Extraditing Assange Would ‘Endanger Journalists’ all over the World

The bid to extradite Julian Assange threatens the fundamental freedom of the press, so why are so few of them willing to step up and offer a defence?


FILE PHOTO: WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange leaves Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Britain January 13, 2020. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
FILE PHOTO: WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange leaves Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Britain January 13, 2020. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
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LONDON (Bywire News) - While attention has been taken by COVID 19, Brexit and dodgy trade deals, another equally important story has been bubbling away which the media has almost completely ignored.

The trial of Julian Assange has enormous connotations for the freedom of the press. That most of them don’t want to know tells you a lot about just how endangered that freedom is. 

First here’s what’s happened so far. 

Case for the prosecution

US prosecutors want to extradite Assange to the US and try him a series of espionage charges and one of hacking which could carry a maximum sentence of 175 years. Prosecutors claim Assange encouraged Chelsea Manning, a US Army Intelligence Analyst, to steal 250,000 classified documents. Assange is said to have provided assistance in cracking a password to US defence department computers, gaining access to files including diplomatic cables, assessments of detainees of Guantanamo Bay, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is not the first time that the US has attempted to extradite Assange. They tried it before under the Obama administration, but moves were ended when the DoJ acknowledged a prosecution would compromise press freedoms. They tried and failed to establish a way in which Assange could be charged but a liberal outlet such as the New York Times does not. 

The US constitution makes an important differentiation giving news outlets the right to publish secret information even if that information was obtained illegally. It’s a crucial tenet which has enabled newspapers to hold power to account when it breaks the law. From Snowden to Manning, whistleblowers tend to crop up when the government acts in an illegal way. Ensuring their right to publish is crucial to any functioning democracy. 

Unsurprisingly, therefore, this is something the Trump administration has decided to take aim at. Their strategy revolves around attempting to differentiate Assange from the mainstream press by claiming he is not a journalist and that the charges related to his obtaining the documents rather than the act of publishing them. In other words, they are attempting to show he played an active part in persuading Manning to leak the documents and even helping her to gain access to them. 

Among the files, they say he helped her access is a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Bagdad that killed 11 people including two journalists. He adopted what they call a ‘cavalier attitude’ to the publication of these files giving little thought to the possible consequences for US personnel or people who had helped the US forces. 

The aim is to reassure the court that the extradition does not violate the First Amendment and troubled journalists who believe they could one day find themselves in the same situation as Assange. 

However, as the trial has progressed, prosecutors have been adopting a harsher stance. Assange is currently charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, but since returning, after a member of the prosecution team had a scare with a suspected case of coronavirus, they have taken their case down an increasingly sinister direction. The danger now, as former diplomat Craig Murray suggests, is that they intend to use this case to claim the Espionage Act could be applied to any journalist. 

Case for the defence 

The defence team drew attention to the contribution Wikileaks to exposing information which was of important national interest, highlighting his status as a journalist, his physical and mental health problems as well as the excessively harsh sentences and treatment he could expect to receive if he is extradited to the US.

The prosecution, they say, is politically motivated. Eric Lewis who had represented Guantanamo detainees and serves as the chairman of the board of Reprieve said that under Trump the Justice Department has become highly politicised to the point that it had become the ‘prosecutorial arm of the President’.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, he says, attempted to pressurise the Eastern District of Virginia into bringing a prosecution against Assange and things had been just as bad under the current AG, William Barr. He highlighted Barr’s 2018 memo which said the “full measure of law enforcement authority is placed in President's hands, and no limit is placed on the kinds of cases subject to his control and supervision.”

Conservative journalist Cassandra Fairbanks provided further evidence about the political motivations behind the case when she detailed how he meeting with Assange inside the embassy had been monitored and how Trump’s team had negotiated with the embassy to have him evicted and arrested by British authorities. 

In a recorded phone conversation between ambassador Fairbanks and Trump fixer Arthur Schwartz he specifically says Assange was arrested on direct orders of the president. 

Former federal prosecutor Thomas Durkin added to Lewis’ testimony casting doubt on the chances of Assange being given a fair trial. “I don’t believe, he would be able to get what I consider to be a fair trial,’ he told the court. He argued that Assange would struggle to gain access to key evidence in his case and pointed to the contrasting attitudes of the Trump and Obama administration. 

While the case had been declined under the Obama administration it had resurfaced under Trump without any new evidence coming to light. This changing stance offered clear evidence that the prosecution was based on politics rather than the law. 

Excessively harsh sentence 

Durkin also pointed to the US legal system which implements what he refers to as a trial tax which is designed to disincentivise defendants from taking their cases to trial. There is also a practice of encouraging a timely guilty plea with the prospect of a reduced sentence. 

Were Assange to be found guilty, though, he suggested the sentence could be much harsher than elsewhere in the world. If convicted on all charges Assange could face 175 years in jail. The prosecution has claimed that in reality, the most likely sentence would be around 14 years. 

