Julian Assange Released
On June 24, Julian Assange was released from Belmarsh Prison (London, Great Britain) and was able to return to Australia (his home country). He had been detained since 2019, at the request of the U.S. government, with an extradition request and accused of “revealing secret information”. Who is Julian Assange, and what is the significance of his release?
By Alejandro Iturbe
Julian Assange was born in 1972. From a very young age he dedicated himself to programming and following the permanent growth of the use and influence of the internet and new media. He developed a very critical view of how imperialist capitalism and its governments were using these media and he connected with other young people with similar views.
They considered that the internet had become a means to gather information about the population in order to control and also to manipulate it (a concept that today is called “information mining”). This vision was set out in a developed way in the book “Cyberpunks: freedom and the future of the internet,” published in 2012[1].
At the same time, they considered that the most influential media only disseminated information of interest to governments and companies in order to manipulate public opinion and hid everything else, especially the “secret plots” of power and the methods they used.
They thus became what are now called “cyberactivists” and grouped together with the aim of developing an “alternative media” to uncover and publicly denounce these “dirty secrets.” In 2006, they created the Wikileaks site with that goal in mind [2].
From there, they began to publish some “secret documents,” but the leap in quality came in 2010, when Chelsea Elizabeth Manning, a former military and intelligence analyst of the U.S. Armed Forces gave Assange thousands of classified documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with cables and “secret communications” [3].
The most sensitive of these materials is a video filmed on July 12, 2007, showing U.S. soldiers in Iraq firing from a helicopter and killing a group of civilians including two Reuters journalists and 9 other people. The official version of the military authorities about what happened was that it was a “collateral consequence” of a “combat against Iraqi insurgents,” something that the video shows to be false [4].
Once made public, under the name of “Collateral Murder,” the video quickly went viral in 2010, with millions of views and generated a great scandal in the U.S. that led to public doubt about military authorities and former President George Bush Jr. From then on, a permanent international judicial persecution of Julian Assange began.
Accusations in Sweden
Assange traveled permanently to several countries where he resided for some time. In 2010, shortly after the great Wikileaks leak, the Australian government withdrew his passport and warned him that it would be cancelled. He denounced that this was a U.S. request and persecution.
That same year, Assange applied for a work and residence permit in Sweden, the country where he was living. The Swedish government rejected the request and, at the same time, in that country, the Justice initiated two judicial processes for accusations of “rape” and “sexual harassment” by two Swedish women and ordered his arrest (later only the rape case remained ongoing).
The judicial accusations against Assange in Sweden “came and went” several times. Even in 2017, the Swedish Justice closed the case due to the difficulty of reliably proving the facts. Then, in 2010, Assange fled to England and, in fact, went to live in semi-clandestinity. In between, the Swedish Justice requested the British government to arrest him and extradite him to Sweden.
Assange always said that it was a “staged judicial process” and that the real objective of the Swedish Justice was to arrest him and then extradite him to the U.S. to be tried and sentenced in that country for the “leaks” of Wikileaks.
Regarding the specific fact of which he was accused in Sweden, his version was also very confusing. First he said that he had met the women who accused him but that he had not had sexual relations with them. Later he admitted that he had.
Before continuing with his story, we want to make one point clear: if Assange had committed the sexual crimes of which he is accused, it would be entirely valid for him to be tried and convicted for them in Sweden.
Refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy
In Great Britain, there was a court order for Assange’s arrest at Sweden’s request. In 2012, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and requested political asylum, which was finally granted by the government of Rafael Correa. At that time, the British authorities warned that they would not give him any safe conduct to leave the country and go to Ecuador. But they did not dare to invade the embassy and arrest him, although there was, yes, a failed attempt in 2016.
He lived, then, as a refugee for seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy. The situation changed in 2019, when the new Ecuadorian government officially announced that it was no longer granting political asylum to Assange, and the British police forces violently arrested him.
Belmarsh Prison
At the same time, the cause for which the British Justice ordered his detention had changed. It was no longer at the request of Sweden (where the judicial process for sexual offenses had been closed). Now it was directly and clearly at the request of the U.S., with an extradition request to try and convict him for the “serious crime” of the Wikileaks “leaks,” something that U.S. imperialism and its British partner could not let go unpunished. From prison, Assange filed several appeals to prevent his extradition.
