, and Wikileaks declined to publish documents revealing a 2 billion euro transaction between Syrian regime and a Russian bank. WikiLeaks also handed information on Belarusian dissidents to the Lukashenko regime.
Not to mention the infamous leaks of Taliban informants details, to which Assange was quoted saying: "Well, they're informants, so if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it.", as well as the 2015 Saudi leaks which revealed the virginity status of multiple Saudi women, several Saudis suffering from HIV as well as being arrested for being gay.
The level of care and privileges he's had while being imprisoned weren't afforded to the many Afghan informants, Belarusian dissidents and the LGBTQ members in Saudi that he's exposed.
(TL;DR - if Assange was on modern Twitter, I bet he'd be a Assad-loving, anime-pfp-displaying, Putin-bootlicking tankie)
Both Snowden and Assange went far beyond "blowing the whistle" in what they leaked and/or solicited.
Where is the punishment for the people commiting the crimes and treason that Snowden and Assange exposed?
He acted in the interests of everyone who doesn't like the US, you could justifiably say the same thing about him acting in China's best interest, or Iran.
Absolute codswallop that you can't hold a government to account else you are criticised for aiding their enemies. Does that mean we should just sit down and take it because it makes us look bad?
I'm the first in line to criticise my government (UK) but that doesn't mean I'm intentionally working in the interests of it's enemies.
Sod off with these bad faith attacks espousing an opinion that no reasonable person could possibly hold.
It has never been proven he had some killer stuff on trump and failed to leak it.
Its not his job to selectively withhold information during an election to make demo voters happy.
And trump is basically immune to bad press anyway. What more could you say about him that hasnt been said.
This claim never held water and still fails to.
Wait, Assange or Trump?
Still, I hope he finds happiness and peace.
I mean I don’t blame him for not wanting to be murdered by Russia but he isn’t a freedom fighter when he only leaks things for countries that don’t directly threaten his life.
This argument is completely nonsensical, this idea that who revealed the crime matters more than the actual crime.
What does it matter who "influenced" him, if the information was legit? And is it your opinion that none of this information should be released unless it covers all countries equally? Do you honestly think he should have thought, I can't reveal this crime until I find an equal Russian crime, for equality. What a wonderful, open world that would be! Utterly ridiculous.
This is the same stupidity as "Hunter's laptop". It allows the Idiocracy to dismiss anything because "the Russians!".
When presented with evidence of her infidelity, her first and only reaction, "Who sent you those screenshots?! It was Sarah, wasn't it? You know she hates me. Why are you talking to her?!"
However, for me, personal feelings about him should not matter in this case. It's a question of how our society treats people that expose bad actors. He's a flawed human being like every other one, but what he did was not wrong even if deemed illegal (by the justice system from the exposed party, who would've guessed).
Not saying Russia doesn't engage in propaganda attempts, but they are more or less irrelevant for any domestic discussion then and now.
No, he is not. Nobody can go through what he has been forced to suffer in all those years without lasting consequences that can't be undone: years of his life have been taken away, his health has been damaged, his family has been hit as well. He may be free to roam around, but he's not the same person anymore. I don't see any happy ending here, especially if there are no consequences for the psychopaths dressed as patriots who forced him into that ordeal.
He's actually agreed to confess to something which the US should have no legal authority over.
We must remember that the US are torturers who tortured people here in Sweden, right at Bromma airport, even after specifically agreeing not to torture them. It is not a country which should have any influence whatsoever outside its borders; and this is someone who exposed very severe crimes and who had no duty whatsoever to keep any US defence information secret.
I wholly agree, as an American citizen
I'm not going to defend US autrocities, but why exactly is Sweeden and the EU allowing this stuff to happen on their soil?
Yet the calls from Swedes for the US to provide more Ukraine aid are deafening at this point. Swedes want the US to intervene when it benefits them, regardless of their chest-beating.
Where is the criticism from Swedes when Russia murders its own journalists or China restricts freedom of speech?
Please, if you are so anti-american, impress upon your countrymen to stay away from NATO. You people are clearly not interested in allying with the US.
He had sex in Sweden with a woman who consented to having sex, but not without a condom, and at some point he took off the condom.
As I remember, that led to England seeking his arrest to be extradited to Sweden for this sex crime. Since he was stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Britain stationed officers outside it for years in case he stepped out. Ostensibly, for justice in this sex crime.
Everyone knew the real reasons were to extradite him to the US, but the US was totally silent on him, until minutes before the statue of limitations would have run out.
The US' charge was that Assange offered to run John the Ripper on a hash Bradley Manning gave him. Which, I mean, who among us have never run a hash in john the ripper?
It's been astounding to see such incongruity between the heft with which the US can use its muscle against a target, and the thin veil of weak crimes the legal systems would admit to investigating.
If Sweden, the UK, and the US would have been transparent that they were colluding to imprison him for publishing, I wouldn't have become so cynical.
Here it is: He was sent a Windows NT password hash, he ran hashcat over it, couldn't successfully reverse it, and gave up.
