Julian Assange does not call it his D-day but his P-day (from plane, plane in English). Today and tomorrow two judges from the British High Court are presiding over the legal hearing to decide whether to put him in one and definitively grant his extradition to the United States, accused of seventeen crimes of espionage, and of conspiring to hack the Government's computer system. It is his penultimate cartridge. If he loses, he will only have to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
“In the dock is not only Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, but also freedom of the press,” said Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds in the House of Commons, and one of the 35 British parliamentarians (fourteen Labor, a Conservative, two Scottish nationalists, a Green and the rest Lords) who have written to the American Minister of Justice asking – without success – for the charges to be dropped.
The Guardian newspaper, which once published Wikileaks (almost four hundred thousand documents and diplomatic cables from the Pentagon and the State Department on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan detailing bombings and murders of civilians, clandestine activities in the Middle East, surrenders of suspects to third countries so that they were tortured and the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo), he noted yesterday in his editorial that "at stake is the future of journalism, and especially investigative journalism." The United States wants to set the precedent that such a vague and flexible concept as “national security” is above the right to disseminate news of public interest. And the first amendment of its Constitution, which establishes freedom of expression.
The Belmarsh maximum security prison, in southeast London, is by no means the “polar wolf”, the Russian penitentiary center in the Arctic where Alexei Navalny died, but it is not a pleasant place to live either. Assange has been locked up within his walls for almost five years, to which we must add the seven he spent in the Ecuadorian embassy in the English capital, until his hosts got fed up with him. Those who have treated him assure that he is not an easy guy.
The Australian journalist, 52, is married to a human rights lawyer born in South Africa and of dual Swedish and Spanish nationality (Sara González Devant, who changed her name to Stella Morris). He was part of his defense team after being accused by two Swedish women of sexual abuse, and Stockholm requested his extradition, conceiving the two children they have together when the journalist was evading UK justice in the Ecuadorian embassy, on a street which overlooks the back of Harrods department store.
The lawyer and activist, who now goes by the name Stella Assange, led a demonstration in front of the Palace of Westminster, the seat of Parliament, over the weekend, asking judges to ignore her husband's extradition request because he has not been charged with any charges. crime in the UK. Even the Daily Mail, a very right-wing law and order newspaper, has collected opinions to the effect that London behaves like Washington's lapdog, handing over anyone wanted by American justice when the reverse is not the case. .
Swedish prosecutors eventually dropped sex crime charges against Assange (who refused to go to Stockholm but offered to be interviewed in London), but their joy was short-lived because in 2019 the Trump administration formally charged him based on a 1917 law designed to prevent the country from entering World War II, and which is now used against those who divulge official secrets. His detractors allege that he considers “espionage” the mere act of seeking out sources with access to national security issues, persuading them to speak, and publishing what they say, precisely the essence of investigative journalism.
Joe Biden's government has ignored all demands to leave Assange alone, who has many enemies for what some perceive as a friendly attitude towards Russia and hostility towards Israel, tolerance of the excesses of dictatorships while looking with magnifying the defects of democracies, having published the names of CIA spies, putting their lives in danger, and wanting to do the same with those of Afghan and Iraqi civilians who were his informants, and therefore “collaborators.”
One of the arguments of Assange's lawyers for the judges not to grant extradition is his delicate state of health, both mental and physical (he has a chronic respiratory problem). If he is tried in the United States under the Espionage Act, he would not be able to use in his defense the content of the leaked documents, nor why he did it, nor whether they are of public interest. He risks being sentenced to 175 years in prison, and never seeing the world again from the other side of bars.
