I don’t like Assange, but he has served his time

I imagine when Julian Assange – who yesterday launched his final appeal against extradition to the US – eventually shows up in court, he will cut a far more pathetic figure than he once did in the photos that appeared when he was hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy, posing with Pamela Anderson on his lap.

There are some for whom Assange is a hero, a charismatic hacker, a freedom fighter, someone who can bring down governments with a hard drive.

Well, he certainly does not represent those things to me – far from it – but I believe his wife Stella Assange, who says his health has deteriorated in Belmarsh and she is fighting his extradition to the US. How he managed to get a wife and father two children while hiding in a cupboard, I find as difficult to grasp as the fact that Lady Gaga used to visit him there.

Julian Assange came to represent the principle of WikiLeaks, which was to hold power accountable, the mysterious networks of virtual/ deep state/military doings that were unreachable to mere mortals. Information dumps, hacking and digital spying revealed war crimes. WikiLeaks gave us images of the slaughter of civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

But WikiLeaks became only about him. Who was Assange accountable to? Respected journalists resigned from WikiLeaks because of his associations with anti-Semites.

Assange released information that may have led to the identification of gay men in Saudi Arabia, informants, rape victims.

Was his information helping Putin and Trump? It certainly did not help Hillary Clinton.

What oppression was Assange actually fighting?

When, 14 years ago, Sweden issued an arrest warrant accusing him of one rape and the molestation of another woman, two years of legal battles followed, with him ending up in the basement of the Ecuadorian embassy. Some charges were dropped in 2015 because of the statute of limitations; the rape charge was dropped in 2019 after a review of evidence. A megalomaniac and misogynist with a messiah complex: I have never had any time for this man or his supporters. As a result, I have been abused for years by his cult-like followers and have been told I am in the pay in the CIA. Indeed, even the late John Pilger said this to me in a bizarre radio interview. Support for Assange usually indicates you are dealing with the very worst kind of far-Left conspiracy goons.

So, this is not easy to say but right now I think he has served his time. He should not be extradited to the States and if Australia wants him back, they should have him. He is charged with 17 counts of espionage by the American authorities and would face a long prison term.

There is a bigger principle here and that has nothing to do with what I think of the man: can the UK let someone be extradited for breaking the secrecy laws of another country? Or talking to whistleblowers? This would stop some serious journalism occurring at a time when we most need it.

Whether Assange is a journalist or now just a broken narcissist is a question for another time. Right now, our courts must stand up for free speech, for press freedom and, yes, for Julian Assange.