Assange should be protected
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is an unattractive character and he also has very poor judgment. He should have gone to Sweden seven years ago and faced the rape charges brought against him by two Swedish women. Even if he had been found guilty, he would probably be free by now under Swedish sentencing rules, since no violence was alleged in either case.
His explanation for taking refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy instead was that he feared that once in Sweden, he would be extradited to the United States – and the US Government wanted to try him on charges that could involve a life sentence or even the death penalty.
What had so angered Washington was Wikileaks’ spectacular 2010 dump of 725,000 classified cables from US embassies around the world. The most damaging revelation was an official video in which the crew of a US Apache helicopter over Baghdad machine-gunned innocent civilians while making remarks like, ‘‘Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards’’, and, ‘‘It’s their fault for bringing their kids into battle’’.
Assange faced no immediate threat of extradition in 2012, because President Barack Obama had not encouraged US officials to make such a request. Indeed, in 2017, just before leaving office, Obama pardoned Assange’s source for the leaked cables, former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, after she had served only four years of her 35-year prison sentence.
Maybe, when Assange sought diplomatic asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012, he feared that there would be a different administration in Washington after the US election that November. He should still have gone to Sweden, because the Swedes would have been less likely to grant an extradition request than the British Government. Poor judgment.
Fast forward four years and there is another Wikileaks dump, this time of Democratic National Committee emails that embarrass Hillary Clinton.
‘‘Wikileaks – I love Wikileaks,’’ says Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally. ‘‘This Wikileaks is a treasure trove,’’ he says at another. He cites Wikileaks 141 times at 56 campaign events, according to a count by NBC News. This is known in the philosophy trade as ‘‘situational ethics’’.
It has now been seven years and the Ecuadorian government has changed. The new president, Lenin Moreno, wants to mend relations with the US – and he is cross about a picture that Wikileaks released of him eating lobster in bed in a luxury hotel. So he withdraws diplomatic protection from Assange and invites British police to arrest him.
The sole charge currently laid against Assange is carefully written to avoid a British refusal to extradite him – no death penalty is involved – and to get around the guarantee of freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Instead, Assange is charged with conspiracy to commit a computer crime by helping Manning crack a password to gain access to the classified documents she gave to Wikileaks. The maximum penalty he faces is five years in prison, but of course ‘‘new evidence’’ can be discovered once he is in the US and other charges brought that would involve a far longer sentence.
Assange is an unpleasant narcissist, but the world needs more whistleblowers, not fewer. He still deserves protection under the US First Amendment, but it’s doubtful he will get it.
Few locals darken the museum’s doors, unless they have curious family members visiting.
Gwynne Dyer’s new book is Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work).