Essay by Kellie Trantner, The Multiplural World, June 28, 2024 (with a dossier of recommended, related readings further below)
(This report was first published in Declassified Australia on June 27, 2024. The writer Kellie Tranter is a lawyer, researcher, and human rights advocate in Australia. Her website is here.)
He survived; he’s free; he’s home. Notwithstanding his abuse and torture for over a decade, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has successfully waited out those persecuting him.
There’s little doubt that his release was assisted by political pressures coinciding with a looming U.S. election and by the mounting Assange campaign in the United States. Perhaps it was also assisted by Australia’s ‘quiet diplomacy’, one of many other factors at play.
Given that last month, Assange won the right to appeal to the UK’s highest court his threatened extradition to the United States, and considering the ‘Perfected Grounds of Appeal’ filed on his behalf [weblink below], it is not improbable that the United States was advised that the writing was on the wall as far as its extradition demand of the British legal system went. There was a heightened risk of global humiliation in failing to have Assange extradited.
There was also a real risk of a dangerous precedent being set with findings that might be made about legal questions. These include selective application of the U.S. First Amendment and extraterritorial punishment, and also embarrassing factual findings about the suitability of carceral facilities in the United States, Assange’s likely treatment there, and the reliability of U.S. assurances that whatever rights remained for him in the U.S. prison complex would be fully respected.
This seemed to be supported by Assange’s criminal defence lawyer Barry Pollack when he confirmed at the press conference in Canberra on June 27 that, “The negotiations were a protracted process that went on for several months in fits and starts. They were not close to any sort of resolution until a few weeks ago when the Department of Justice reengaged in the very intense negotiations over the last few weeks.”
The 150-page Perfected Grounds of Appeal is even more striking when read as a summary of the brutality of the United States’ actions on a global scale. In the context of the ‘AUKUS’ military alliance with the United States, all Australians should be asking larger questions about the criminal enterprise that underpins Australia’s relationship with the United States.
The claim by some U.S. officials that the plea arrangement and Assange’s consequent conviction reflect a victory is preposterous. How could any person who has been subjected to such treatment as suffered by Assange not accept an offer to plea to the comparatively minor offence of conspiring to commit espionage and walk free when the alternative is to spin the wheel of judicial roulette, weighted by legislation favouring the persecutors, and risk extradition and death?
And further, as Barry Pollack, put it:
“Mr. Assange was not going to agree to any disposition in this case that required him to accept allegations that are simply not true. Mr. Assange did not plead guilty to, and would not plead guilty to, 17 counts under the Espionage Act, including for computer hacking.
“There is a very narrow agreed upon set of facts here, and Mr. Assange acknowledges that of course he accepted documents from Chelsea Manning and published many of those documents because it was in the world’s interest that those documents be published. Unfortunately, that violates the terms of the Espionage Act. That’s what we acknowledged today. We also said – Mr. Assange said very clearly – he believes there should be First Amendment protection for that conduct but the fact of the matter is that as written the Espionage Act doesn’t have a defence for the First Amendment. So, what he acknowledged is what he has to acknowledge which is true and nothing he should be ashamed of. Yes, he received classified information from Chelsea Manning and he published that information. That should not be a crime.”
Listen to the warnings
Compared to the outraged “principled” position the United States has taken since Assange began publishing damaging information, his conviction after pleading to the single “lesser” charge is far from a victory for his detractors.
Some commentators are now belatedly raising concerns about what the plea deal means for most journalists who have sat on their hands for over a decade instead of being up in arms about the unprecedented extraterritorial witch-hunt. Any chilling effect comes not from Assange’s plea but from the cowardice of journalists fearing that if they publish information that is embarrassing to the United States, they will be relentlessly pursued as was Assange. That’s particularly the case in the United States, where they are citizens of and residents in the jurisdiction.
The Assange plea deal post-dates a significant trend of reputable investigative journalists here, and even more so in the U.S. and UK, quitting mainstream media outlets in order to publish the truth, unvarnished and uncensored. Popular support for those journalists is widespread and growing. This reflects the growing contempt of a broad section of the public for co-opted, mainstream media. Rather than laying blame on Assange for accepting a guilty plea, mainstream media and their owners should look in the mirror. Again, defence lawyer Barry Pollack has rightly confirmed:
“What set a chilling precedent in this case was the prosecution; the fact that the United States elected to charge Mr. Assange with violating the Espionage Act. The Court today determined that no harm was caused by Mr. Assange’s publications.
“We know that they were newsworthy. We know that they were quoted by every major media outlet on the planet. And we know they revealed important information. That is called journalism. The United States prosecuted that. They exposed Mr. Assange to the danger of 175 years in prison. That is what has had a chilling effect on jounalism. The decision that it is time for Mr. Assange to go home does not have a chilling effect. The chilling effect is the U.S. pursuing journalism as a crime. I hope this is the first and last time that ever occurs.”
Assange’s Australian counsel Jennifer Robinson commented:
“I want to take the time to thank the Australian people and the Australian government for all of the support that we’ve received from home in Australia. In particular, I want to thank our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for his statesmanship, his principled leadership and his diplomacy which made this outcome possible. It was as leader of the Opposition that he took a stand for justice and said, “Enough is enough, there is nothing to be served by Julian’s continued incarceration”. As Prime Minister, he stood true to his word and he did what he needed to do to ensure Julian Assange’s freedom. He raised it at the highest level at every opportunity and when Australian officials were making outreach to the United States, they knew they were acting with the full authority of the Prime Minister of Australia. It was his intention that this be done and we wouldn’t be here today without the support of the Prime Minister of Australia.
