Britain can’t claim to care about free speech if it extradites Julian Assange
The Wikileaks founder is far from an angel, but he should be treated fairly by the criminal justice system
Let’s face it, Julian Assange is not the most sympathetic of figures but his likeability is of no relevance to whether he is being properly treated by the criminal justice system. The Wikileaks founder, who holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London fearing his deportation to the US, is currently in Belmarsh high security prison awaiting precisely that. Last week, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, signed an executive order under which he can be handed over to the American authorities for trial on charges of espionage, for which he could face the clearly preposterous sentence of 175 years in prison.
The obvious caveats should be entered straight away, not least to assuage those who think Assange deserves whatever fate awaits him. He is a self-regarding, egocentric, would-be martyr who has seemingly managed to alienate most people, including many of his early supporters. Some of the latter deserted him, ironically, after Wikileaks began to target heroes of the progressive Left like Hillary Clinton. It was OK while Republican administrations were being embarrassed by the disclosure of classified material; but when hacked emails from her disastrous 2016 presidential campaign were put in the public domain, many of Assange’s defenders dumped him.
Indeed, the Biden administration is pursuing the extradition with just as much determination as its predecessors. They see Assange as an enemy of the state. His supporters see him as an anti-establishment figure informing the public of activities the powers-that-be would rather they did not hear about. A journalist, in other words, practising freedom of speech.
Assange was initially arraigned under a European Arrest Warrant issued by Sweden alleging rape and three sexual assaults. But rather than surrender himself to the British police, he sought sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy where he remained for eight years. Assange and his followers said the Swedish warrant was a ruse to get him into custody, whereupon he would be sought by America over the leaking of cables and diplomatic papers connected to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Sweden dropped the charges against him and yet he faces removal to the US, which suggests that his suspicions were well founded. His supporters detect “dark forces” at work to mete out punishment for the role Wikileaks played in exposing American abuses during the conflicts.
When Assange was hiding in the embassy, he was placing himself above a law that applied to everyone else. But now that the Swedish charges have been abandoned, is he any different to a journalist publishing secret documents that expose state wrong-doing?
The issue is how he came about the documents and the cavalier approach to their publication. The Americans allege he conspired with Chelsea Manning, then a US intelligence analyst, to hack into a secret Pentagon network to access classified material. Were a journalist to do that in the UK it would be illegal, though a public interest defence can be mounted given the egregious nature of what was uncovered.
The Telegraph’s release of information about MPS expenses, contained on a confidential computer disk, is a case in point, though unlike Wikileaks this newspaper went out of its way to ensure certain personal information was withheld. Assange just dropped the lot onto the internet without considering the effects its exposure might have on US agents. But was this espionage, as the Americans claim? There is an unmistakeable sense that Assange is being punished because he took the lid off some of the appalling activities of the US military in order to stop similar investigations in future.
The Government’s acquiescence in this enterprise is worrying and comes on the eve of the publication today of a British Bill of Rights which is due to enshrine a commitment to free speech as one of its central provisions. Dominic Raab, the Lord Chancellor, is especially keen on this part of his new statute. He wants to rebalance the countervailing rights to privacy and free speech under the European convention which have tipped too far in favour of the former. He also sees it as an opportunity to stop, or at least slow down, the advance of “wokery” on unfashionable opinions.
But there is another side to free speech, which is to defend the right of journalists to hold the powerful to account for misconduct that they would rather the public did not know about. Many people are unwilling to hear this argument and consider the media, and certainly people like Assange, to be too intrusive, exercising power without responsibility as Baldwin put it. But the idea that our courts can be used for a proxy vendetta against an irksome exposer of nefarious state activities should alarm anyone who wants to live in a free country.
This case also again raises questions over the balance of power in the 2003 Extradition Treaty between the UK and the US. The family of Harry Dunn, the teenage motorcyclist killed in a collision with a car allegedly driven by Anne Sacoolas, an American claiming diplomatic immunity to avoid extradition, are angry at what they see as the lack of reciprocity. In the Commons a few months ago, Boris Johnson conceded that elements of the extradition relationship between Britain and America were “unbalanced” though he insisted diplomatic immunity was a separate matter.
Of course, the Americans are entitled to make an extradition request if their national security has been compromised by illegal activity not covered by public interest protection. But we should be entitled to say no if we suspect this to be more a political witchhunt than a criminal matter.
Due process has been followed. Our lower courts accepted there was a prima facie case for Assange to answer but rejected the US request on the grounds that his mental health has deteriorated and he would be a suicide risk in an American jail, especially if he ends up in solitary confinement. The refusal was overturned by the High Court and its decision upheld by the Supreme Court. But the saga is not yet over. Since Ms Patel’s decision, yet another appeal has been lodged.
On the day that a new Bill of Rights makes its appearance, 334 years after its namesake – one of the founding documents of American democracy – promised to defend the liberties of the people against an over-mighty state, we should ask ourselves whether any of this is fair or just.
We should be entitled to say no if we suspect this to be more a political witch-hunt than a criminal matter