You essentially incarcerate a man for 12 years for telling the truth about U.S. government crimes, and of course it’s going to have a chilling effect on press freedom, regardless of that fact that Assange has now been released. From Robert Bridge at swentr.site:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. © Daniel LEAL/AFP
Julian Assange, the co-founder of WikiLeaks, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act for his role in collecting and publishing top-secret military and diplomatic documents from 2009 to 2011. What does this verdict mean for media freedom around the world?
While it’s certainly positive news that the US Department of Justice is apparently closing the book on the tragic Assange saga, it’s shocking that the administration of President Joe Biden demanded a guilty plea for the alleged crime of obtaining and publishing government secrets. After all, this is the crucial task that investigative journalists perform on a regular basis.
“The plea deal won’t have the precedential effect of a court ruling, but it will still hang over the heads of national security reporters for years to come… It’s purely symbolic,” Seth Stern, the director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), said in a statement. “The administration could’ve easily just dropped the case but chose to instead legitimize the criminalization of routine journalistic conduct and encourage future administrations to follow suit.”
Assange rose to international fame in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012 on the grounds of political persecution and fears he might be extradited by the UK to the US. He remained in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London until April 2019, and then was imprisoned in Belmarsh Prison until June 2024, as the US government’s extradition effort was contested in the British courts.
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