“I want to thank our Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, our Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and give particular thanks to our U.S. Ambassador and former prime minister Kevin Rudd for his adept diplomacy and his relentless efforts in Washington that facilitated our negotiations with the United States government and ensured this outcome.
“I also want to thank our High Commissioner in London, Stephen Smith, whose tireless work enabled us all to be here today…”
A different outcome was possible
It is understandable that in the circumstances and in this moment, praise is directed towards the Australian government. It is not lost on those who have followed the Assange case for over a decade that successive governments told the Australian public on countless occasions that it could not intervene in the Assange case. That was always politically dishonest.
An accurate historical record should show that in 2012, Labor’s Attorney-General Nicola Roxon met with Assange ’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson The attorney-general said when asked about protecting Julian that there “may be some things we can do diplomatically”. But soon afterwards, she wrote to Robinson saying Australia would not be seeking to involve itself in any international exchanges about Julian’s future. And that is what happened.
Achieving a political solution now is all well and good. But with the solution having been diplomatically negotiated while the legal processes of both the U.S. and UK were in full flight, one wonders why that could not have been done over a decade ago and saved Assange from being tortured and subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Assange’s difficult circumstances and mistreatment spanned the time in office of the governments of six prime ministers, including five predecessor of the current prime minister: Gillard, Rudd, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison.
The other untold story is the faceless senior bureaucrats and the many current and former politicians who over many long years had a hand in Assange’s ongoing incarceration through departmental and diplomatic inaction as a matter of policy, as my extensive Freedom of Information work has revealed.
As Assange slips into an ‘ordinary’ quiet life, for now, he should be circumspect about his freedom given the propensity of some within the United States security state to pursue their enemies indefinitely, including by extra-legal means. But if anyone knows this and can yet stand firm in the face of uncertainty and adversity, it is Julian Assange.
Finally, I have personally watched many good people pay high personal and career prices for their support for over a decade of the important work of Wikileaks and Assange. They all did so because it was the right thing to do and they never wavered during long and difficult battles in supporting Assange and consequently press freedom, official transparency and justice. Assange wrote in 2013:
“Nothing worth doing is easy. Great battles throw our characters into relief, revealing our strengths, our weaknesses, and our inclinations. Struggle cuts down opportunists, conformists, and those who can’t sacrifice the minute for the hour. We have been bloodied but now we can see clearly who our friends are and appreciate their talents.”
Go well Julian Assange. Enjoy freedom with your family in the fresh air, surf and sunshine!
Dossier on Julian Assange’s historic release from prison in Britain:
The following is the reporting of Julian Assange’s release from a British prison on June 25, as it appears on the ‘World news’ page of The Multiplural World website.
The Western media helped keep Julian Assange behind bars, analysis by Jonathan Cook, in Declassified UK, June 26, 2024 (and re-published in Consortium News, June 29, 2024) ….The truth is, with a properly adversarial media playing the role it declares for itself as a watchdog on power, Assange could never have been disappeared for so long. He would have been freed years ago. It was the media that kept him behind bars. The establishment media acted as a willing tool in the demonising narrative the U.S. and British governments carefully crafted against Assange…
Plea agreement by Julian Assange was the result of imminent failure of U.S. extradition demand from Britain, report in Al Mayadeen English, June 28, 2024
(photo caption: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange appears for plea agreement on June 26, 2024 at U.S. court in the Pacific island colony of Mariana Islands)
Unlikely that important, previously unreported materials remain in Wikileaks files, says Julian Assange’s U.S. lawyer, report by Joe Lauria, in Consortium News, June 28, 2024 Part of the plea deal requires destruction of unpublished material in the files of Wikileaks. The agreement makes clear that already published materials remain safe.
Watch: June 27 press conference in Canberra by lawyers and supporters of Julian Assange, YouTube broadcast by Reuters (18 minutes. Photo caption, left to right: Stella Assange, Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson, Senator David Shoebridge, Assange lawyer Barry Pollack, and Senator Peter Whish-Wilson at press conference at Australian Parliament on June 27, 2024. Also speaking briefly was Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.)
Julian Assange has become a symbol of resistance to the U.S. government, commentary by Fyodor Lukyanov, in RT News, June 26, 2024 (This commentary was first published in the Russian daily newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on June 25, 2024. Fyodor Lukyanov is the editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs (English version here). He is chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy think tank in Moscow and research director of the Valdai International Discussion Club.)
Julian Assange walks free, but threats to journalism and the truth by those who persecuted him are larger than ever, commentary by Su-Lin Tan, columnist, South China Morning Post, June 28, 2024 (here in pdf format: Threats to journalism by those who persecuted Assange are larger than ever)
Julian Assange is finally free!, report by Joe Lauria (editor), Consortium News (on board Julian Assange’s flight home to Canberra), June 26, 2024 …The journalist and Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has done more than anyone in the past 20 years to expose U.S. government crimes to a world saturated in U.S. propaganda obscuring them. He will speak publicly on June 27 in Canberra for the first time since his release from the prison/industrial complex in imperialist Britain…