That's it.
Prosecuting him for this "heinous crime against the state" has cost US and UK taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
At the time of this "crime" occurring he was not physically in the USA, not a citizen of the USA, and hence not subject to its laws.
Unless you think the USA is the world government and can police anyone, anywhere, for anything?
A link to the "tools of the crime": https://github.com/hashcat/hashcat
Remember the people who didn't stand by him: The entire left. Most European Governments, who were collaborating in a decade of torture; that he had to be protected by Ecuador is an utter shame. Of course WaPo, NYT, et al. Now every time I hear a high pitched social justice squeal from these folks, I realize that it's selective and merely self-serving.
Sorry, political rant because this is a political topic.
He could have engaged with the various legal processes being held against him, but he chose extra-legal protests instead. None of us know if that approach is better or worse than what he did, but this wasn’t torment without agency. It was a direct outcome of his own choices.
One man (and a bunch of supporters) against several governments with limitless resources. If something didn't stick, there would be another. Let's not judge his legal tactics looking back.
Oh come on. No matter your opinion on the whole situation you can't say sitting in an Ecuadorian embassy is torture lol. Dude had his girlfriend, internet, and pets. Calling the self imposed stay torture is beyond absurd. BFFR
His mental health deteriorated a while back.
I agree that whistleblowing shouldn't be punished like we usually do, and the attempts to imprison him were a farce, but I still think he's a piece of shit who ruined any journalistic credibility he had when he got in bed with Putin.
Here it is different, it is an activist sponsored/supported by an enemy state actively seeking to create chaos in a foreign government.
I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. He is appearing in US territory before a US judge who is actually under any obligation to honor the plea deal. The judge could reject the plea deal and remand him to custody or sentence him to US prison.
He's not out of the woods yet by any means, but if they reached a deal his lawyers are confident in, I wouldn't be worried about the judge. They are supposed to deffer to international law if US is a party to the treaties involved (which in the case of extradition, it is).
There's every chance here that this deal represents a way out for the US as well, and that it will be kept for that reason, but if the US government still wants him to stand trial, a plea deal and the risk of a minor diplomatic scuffle at a point in time where the UK parliamentary election will overshadow the case in UK media isn't going to stop them.
Keep in mind he doesn't have any support from the UK government - they'd rather be rid of him -, and the current UK government is almost certain to be out of government shortly. It's unlikely there'd be more of a diplomatic incident than a slightly stern letter.
I think he has reasonable odds - this case is likely at this point mostly just a nuisance for everyone involved except Assange himself. There's nothing to be gained, other than perhaps for some overzealous prosecutor. But I also would not be one bit surprised if something was to happen.
He would then spend potentially several more years in jail preparing for trial, obtaining discovery, going through discovery, filing pretrial motions, subpoenaing witnesses, etc etc.
Australian Politicians: collective silence
We let dodgy Uncle Sam do whatever he wants to us.
1900 days in isolation (human rights violation), falsly accused of rape with the goal to extradite to the US, jailed outside of the US on behalf of the US (but not officially), and just the simple fact that a journalist gets jail time for exposing war crimes.
Yeah, this has nothing to do with law or justice. This is about a handful of people above the law trying to save their *sses. Anything could happen at this point.
Reminds me of when a foreign diplomatic aircraft (Equador) was forced to land in a foreign country (France), because the US thought Snowden might be on board. Remind me of the relevant law that allows for this please? lol
Why would it be a diplomatic incident? When you are a fugitive from justice taking a plea deal is always a gamble because you have to show up in court. Should the judge reject your deal, you are handed over to US Marshals pending a new court date.
Edit: downvote all you want, it doesn't change facts. There is a separation of powers between the prosecutor who is negotiating the extradition/plea and the judge who independently evaluates the agreement.
Like getting leaked data from the DNC and RNC and coordinating with the Trump campaign to time DNC leaks for maximum effect (I have no love for the DNC) while not releasing RNC content sent to you?
I think you've confused wikileaks with the new york times there. The times definitely pick and choose. I have seen no evidence that wikileaks suppressed anything ever. Link if you have it as that would make them more like the times.
You can tell it’s election year for the USA. Probably hoping for a little extra PR from it all for being the Good Guys (tm)
Assange was just a soundbite for him to dogwhistle.
A little too heavy handed. Yeah it seems like from the outside he was potentially overly punished, pending further details that may never materialize, but “his freedom is our freedom” is pretty extreme given what he did. He’s not relatable.
Outside of the tech community, he’s not really known except for being that guy who leaked things.
The U.S. as a national entity certainly isn't above lying, as leaks regarding them have shown.
Most notably, the UK-US extradition treaty, which has exemptions for political offenses (e.g. espionage), has been found not to apply.
This article is decent https://theconversation.com/julian-assange-how-british-extra..., but from the middle of the trial. Craig Murray's blog is also a good source of info.
Considering the lengths Assange has gone to to avoid entering US custody, I think he's weighed up the ability to trust the US on this one with probably more information than we have.