During the five years he was imprisoned, the prison conditions were extremely harsh, typical of those that imperialist countries apply to the most dangerous “terrorists.” He was forced to remain 23 hours a day in solitary confinement in his cell, with only 45 minutes to exercise in a concrete courtyard. When he left his cell, he was prevented from having any contact with the other prisoners.
In this situation, his physical and mental health deteriorated seriously, even at risk of death. This inhumane treatment was publicly denounced by the international campaign demanding his release, and so evident was this mistreatment that 60 doctors, from the USA, Australia, UK and Sweden, published a letter addressed to the British government “to express our grave concern for the physical and mental health of Julian Assange” [5].
Even Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, stated that “a system was being set up to assassinate him” [6].
International campaign
In this situation, the “Assange case” reached great international importance and his figure became a symbol of the “alternative press” and of the cruel persecution of the imperialist countries which he considers “enemies.”
A great international campaign was developed against his deportation to the United States and for his immediate release, through letters and petitions to the British Justice and numerous articles and declarations. Among them, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which launched its own campaign [7], and Amnesty International.
Many years ago (when he was still a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy), the IWL made a clear statement against the persecution of Julian Assange and joined the campaign demanding his immediate release, after being arrested and imprisoned by the British Justice system [8].
Some considerations
Assange was released after accepting the conditions of an agreement proposed by the government of Joe Biden and the U.S. justice system: to plead guilty to the charges, to receive a sentence that would be considered served with the five years of imprisonment in Great Britain, to be released and to be able to return to Australia[9].
It is perfectly understandable that he would accept such an agreement in order to be released and to be able to recover his physical and mental health, as well as to be able to return to his country to be reunited with his family (his parents, his ex-wife and his son) [10].
On this basis, it is interesting to analyze why the Biden administration and the U.S. Justice decided to make this proposal. It is clear that, on the one hand, it was due to the great international campaign in defense of Assange, which exposed the hypocritical image of “defender of democracy” that U.S. imperialism tries to sell to cover up its crimes.
On the other hand, the Biden administration is under great internal questioning for maintaining its unconditional support to the State of Israel, even in the midst of its genocidal action in Gaza. In the U.S., solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people against Zionism has been expressed in large mobilizations and in multiple actions by university youth against Biden’s foreign policy. In this framework, the Biden administration considered that the best thing to do was to “defuse” the Assange case.
Beyond these considerations, it is clear that his release was a triumph of the international campaign and a political defeat of U.S. imperialism. For this reason, we celebrate it, as do millions around the world.
Notes:
[1] https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view/79481-cypherpunks-nuevo-libro-assange-internet-mayor-maquinaria-vigilancia
[2 ] This denomination takes part of the name of the well-known “Wikipedia” and unifies it with the English word leaks, whose meaning in Spanish is “filtración” or “gotera” (leak).
[3] In 2010, Chelsea Manning was imprisoned. In 2013, a military court sentenced her to 35 years in prison and her “dishonorable” discharge from the military. Obama released her in 2017, commuting the remainder of her sentence, but she was imprisoned again in 2019 to force her to testify against Assange. She attempted suicide in prison, in 2020. She was finally released for good at the end of that year. In 2013, Chelsea Manning came out as a trans woman and, in 2014, managed to legally change her birth name (Bradley Edward).
[4]https://web.archive.org/web/20100409060709/http://www.publico.es/304527/video/muestra/como/ejercito/eeuu/mata/fotografo/reuters
[5] https://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20191125/471840750638/sesenta-medicos-temen-assange-pueda-morir-prision.html
[6] https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange
[7] https://www.ifj.org/es/actividades/campanas-de-la-fip/por-la-libertad-de-julian-assange
[8] See for example: https://litci.org/es/una-verdadera-conspiracion-imperialista/ and
[9] https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cv22g41znd3o
[10] https:// www.facebook.com/watch/?v=441355632024672