However, Durkin argued that the prosecution appeared to be claiming Assange was more liable for the leaks than Chelsea Manning and that the Government could therefore seek a sentence of as high as 60 years. 

Risk of suicide

That harsh sentence would have severe implications for anyone, but particularly a man such as Assange who is said to suffer from a number of physical and mental health issues. In his evidence, Eric Lewis said that Assange would not receive adequate treatment for a range of mental health issues such as depression, suicidal tendencies and a possible diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. 

“US prisons are woefully understaffed, especially with respect to quality mental health services, even with respect to high-profile prisoners,” he said.

He also pointed to the suicide of Geoffrey Epstein who was awaiting trial on sexual assault charges. The death of Epstein, who was closely linked to many prominent figures including Prince Andrew and Donald Trump, has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories online.  

“Mr. Epstein was reported to have private, compromising information on many powerful people, just as Mr. Assange likely does. My confidence that he will be safe from harm, whether inflicted by himself or others, is low,” he said. “With regard to Mr. Epstein, even with the full battery of precautions in place, suicide is still a real possibility.”

Assange would also face a number of special administrative measures while being held in custody which could include solitary confinement at the Notorious Supermax Jail in California. This in itself could violate Article 3 of the UK Human Rights Act. 

The prosecution point a decision from the European Court of Human Rights which suggested that the potential for solitary confinement within the Supermax Prison should not discount extradition. 

Lewis replied that, since that ruling in 2012, new information has emerged about conditions within the supermax prison which should influence the court’s decision. 

Positive diagnosis

Dr. Quinton Deeley, a National Health Service psychiatrist specialising in autism and other mental health issues agreed that Assange suffers from Asperger’s syndrome and depression. He also added to concerns about the high risk of suicide, if Assange was to be extradited.  

The prosecution’s own expert also seemed to bolster the diagnosis. Dr. Seena Fazel, an expert on prison suicides was called to downplay the risk of Assange harming himself. However, she did agree that he suffers from depression and is high on the autism spectrum and his risks would increase if he felt he had ‘bleak prospects’. 

Dr. Sondra Crosby who visited Assange while he was in the Ecuador embassy expressed her concern at his mental and physical condition. When she saw him in 2018, she said, he “described his thoughts of suicide to me and in fact, spent quite a lot of time talking to me about how he had been thinking about all of this deliberately.”

He described his thoughts of suicide and suggested he felt the trigger would be extradition to the US where he believed his life would become intolerable. It all added to the notion that the risk of suicide if extradited is extremely high. 

She also said she was concerned about a serious and advanced tooth infection that was causing him excruciating concern and was causing him to take narcotics. He refused to leave the embassy in order to seek health care.  

Reckless publication 

A key part of the prosecution’s case has been that Assange recklessly published unredacted material that could endanger US personnel and people who worked with US forces. However that has been refuted by a number of witnesses, most devastating of all, Professor Christian Grothoff testified that it was two journalists from the Guardian who was responsible for the publication of the unredacted material by Cryptome after they published an encryption password in their book. Neither the journalists nor Crpytome have been prosecuted. 

Instead, he painted a picture of Assange being extremely reluctant to share access to the unredacted cables and how he worked hard to prevent access even after others had published them. The prosecution was unable to contest the fact that the cables had appeared on the internet before Wikileaks, but they tried to claim Wikileaks gave them greater visibility.  

Lack of attention 

An ongoing issue throughout this hearing has been the lack of press coverage in the mainstream media. For a case that is thought to be one of the biggest attacks on press freedoms in modern times, the media seems surprisingly blasé. 

The prosecution has worked hard to separate Assange from the rest of the media. However, this is an extremely difficult task. Being a journalist is not something you have to qualify to become. If you take part in the kind of activities a journalist undertakes, you are considered to be taking part in journalism and as such should have the full protection of the law.

Wikileaks may not have been part of the mainstream press but he performed the same duties. He took Government secrets and published them to expose wrongdoing. In doing so, he collaborated closely with major media organisations. If he is guilty of espionage, so are they.

This attack on Assange, whether people understand it or not, is a wholehearted attack on the freedom of the press in general. That the media as a whole is unwilling to turn out in his defence suggests either complicity or a woeful failure to understand the sheer scope of what the Trump administration is trying to do. 

If they get their way and extradite Assange to the US, they are sending a clear message that any journalist who undertakes work Trump and his friends decide they dislike could be liable to the same fate. Even if Assange receives a fair trial and is acquitted, his ordeal is intended to serve as a warning to others. 

So while Assange may not be the most sympathetic figure in the world and we should all rightly be concerned by the allegations he faced in Sweden, allowing his extradition would set a horrendous precedent which would have disturbing implications for investigative journalists all over the world. 

(Written by Tom Cropper, Edited by Klaudia Fior)

 

 

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